By defining a list of synonyms, you can increase the effectiveness of a search by grouping similar words together as a single result. You can define as synonyms words that are not in your source documents, but the main word does need to be in a source file. For example, if you define video and avi as synonyms of movie (main word), then when a user searches for video, a match will be scored showing the source files where the word itself is in, but also where the main word movie is as well. Please note that the inverse is not true, meaning that if a user searches instead for movie, files where the word video is will not be scored because of the synonym entry.

To add these definitions, you’ll need to perform an override on a file called locales.xml, located by default in the ePublisher Designer installation directory here:

  \Formats\WebWorks Reverb 2.0\Shared\common\locale

Once the file is copied to the correct location in your project directory, open it in any text- or XML-editing application (e.g., NotePad), and add entries to the <Synonyms> section. For example, your synonyms might look like this:

  <Synonyms>
   <Word value="movie">
    <Synonym value="avi" />
    <Synonym value="video" />
   </Word>
   <Word value="designer">
    <Synonym value="pro" />
    <Synonym value="publisher" />
   </Word>
  </Synonyms>

Please note that the Synonyms feature does not recognize multiple word values or synonyms. And, it ignores words (and synonyms) shorter in length than the specified value for MinimumWordLength defined in the same file. Synonyms are not case sensitive.