Dictionary

Introduction

A nice simple dictionary app. This may work in concert with a system-wide inline dictionary service.

Designers

Objectives

• Look up word definitions
• View/hear pronunciation
Stand-alone application
A windowed application, with good typographic results; search capabilities; "bookmarks"/favourite words; last searches.
Dictionary as a service
A structured API for displaying bubbles with short definitions at a given location for a given word.
Shell integration
A content provider for the shell search capabilities.

Constraints

Relevant Art

Dictionary (GNOME 3.14)

Fantasdic (GTK 2.x application)

StarDict (GTK 2.x application)

OS X Dictionary

Merriam-Webster Dictionary HD

Wiktionary app

Oxford Dictionary Android app

Urban Dictionary unofficial app

Discussion

On objectives:

• talking about words and dictionaries, there is more than definition and pronunciation. I propose to extend the objectives by considering:
• look up for word translation (into language X)
• look up for paragraph/text selection translation

• look up for synonyms (see http://aiksaurus.sourceforge.net)

• manage check spell dictionaries
• extend information sources to well established online resources like wikipedia, google image, etc.
  • As usage scenario, I often use wikipedia to find the translation of word (). I also use google image to understand what a word means

Tentative Design

Comments

It would be interesting to use wiktionaries content, and even to encourage contribution when somthing is wrong/missing. Unlike with other disparate sources, it would provide definitions for "many to many" languages. -- psychoslave

See Also