xfce4-dict and WordNet

[Liviu Andronic]

Hello Enrico,

On 8/24/08, Enrico Tröger <enrico.troeger at uvena.de> wrote:
>  > I am currently using WordNet Browser, or WordReference.com to browse
>  > Princeton's WordNet lexical database. I am curious whether the Xfce4
>  > Dictionary can be used with a locally installed app-dicts/wordnet-3.0?
>
>
> I guess you can't use the service of wordreference.com locally as their
>  site states that it is an online-only service and even scripts to
>  download their database are not permitted. So, there is no way, AFAIK.
>
I was not clear enough in my wording. I meant that I could use
WordReference.com to browse on-line Princeton's WordNet-2.0. At the
same time, I locally installed (on Gentoo) app-dicts/wordnet-3.0,
which ships with its own Tcl/Tk GUI browser.

This would have been another feature suggestion: do you mean that
Xfce4 Dictionary couldn't query WordReference.com for their different
english<-->language dictionaries? If find WR.com a terribly useful
ressource, and having it readily available in Xfce's dictionary would
be quite nice.



>  wordnet: you can install the dictd server locally, install the wordnet
>  database for dictd and then query your local dictd server with
>  xfc4-dict. This is the way I would suggest as this works fine, fast and
>  is already implemented.
>
I installed app-text/dictd-1.10.11 and app-dicts/dictd-wn-2.0, started
the daemon, in xfce4-dict switched the server to "localhost" and the
WordNet dictionary was detected. Querying "localhost" for words seemed
to work. There is, however, some funny behaviour.

For example, querying "abbreviation" or "hello" in dictd-wn-2.0
through xfce4-dict returns nothing, but both entries are present in
the WR.com online WordNet-2.0, and in "my" local WordNet-3.0. At the
same time, both "lavatory" and "machine" are present in all three
ressources.

From here, I can think of two things: either dictd-wn-2.0 is somewhat
corrupted, or the text received from dictd is miss-handled by
xfce4-dict.

One thing that could be improved in handling the dictd output is the
formatting. If the text received by xfce4-dict could be reformatted
on-the-fly, it would be nice, for example, that "[syn: {car}, {auto},
{automobile}, {motorcar}]" be formatted similar to WR.com's display
[1] (using bold, and why not links for the definition words).

[1]  http://www.wordreference.com/definition/machine


>  For testing, you could use the dictd server at 'dict.org' which also
>  provides the wordnet database.
>
Unfortunately I access the Internet through a proxy server, and as far
as I can tell xfce4-dict does not support this. Could this also be
considered for a future release?


>  > Otherwise, could such a development be considered for future releases
>  > of Xfce's dictionary?
>
>
> Basically yes. But before thinking about adding new code, I'd like you
>  to test the above mentioned dictd-wordnet package.
>
I also installed app-dicts/dictd-web1913, Webster's Revised Unabridged
Dictionary (1913) for dict. I think it would, too, be of interest to
xfce4-dict. For this dictionary I had no above-mentioned missing
definitions. It gives, however, nice, long and oldish definitions.


Thank you,
Liviu