xfce4-dict and WordNet

[Enrico Tröger]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:45:30 +0200, "Liviu Andronic"
<landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 8/25/08, Enrico Tröger <enrico.troeger at uvena.de> wrote:
> > Then I still don't understand what you are requesting. Do you wish
> >  direct support of the wordnet database without the dictd server?
> >
> This was the post triggerer, but since communicating with dictd(-wn)
> works with actual code it is probably not worth implementing it. Only

That's my point. Why spending time in implementing a wordnet database
interface when it already works via dictd.
For the reason 'dict-wn' is old, see below.


> culprits, that the version is older and the dictionary seems
> incomplete.

Yes and no.
Find the real differences between wordnet 2.0 and 3.0, check them and
then find out if the differences (incomplete word lists, wrong
definitions) actually concern you. What I mean is I guess the update
added some more defintions for more or less uncommon words, fixed some
wrong or bad descriptions and such. But probably the main content is
the same and remained the same. So probably all the efforts in
discussing this and maybe implementing a special wordnet interface is
not worth the differences. But this is just a guess and need to be
verified by checking the differences.
Generally I'm not against adding a wordnet interface and it's probably
not that difficult but I don't want to do this if it isn't necessary.


> >  You can of course use the wordreference.com resource as a web
> > search with xfce4-dict. Then simply your default browser with the
> > results page will be opened. But displaying any contents directly
> > in xfce4-dict is not possible for legal reasons, AFAIK.
> >
> I could mention StarDict-3.0.1, which provides "full-text
> translation", from Yahoo, Google, Altavista and others, with the
> appropriate "Powered by ~" information, which I feel like a copyright
> indicator. No idea, however, where they are from a legal perspective.

I'm not sure. Do they just display the website contents in StarDict(1),
do they receive the search results via some kind of web API from these
service(2) or do they parse the website output and display the results
(3)?

(1) and (2) should be legally but if they do it like in (3) I'm pretty
sure that is against the law and/or the service's terms of use.
I definitely don't want to do something like this.


> >  wn "WordNet (r) 2.0"
> >  n 1: a shortened form of a word or phrase
> >  2: shortening something by omitting parts of it
> >
> Same results pop up in WR.com (which uses WordNet 2.0), so I imagine
> this is what should be retrieved when searching through dictd-wn-2.0,
> but currently is not.

In the meantime, I tried it locally with the dict-wn 2.0 sources. I
compiled these into a dictd dictionary and then started the server with
the files. Then I requested "hello" and "abbreviation" and both
resulted with the above content.
I tested these words once with xfce4-dict and then to get sure also
with

[20:13] enrico at ukio (0): ~/$ telnet localhost 2628
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.localdomain.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ukio dictd 1.9.15/rf on Linux 2.6.25-ARCH <auth.mime>
<10.4630.1219947244 at ukio>
define wn abbreviation
150 1 definitions retrieved
151 "abbreviation" wn "WordNet (r) 2.0"
abbreviation
     n 1: a shortened form of a word or phrase
     2: shortening something by omitting parts of it
.
250 ok [d/m/c = 1/0/17; 0.000r 0.000u 0.000s]


So, I think it is a) your dict-wn dictionary which might be broken or
its index file or b) it's because you are using the -pre version, why
don't you use the final dict-wn 2.0 which was released years ago? Why
using an even older version?

 
> >  > 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
> >
> >
> > In what way would it be of any interest for xfce4-dict? I mean if
> > you already used it via dictd what else should xfce4-dict do?
> >
> Oh, I was certainly alone in this train of thoughts. Xfce4-dict could
> feature Search with: Dict (local) and Dict (web). This for two
> reasons: one, people could use local and web resources
> "simultaneously", at least switching from one to the other would be
> fast and two, it will, or some tooltip will indicate users that they
> could use locally installed dictionaries.

I think this could be more generally expressed:
have multiple configured dictd server profiles which can be easily
chosen in the GUI without opening the prefs dialog?
IMO it doesn't make much sense to differentiate between 'local' and
'web' dict servers as both are servers and both are accessed the same
way, through the network. 'local' and 'remote' is only defined by
geographical locations but the code doesn't see the difference. 

I'm not sure this is that useful or necessary. I think if you are
already running a local dict server, you should it  configure it
properly. IIRC there are features like using a remote dictd server to
forward the query to. Similar to forwarding DNS servers. Then you could
use the locally installed dict-wn dictionary and some online
dictd resources. Using the different search methods which dictd already
provides ('*' search all, '!' search until first match) these things
probably can be reached without any new code.
Just read the docs of dictd.

Furthermore, you are aware there is already a web-search which opens a
dictionary service in a web browser?

Regards,
Enrico

-- 
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