Dictionaries not working on iOS 7 - cause app to freeze

[holymadness]

So I ran into this problem tonight.

When clicking on define after selecting a word, instead of being taken to the customary brownish screen of the system dictionary, I got a blank grey screen that said 'no definition found.' There was an Edit button in the top right corner. Clicking on that took me to a long list of dictionaries: the revised American Oxford, the Oxford, the Apple dictionary, foreign language dictionaries, etc. They all had cloud download icons next to them.

I tried clicking on some of these but nothing happened. After a 10 second delay, I noticed the Apple dictionary had started downloading but it never finished. The circle stayed stuck at about 99%. The app then froze.

Rebooting took me back to my book, but attempting to define a word now causes it to freeze on this screen : http://i.imgur.com/8suIuMv.jpg. Leaving the app and re-entering it causes Marvin to crash, and once even locked up my entire phone for 20 seconds.

[Faterson]

It looks to me like a problem -- at least initially -- on iOS level, unrelated to Marvin. Do dictionary look-ups work for you now in other iOS apps?

To download a dictionary in iOS 7, you need to tap not the line with the dictionary name, but the cloud icon on the right. It's quite unintuitive. The download progress is not clearly indicated, either. Your dictionary is only completely downloaded once you see a "delete" icon next to the dictionary name (like a small x). If you still can't see a small x next to the dictionary name, but a circle, or a cloud icon, then you still haven't finished downloading the dictionary, and dictionary look-ups cannot work for you anywhere in iOS.

By the way, the new dictionaries setup in iOS 7 is much preferable over the older one up until iOS 6, although it is still extremely dumb (as usual for Apple whenever it comes to multi-lingual issues). The internal iOS 7 dictionary now allows you to display a dictionary definition from several dictionaries at the same time -- such as both a definition dictionary, and a translation dictionary --, which is a huge plus, at least in theory. I say theory, because the range of currently available internal iOS 7 dictionaries (especially translation dictionaries) is still extremely narrow, and there still appears to be no way for you to add your own custom dictionaries. And, all the internal iOS 7 dictionaries still exhibit the fundamental flaws of earlier iOS dictionaries: all the hyperlinks inside them are completely dead (how Apple is not embarrassed by this, is beyond me); and you cannot search within dictionaries, cannot define words used in the definitions themselves, etc.

Also, the German iOS dictionary is still next to unusable in most contexts -- it fails to look up even the most basic German words if they happen to be inflected, which, of course, they will be in most occurrences in book texts. In iOS 7, we now at least know whom we are to blame (besides Apple): Duden Wissensnetz is the name of the inept German dictionary. I wonder if such a dumb, inefficient dictionary is truly the best that both Apple and Duden could come up with in 2013.

A relief in iOS 7, for me, is the ability to get away from Apple's previous English-English internal dictionary, especially its hair-raisingly amateurish pronunciation indications, selecting the (British) Oxford English Dictionary as my new default iOS 7 English-English dictionary; it features proper IPA pronunciations for every word. Ideally, there would also be a loudspeaker icon next to each definition, so that you would get to hear the word pronounced out loud!

The above means that in iOS 7, it's no longer true (which was the silly setup in previous iOS versions) that in order to switch your iOS dictionary language to the language of your choice, you first had to switch the layout of your iOS keyboard (!) to that language. Now, iOS 7 just pops up the definitions from all of your downloaded dictionaries, whether the dictionary language matches the language of the text you are reading or not. Again, an extremely inflexible, dumb way of doing it by Apple, but that is typical; from among the 2 dumb ways of doing it (iOS 7 versus earlier iOS), the current iOS 7 way is slightly less dumb, though still very inflexible and unprofessional.

[kguil]

I encountered something similar in early iOS 7 betas. I can't reproduce the problem on any of my test devices updated to 7 (although I notice that the dictionary is slower).

Try this. Open the notes app, write something, select it and define it. Does the dictionary work in that app?

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by kguil

I notice that the dictionary is slower

All of iOS 7 is slower compared to iOS 6 (see all those painfully slow animations; gone is the former iOS fluidity, being replaced by garishly "flat" ugliness).

However, as to the reason for dictionary lookups being slower, it could be related to what I described above: as soon as you download more than one internal iOS dictionary, iOS will proceed to search them all whenever you look up a word in iOS. (My guess would be that you have already downloaded more than 1 iOS dictionary, Kris.) If you're reading an English text and look up the word problem, iOS will search through all of your downloaded dictionaries, looking up the word "problem" in them, which (naturally) slows it down. And, it will then pop up the definition of the word problem in both the English-English dictionary, and the German-German dictionary, even if you are currently reading an English text, so that German-German dictionary definitions are irrelevant for you (for now!).

Talk about dumb. There is simply no flexibility: no way to tell iOS, "Hey, I'm reading an English book now! Please, only look up words in the English-English and English-MyNativeLanguage dictionaries for now; forget about all the other dictionaries, until I instruct you otherwise." Apple could have added check-marks as toggles next to each dictionary name -- tapping the dictionary name would then temporarily activate it, and tapping the dictionary name again would temporarily deactivate it. But hey, that's too simple and smart solution, isn't it; which is why Apple is unlikely to implement it.

[kguil]

In the meantime, to verify that this is a system-wide issue, and switch to an online dictionary until this problem is sorted out, please take a look at this.

http://blog.marvinapp.com/post/61746545578/

[holymadness]

You're right. The stock notes app also freezes when attempting to define a word. As does Safari.

Switching to Wiktionary in Marvin prevents the app from crashing/freezing.

I guess the best thing would be for you to submit a bug report to Apple.

Thanks.

[ChristopherTD]

I downloaded the Oxford English dictionary and word lookups now work for me in Mail and in Marvin. This is on iPhone 4, iOS 7.

Just a FYI of a situation where it isn't (yet) seizing up!

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by holymadness

I guess the best thing would be for you to submit a bug report to Apple.

It's an iOS issue rather than a Marvin issue. It is caused by the download of your dictionary not yet fully being completed. Isn't there a way, perhaps, to interrupt the current (but incomplete) download of your dictionary, or to stop it and re-download it, or to stop it and download a different dictionary? That should remove the freezing occurring on your device.

[holymadness]

I found a fix for this issue.

Rebooting the phone and going back into notes to define a word allowed me to access the dictionary picker. From there I was able to get the Apple dictionary and the OED. Subsequent definitions worked without freezing the app.

From then on, I was able to switch to the system dictionary in Marvin and look up words without any issues. However, I noticed the Marvin dictionary popup uses default iOS 6 styling rather than iOS 7's new look. See below for comparison.

Marvin: http://i.imgur.com/zC66K4A.jpg
Notes: http://i.imgur.com/Q2ficP2.jpg

[kguil]

holymadness, countless developers complained/reported about the issue during the betas. Hopefully they'll sort it out soon.

[holymadness]

Good good.

Just FYI: I tried this on my iPad 3 and iPhone 5. I went into the Apple Notes app and selected to define a word. I was prompted with the blank screen in the dictionary popup. I downloaded the Oxford American English Dictionary without issues. I returned to the text, reselected to define the word, and everything worked perfectly. Then I tried selecting a word to define from within Marvin and it also worked perfectly. I don't know what all this means, but obviously the bug doesn't occur for everyone as I had no issues on either of my iOS 7 devices.

[Faterson]

The bug only occurs if you fail to download a dictionary -- when your dictionary download gets stuck before being completed. It's an iOS bug, or an issue with the user's Internet connection. It has nothing to do with Marvin.

Originally Posted by Faterson

The bug only occurs if you fail to download a dictionary -- when your dictionary download gets stuck before being completed. It's an iOS bug, or an issue with the user's Internet connection. It has nothing to do with Marvin.

Yes, I understand that. But I guess I was lucky in that I was able to get both devices to DL the dictionary without any issues.

[McSatler]

I had that problem when "Define" feature in Kobo app would not work on Ipad running on iOS 7.

To solve the problem, I had to use third party product - IBook, that is developed by Apple.

I opened any book in it, clicked "Define" and it also showed "No definition found" the same way as it was in Kobo app. However, on the bottom left corner, there was a "Manage" button, when I pressed on it, I was able to download Oxford Dictionary of English.



Afterwards, the issue with Kobo abb define issue has been solved.

I hope it helps!