Mysterious problem with dictionary-lookup

Pulp · 08-21-2008, 05:26 PM

I currently have the free Websters ditionary installed but it does not work the way I want it to.

When I have the dictionary opened and do a lookup the results are displayed just fine - for ex. 'except' gives me a list of 5 choices.

The strange thing is that when I leave the dictionary and try to lookup words within normal books, I get a "no result" error - 'except' gives me no results at all all of a sudden.

It proves that the lookup modes would work in general, but only where it is not needed

Any

s?

PS: I tried the GCIDE-dict aswell, same behaviour.

montsnmags · 08-21-2008, 08:18 PM

[Note, this is just a remote chance, as I have no experience with the Cybook, and it may work totally differently, but in the absence of other explanations from those more experienced and "technical" at the moment, here's my probably-useless take...]

When I was having similar problems with my Iliad (which turned out to be "language" related in my case), I found mention with the Iliad that there were occasional problems for people with the application not finding the dictionary, when they stored it on the card rather than internal memory.

I mention the "specifics" above, so you can see that (lack of) likelihood of the explanation being applicable to you.

On the Iliad, when you open a mobipocket book on the card, it actually then copies the book from:

books/Mobipocket/[bookname].prc

to books/Mobipocket/bookname/bookname.prc

Now, this is normally not a problem, but it seems that (perhaps only sometimes - because not everyone seemed to be reporting it) if you opened a dictionary directly (rather than just doing a lookup from another book), the Mobipocket application on the Iliad did the above too, copying:

books/Mobipocket/dictionary.prc

to

books/Mobipocket/dictionary/dictionary.prc

Once that had occurred, the dictionary was outside of that

books/Mobipocket

director that a lookup was looking in, and so it couldn't find it.

At least, that was seemed to be the gist of the explanation, and, at one stage, seemed to be the gist of of problem I was experiencing.

So, in the absence of other, more relevant (to the Cybook) explanations, could you check the location of the dictionary files on the Cybook, and see if they're in that directory. If not, put them there again, and try a lookup from within a book, before trying to access the dictionary directly. It might not solve the problem, but it may confirm or eliminate the hypothesis.

Cheers,
Marc

Pulp · 08-25-2008, 01:08 PM

Thanks for the long post. I was sure the books were in the correct location because it worked before, but I checked and even tried different lokations, no success.

Then I thought the problem could be that my english books are marked "german" because the mobi-creator does that automatically and I didn't change it.
Changing the language to "en" didn't help either.

The dictionaries are detected as 'existant', because when I delete every dictionary on my Cybook the lookup mode returns "No dictionary in that language available", as soon as I reinstall them I get "no result" again.

I am pretty sure that it worked before I did the firmwareupgrade to 708.
Could anyone using 708 please check and see if it works on her/his device?

Pulp · 08-26-2008, 09:05 AM

I finally found the solution.

It seems that changing the language of a book in the Mobipocket Reader does not really change the metainformation - only if the book is defined as "english" when created with the Mobipocket Creator the dictionary-lookup will give proper results.

*sigh* - going to rebuild my english books.

HarryT · 08-26-2008, 09:19 AM

I suppose that does make sense; if the language of a book is specified as being, say, German, then you don't want to look words up in it using an English dictionary.

zelda_pinwheel · 08-26-2008, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

I suppose that does make sense; if the language of a book is specified as being, say, German, then you don't want to look words up in it using an English dictionary.

actually i would prefer the dictionary lookups to be non-language specific, even if i have to maybe sort through the results myself (in case of results in more than one language, which would probably be rare anyway). if i'm reading a book in (for instance) english which contains some citations in (for instance) german, looking up the german citation in an english dictionary, even though the book is defined as an english language book, will not be helpful. whereas if i have a german language dictionary, i would get more pertinent results. i don't know whether there is any way to do that but it seems a much better solution to me.

Pulp · 08-26-2008, 02:35 PM

zelda_pinwheel it is posible to define a book as "neutral" - in that case all dictionaries should be searched.

What bothers me is that it seems to be impossible to change the language later.

tompe · 08-26-2008, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pulp

zelda_pinwheel it is posible to define a book as "neutral" - in that case all dictionaries should be searched.

What bothers me is that it seems to be impossible to change the language later.

mobi2mobi (part of MobiPerl) can be used to change the lanuage.

zelda_pinwheel · 08-26-2008, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pulp

zelda_pinwheel it is posible to define a book as "neutral" - in that case all dictionaries should be searched.

What bothers me is that it seems to be impossible to change the language later.

thank you for that info ; that's very good to know.

perhaps there is a way to change the metadata using a tool similar to lrf2lrf (i believe this permits you change the metadata of sony books) ? mobi2mobi ? does that exist ?

EDIT (note to self : yes, it does exist (i thought so) and if you had refreshed the page before you posted you would have known that.)

montsnmags · 08-26-2008, 06:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tompe

mobi2mobi (part of MobiPerl) can be used to change the lanuage.

It can and was by me about a week ago, Tommy. It took me a while to figure out what was going on with the dictionaries and the languages, but once I figured it out, and discovered the abilities of mobiperl and mobi2mobi, all my ebooks have been "neutral"ised. All of my "English" books now work a treat with my purchased French-English dictionary.

Thanks, mate.

Cheers,
Marc

HarryT · 08-27-2008, 09:46 AM

What's the language code for "language neutral"?

Jellby · 08-27-2008, 09:52 AM

Maybe an empty string or 0x007F?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...fo(vs.71).aspx

By the way, I only have an English dictionary installed (the GNU dictionary), but when I look a word up from a French book (language set with mobi2mobi) it still tries to search the dictionary (and returns no result), I mean it does not complain about no dictionary existing for the language...

montsnmags · 08-27-2008, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

What's the language code for "language neutral"?

Using mobi2mobi, I ran it on the ebooks with the option:

--language ""

so, basically, null. That seemed to change it to "Neutral".

Cheers,
Marc

HarryT · 08-27-2008, 11:59 AM

Thanks!

tompe · 08-27-2008, 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by montsnmags

Using mobi2mobi, I ran it on the ebooks with the option:

--language ""

so, basically, null. That seemed to change it to "Neutral".

I do not remember that. Checking...

Aha, what happens is that the language is set to the value of "" since "" is not in the language map. And this might result in 0 but if you want 0 you should use "--language 0".

08-21-2008, 05:26 PM	#1
Pulp Palm Addict Posts: 477 Karma: 1001951 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3 [512mb, FW: 1.5]	Mysterious problem with dictionary-lookup I currently have the free Websters ditionary installed but it does not work the way I want it to. When I have the dictionary opened and do a lookup the results are displayed just fine - for ex. 'except' gives me a list of 5 choices. The strange thing is that when I leave the dictionary and try to lookup words within normal books, I get a "no result" error - 'except' gives me no results at all all of a sudden. It proves that the lookup modes would work in general, but only where it is not needed Any s? PS: I tried the GCIDE-dict aswell, same behaviour.

08-27-2008, 09:52 AM	#12
Jellby frumious Bandersnatch Posts: 7,515 Karma: 18512745 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Spaniard in Sweden Device: Cybook Orizon, Kobo Aura	Maybe an empty string or 0x007F? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...fo(vs.71).aspx By the way, I only have an English dictionary installed (the GNU dictionary), but when I look a word up from a French book (language set with mobi2mobi) it still tries to search the dictionary (and returns no result), I mean it does not complain about no dictionary existing for the language... Last edited by Jellby; 08-27-2008 at 09:55 AM.

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08-21-2008, 08:18 PM	#2
montsnmags Grand Sorcerer Posts: 10,155 Karma: 4632658 Join Date: Nov 2007 Device: none	[Note, this is just a remote chance, as I have no experience with the Cybook, and it may work totally differently, but in the absence of other explanations from those more experienced and "technical" at the moment, here's my probably-useless take...] When I was having similar problems with my Iliad (which turned out to be "language" related in my case), I found mention with the Iliad that there were occasional problems for people with the application not finding the dictionary, when they stored it on the card rather than internal memory. I mention the "specifics" above, so you can see that (lack of) likelihood of the explanation being applicable to you. On the Iliad, when you open a mobipocket book on the card, it actually then copies the book from: books/Mobipocket/[bookname].prc to books/Mobipocket/bookname/bookname.prc Now, this is normally not a problem, but it seems that (perhaps only sometimes - because not everyone seemed to be reporting it) if you opened a dictionary directly (rather than just doing a lookup from another book), the Mobipocket application on the Iliad did the above too, copying: books/Mobipocket/dictionary.prc to books/Mobipocket/dictionary/dictionary.prc Once that had occurred, the dictionary was outside of that books/Mobipocket director that a lookup was looking in, and so it couldn't find it. At least, that was seemed to be the gist of the explanation, and, at one stage, seemed to be the gist of of problem I was experiencing. So, in the absence of other, more relevant (to the Cybook) explanations, could you check the location of the dictionary files on the Cybook, and see if they're in that directory. If not, put them there again, and try a lookup from within a book, before trying to access the dictionary directly. It might not solve the problem, but it may confirm or eliminate the hypothesis. Cheers, Marc

08-25-2008, 01:08 PM	#3
Pulp Palm Addict Posts: 477 Karma: 1001951 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3 [512mb, FW: 1.5]	Thanks for the long post. I was sure the books were in the correct location because it worked before, but I checked and even tried different lokations, no success. Then I thought the problem could be that my english books are marked "german" because the mobi-creator does that automatically and I didn't change it. Changing the language to "en" didn't help either. The dictionaries are detected as 'existant', because when I delete every dictionary on my Cybook the lookup mode returns "No dictionary in that language available", as soon as I reinstall them I get "no result" again. I am pretty sure that it worked before I did the firmwareupgrade to 708. Could anyone using 708 please check and see if it works on her/his device?

08-26-2008, 09:05 AM	#4
Pulp Palm Addict Posts: 477 Karma: 1001951 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3 [512mb, FW: 1.5]	I finally found the solution. It seems that changing the language of a book in the Mobipocket Reader does not really change the metainformation - only if the book is defined as "english" when created with the Mobipocket Creator the dictionary-lookup will give proper results. sigh - going to rebuild my english books.

08-26-2008, 09:19 AM	#5
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	I suppose that does make sense; if the language of a book is specified as being, say, German, then you don't want to look words up in it using an English dictionary.

08-26-2008, 02:35 PM	#7
Pulp Palm Addict Posts: 477 Karma: 1001951 Join Date: Aug 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3 [512mb, FW: 1.5]	zelda_pinwheel it is posible to define a book as "neutral" - in that case all dictionaries should be searched. What bothers me is that it seems to be impossible to change the language later.

08-27-2008, 09:46 AM	#11
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	What's the language code for "language neutral"?

08-27-2008, 11:59 AM	#14
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383043 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Thanks!

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