best dictionary in an epub reader?

[diamante]

A few more comments:

The Kindle allows you to highlight and make annotations in dictionaries as you can in any other e-book. You can't do this on the Sony, but the Sony keeps "logs" of words you look up. It even maintains separate lookup logs for each e-book in addition to each dictionary.

Maybe a Nook fan could jump in and talk about dictionary functionality on the Nooks. I know that the Nooks use Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. If I recall correctly, on the Nooks there is no way to simply open the dictionary and browse; you have to search for a word from within an e-book. When you do that and the Nook takes you to an entry, if it's not what you're looking for there's no way to advance to the next entry or select another from a list. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I also noticed some formatting problems with the dictionary on the Nook Color, i.e. missing spaces, etc. Also, as far as I know you can't install different dictionaries. I have some old eReader dictionaries, but I don't think these will work on a Nook.

[boxcorner]

Originally Posted by SeaBookGuy

Sony has a choice of two English language dictionaries - there's also a British one (Oxford Dictionary of English).

Plus, ten bilingual dictionaries. I only mentioned the American dictionary as that is what diamante used for the comparison.

[Billi]

Originally Posted by diamante

However, if you highlight the two words and then hit the space bar, a search box pops up in which you can then easily delete everything but the second word before searching the dictionary. It's just a few extra clicks. Em-dashes don't affect dictionary lookup on the Sony; you can double click on either word to get the appropriate definition. This is a point in Sony's favor.

Thank you, diamante (and speedlever and Harry), for explaining this. This is really a feature I'm taking into account when buying a new reader one day.

Originally Posted by diamante

By the way, Billi, can you comment on the quality of the Pons dictionaries? You provided some interesting information; I didn't know whether Mobipocket dictionaries would work at all on a Cybook device.

I would have guessed that Bookeen was one of the first companies to make dictionaries work on an eink device . But of course, they work only on the mobipocket firmware and not on the epub firmware (one of the reasons I'm still using mobi).
The usage is not that comfortable as with the Sony 650 - to make a little understatement -, but the dictionary itself is very good. It is this one:


http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/...p?BookID=86466




I bought the hardcover version (20 cm thick!); that included both English-German and German-English and the respective mobi-files. Maybe Amazon is offering this dictionary, too, but I haven't checked.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Billi

Well, that's much more than the Cybook finds, but sometimes not enough, when I would need the second word.

Cybook can't, I know , but Sony finds both of them (I know too )

[diamante]

Originally Posted by Billi

I would have guessed that Bookeen was one of the first companies to make dictionaries work on an eink device .

I don't remember them touting dictionary capabilities in their product information, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Anyway, dictionaries seem to be a feature that quite a few people don't care about. For me, it's one of the most important features in an e-book reader. From this perspective I'm very happy with the Sony PRS-350 and the Kindle 2, and for that matter I also like Mobipocket and eReader for Palm OS.

[Lilly]

The Sony PRS-950 comes with about 11 dictionaries pre-install. If you are able to get you hands on it, then it's the best choice.

[boxcorner]

Originally Posted by Lilly

The Sony PRS-950 comes with about 11 dictionaries pre-install. If you are able to get you hands on it, then it's the best choice.

Assuming that all the Sony PRS-n50 dictionaries are the same, the complete list is:

1. New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition © 2005 Oxford University Press, Inc.
2. Oxford Dictionary of English, Second Edition, Revised © 2005 Oxford University Press
3. Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary (EN-FR), fourth edition © Oxford University Press and Hachette Livre 2007
4. Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary (FR-EN), fourth edition © Oxford University Press and Hachette Livre 2007
5. Oxford Spanish Dictionary (EN-SP), fourth edition © Oxford University Press 2008
6. Oxford Spanish Dictionary (SP-EN), fourth edition © Oxford University Press 2008
7. Collins English-German Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged, 7th edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2007, including matching German Lemmatized Lists (German and English) © HarperCollins Publishers 2010
8. Collins German-English Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged, 7th edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2007, including matching German Lemmatized Lists (German and English) © HarperCollins Publishers 2010
9. Collins English-Italian Dictionary, 2nd Edition 2005 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2005, including matching Italian Lemmatized Lists (Italian and English) © HarperCollins Publishers 2010
10. Collins Italian-English Dictionary, 2nd Edition 2005 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2005, including matching Italian Lemmatized Lists (Italian and English) © HarperCollins Publishers 2010
11. Van Dale Pocketwoordenboek Engels-Nederlands, © 2009 Van Dale Uigevers, Utrecht/Antwerpen Alle rechten voorbehouden/All rights reserved
12. Van Dale Pocketwoordenboek Nederlands-Engels, © 2009 Van Dale Uigevers, Utrecht/Antwerpen Alle rechten voorbehouden/All rights reserved

[dordale]

Originally Posted by diamante

A few more comments:
Maybe a Nook fan could jump in and talk about dictionary functionality on the Nooks. I know that the Nooks use Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. If I recall correctly, on the Nooks there is no way to simply open the dictionary and browse; you have to search for a word from within an e-book. When you do that and the Nook takes you to an entry, if it's not what you're looking for there's no way to advance to the next entry or select another from a list. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I also noticed some formatting problems with the dictionary on the Nook Color, i.e. missing spaces, etc. Also, as far as I know you can't install different dictionaries. I have some old eReader dictionaries, but I don't think these will work on a Nook.

Just wanted to verify--this is exactly correct regarding the original Nook. I don't know about the nook color though. That's one of the main reasons I bought a Sony 650 although I already had a nook.

dordale

[diamante]

I've just added the following to the "review" of the Sony 350's dictionary feature that I wrote earlier in this thread; I'm posting here as well so that anyone subscribed to this thread who might be interested will be notified:

I recently noticed a useful dictionary feature on my Sony 350. If you double-click on a word for which there is a corresponding entry in the dictionary, the dictionary suggests the first corresponding entry. If there are more corresponding entries, it also displays a small icon that looks like a bulleted list. If you click on this icon, you get a list of other entries that begin with the letters in the word you clicked on. For example, if you look up might and click on the "list" icon, you get a list of entries that includes terms like might-have-been and mighty. This provides an alternative way of looking up hyphenated terms like the example "four-square" I used above. Instead of selecting the entire term and deleting the hyphen, you can just double-click on the word before the hyphen, click the "list" icon, and select the term you are looking for from the list. The list is limited to 100 items, which may not be enough to reach the term you are looking for without adding more letters to your search term. It took me a while to notice this feature; the "list" icon is rather easy to miss in my opinion.