Quote:
Originally Posted by Poppaea
Delphin, when one knows better than the dictionary there is no need for them to use it in the first place. And the other dictionaries show it is possible to recognize the correct word. So this means there must be something wrong with the Oxford dictionary that clearly can be done better.
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Again there are
TWO separate issues here -
FIRST -
YES - the Sony should fallback to using a simple 'partial lookup' like the Kindle.
This is NOT 'rocket science' - If you can't find the FULL WORD, then you just keep dropping letters from the tail end of the word until your existing dictionary database does get a search hit. Duuuh
As I pointed out above, this will fool most folks into thinking you are handling words that you don't technically have precise definitions for.
In other words - Can' find the real definition -> "PUBLISHED" = 'past tense of publish'
so
Just drop the trailing 'ED' and display the definition for "PUBLISH"
and drop the trailing 'D' and display the definitions for "PUBLISHER"
This seems to be what the Kindle is doing.
Again, until Sony implements some kind of fuzzy logic partial lookup, if you get a failed search, you can easily simulate the less rigorous Kindle search by simply hitting the main dictionary icon (the tiny book with the letter 'A' in the upper left in the failed search box) to bring up the full dictionary and on-screen keyboard, and then backspacing over letters from the end of the word that was not found until you do get a hit on the root word.
The Sony even TELLS you this - "No entry found hit [dictionary icon] for manual search."
I agree SONY SHOULD DO THIS FOR YOU AUTOMATICALLY (as I described above) but doing it manually literally only takes about 2 or 3 seconds, so it's only a minor inconvenience.
(It does make the Sony Dictionary feature look bad though and SHOULD BE FIXED).
I think I see Poppaea's point that doing this manually requires some knowledge of the relationship between the base word and modified form, and does NOT tell you with certainty that the word PUBLISHED is even really a valid form of the base word.
Most folks looking up words while reading are just looking for a general idea of the meaning, and aren't using their reader for word processing or spell checking so even this limited 'base word' only lookup should be acceptable.
AND SECOND -
Yes it would be nice if the dictionaries had more entries for modified forms of words, but here you are basically asking for many thousands of additions to a dictionary that already handles literally hundreds of thousands of words and their associated derivatives.
This can certainly be done, just takes time and money, and if the Oxford Dictionary folks don't want to do these additions to fix things, I am sure that Websters or another dictionary source will be happy to step in and take over.