Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
DRM-free Mobipocket dictionaries work just fine on the Kindle.
The essential point here, though, is that book publishers CANNOT publish dictionaries for ePub devices, whereas they can - and do - publish Mobi/Kindle dictionaries. It's a restriction not just for the end-user, but for the publisher, too.
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I feel like I'm being nit-picky, but I can't seem to stop myself: There are relatively few ePub dictionaries available for sale, but some are being published. They must be manually searched, almost like a printed dictionary. This is less than ideal since e-book users want their add-on dictionaries to perform like the built-in dictionary. As I've previously stated, this is a benefit that Kindle has over its three closest competitors.
In an attempt to circle back to and expand upon the original point (I might need Tom Tom to help me find it): ePub's lack of specification for dictionary lookup isn't necessarily a barrier to Amazon adopting the format (but not ADEPT - that's just crazy). Using Sony as an example, we see that robust and elegant dictionary lookups are possible. ePub's benefits probably outweigh the difficulty of integrating Kindle dictionaries with ePub. After all, Kindle 3's dictionary supports lookups in PDFs as well as mobi-variants, so part of the work is already done.