Quote:
Originally Posted by astra
I am curious. What is a proportion of non-native English speakers who voted for No, I do not need a dictionary on my reade?
I have a hunch it tends to zero.
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Likewise I have a hunch that if you asked people with kids if a built-in dictionary would be a compelling feature in choosing a device for them, that pretty much all of them would say yes. As ebook reading becomes more popular and accessible, I do think we'll see more kids reading ebooks, especially in school. At that point, dictionary (and other reference) lookup support will be a must-have feature.
I still don't think "need" is the appropriate word since none of this is about need. It's about how much you want something and how much you're willing to pay. Using the word "need" just gets folks who take it literally to vote no because technically they don't need it even if they would prefer it. It seems like a poll question geared to get the answer the writer wanted, not to find out how important dictionary lookup is.
Besides, my understanding is that this sort of feature is often part of the software API for a given format. It's not like everyone who implements it has to do it ground up. It's not a big money saver to leave it out. How much do you think most people would pay extra for a dictionary? $5? $10? When you look at the per-unit cost of the dictionary on something like the Kindle, it's probably fairly negligible. A little time on developing and QA-ing the UI is likely all it took since it's already part of .mobi. Half a million units sold and we're probably looking at a cost of pennies per unit. The cost is obviously higher with the lower-volume products but it's not like it's a $50 feature. Maybe Whispernet approaches that, but not taking a string and searching for it.