[Faterson]

Originally Posted by rfog

I wrote a post time ago about foreign hyphenation... and it recognizes language in epub and does separation conform each language, at least English and Spanish one. For Spanish, after reading 4 full books with Marvin I've not found any word wrong separated.

Congrats to you... Hyphenation does not seem to work for me in Marvin, even if I explicitly switch it on. It only seems to work in some English-language books here, but in none of the others. (But, I don't really care.)

Originally Posted by rfog

However, I think you can improve dictionary support. That is, my iPad is in Spanish and it is capable to find Spanish words. However, I read English books and would like to use English dictionary (does not matter if it eng-eng or a eng-spa). Easily said, as native Spanish talking I do not need Spanish dictionary. [...]

PS: A workaround is put iPad in English, of course.

Nope, you've got that wrong. Apple employed an extremely silly, unintelligent way of integrating dictionaries into iOS: because you can't change them on-the-fly. (In contrast, the Kindle app employed dictionaries integration wonderfully: you can switch from one dictionary language to another with a couple of taps of your finger, at any time.)

Now get this: one of the Marvin Beta testers accidentally discovered that the way to switch the iOS dictionary language is by... switching your keyboard layout to the desired target language! Yes, Apple can be that silly; to my mind, they are primarily a fantastic hardware company, but their software is often incredibly dumb, and this is a prime example.

So, if you're reading a Spanish book in Marvin, make sure your keyboard layout in iOS is switched to the Spanish keyboard. Then, the Spanish dictionary will pop up throughout iOS, not only in Marvin. But if you wish to see English-language dictionary definitions, just switch your keyboard layout on your iPad to the English keyboard.

Of course, there is no logical connection whatsoever between dictionary pop-ups (= reading activity) and keyboard layouts (= writing activity), but that's just the silly way Apple set it up, and (for now) we need to live with it.

Let's hope one of the future iOS versions adds switching dictionary languages on-the-fly, and adds more dictionary languages. Also, I have noticed the current German iOS dictionary is of such poor quality it's virtually unusable. The English iOS dictionary is pretty awful as well: you can't search within it; all the hyperlinks in it are dead (what a gaffe!) ; and you can't tap a word used in a definition, in order to read its definition. All of these are fundamental usability issues, so to sum up, dictionary integration in iOS is currently on an extremely low level of quality.

So, switching your iPad's interface to another language won't help you in any way regarding iOS dictionaries display. But switching the keyboard layout will.

(By the way, several weeks ago I pointed out to Kris that the related "dictionary selection" option in Marvin's experimental settings does not work at all, and therefore it should be removed from Marvin.)