Reference Webster, Noah: Dictionary - A, v.1, 5 Oct 2008

[vivaldirules]

This is a portion of Webster's 1913 Revised Unabridged Dictionary for words beginning with the letter A. I've done this at the request of those who want to see a dictionary for the Sony Readers although there is no mechanism on the current models (PRS-500 and -505) to do words searches. Words will have to be found by selecting the first two letters from the table of contents and then manually paging from there. Remember that on both of these devices you can advance or reverse ten pages at a time by holding down the page button for two or three seconds. On the 505, you may also find it useful to guess the page number for a word between two known words.

I would consider converting the rest of the dictionary into separate LRF files for each beginning letter but I want to hear back from people who have actually tried this one first and can convince me that this is indeed a useful reference for them and isn't unwieldly. Nrapallo may also be working on converting this dictionary into a single, large LRF file.

Have fun and remember that the words and definitions are a hundred years out of date!

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[mazzeltjes]

Thanks for the effort Vivaldirules
I d/led and went to find the word artifice
It might be in there but after about 20 buttonpushes I gave up
It's faster to walk to the bookshelf.
Pity,it would be very helpfull sometimes.

[mazzeltjes]

Thanks for the effort Vivaldirules
I d/led and went to find the word artifice
It might be in there but after about 20 buttonpushes I gave up
It's faster to walk to the bookshelf.
Pity,it would be very helpfull sometimes.

[vivaldirules]

Thanks for trying it, mazzeltjes. My conclusions are the same as yours: maybe a nice idea but we require Sony's help to make it practical.

[UKHaiku]

I'll download it tonight to try - but as a thought, since you can go directly to a page number won't that speed up finding a word - just need to guess a bit...?

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by UKHaiku

I'll download it tonight to try - but as a thought, since you can go directly to a page number won't that speed up finding a word - just need to guess a bit...?

Right, but when I tried it, I never really got close and still had to make at least 20 button pushes to find the word I wanted. I really like the idea of having a really good unabridged dictionary but it would take great patience. I was thinking I could increase the number of table of contents entries to 50 and have them evenly distributed so that you were never more than 1/50th of the book away from the word you want. For the 'A' words which displays in 1076 pages when in small fonts that means you're never more than about 21 pages from the word you want. Unfortunately, I'd have to do that for all 24 or so of the dictionaries (B to XYZ, too) which would mean over a thousand links I'd have to create. I'm just not sure I want to do that.

[UKHaiku]

hmmm... Yeah, maybe a bit too much work for a non-searchable 100 year old dictionary... But kudos for effort at least

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Right, but when I tried it, I never really got close and still had to make at least 20 button pushes to find the word I wanted. I really like the idea of having a really good unabridged dictionary but it would take great patience. I was thinking I could increase the number of table of contents entries to 50 and have them evenly distributed so that you were never more than 1/50th of the book away from the word you want. For the 'A' words which displays in 1076 pages when in small fonts that means you're never more than about 21 pages from the word you want. Unfortunately, I'd have to do that for all 24 or so of the dictionaries (B to XYZ, too) which would mean over a thousand links I'd have to create. I'm just not sure I want to do that.

I automated the process to add TOC entries into a two-tiered TOC as previously mentioned here. I ended up adding just over 700 TOC links. The idea was to space them evenly over every 160 words and then the mid point would be no more than 80 words from either side (word_before TOClink or word_after TOClink). With an average of (say) 8 words to a "page" that would mean the mid point would be 10 pages away. Doesn't the Sony allow this 10 page jump?

I updated my .html for this two-tier TOC already and attach it below. If you want to check this updated .html in a browser, grab the file below. However, you'll have to convert it to .lrf first to see it in action on your Sony reader.

Strange, but the conversion from .html to .prc or .imp took minutes however, I had problems going from .html to .lrf (took hours and didn't finish!). Oh well, I know what my forte is NOT!

Hope you find it useful.

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[nrapallo]

I did it again! This time I automated the insertion of the tier-two TOC links to be EVERY word in the dictionary; all 110,000+ words!

Not very practical, but interesting idea nonetheless. Somewhere in between is the optimal number of tier-two TOC links i.e. every 160th word vs. EVERY word.

I attach a .html file that contains just the final extracted TOC entries with NO corresponding <a name=> or <id=> links in the main dictionary file.

As a result, this file is basically just a wordlist (including duplicates )...

BTW, Mobipocket Creator's 'Add Table of Contents' seems like a very powerful tool for adding external TOC's that can then be changed to be an inline TOC with a little editing i.e. search & replace.

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[vivaldirules]

You're incredible, Nick. Great job. Now even I'm interested in seeing how this works on a Sony Reader. So I attempted to convert your Final12-NR version (post #8) to LRF with BD but it again failed after a very long time. Could anyone else out there figure out a means to convert it to LRF and post it?

[vivaldirules]

Could someone please take Nick's HTML file from post #8 and run it through html2lrf and post it? I don't use Calibre or I would do it myself.

[nrapallo]

I had started my conversion using html2lrf to produce a .lrf version of my Final12-NR.html above Thursday October 9, 2008 at 6:00 pm local EST.

After 48 hours it still had not produced anything, but hopefully, I will get something useful in the end.


EDIT: message body changed

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by nrapallo

hopefully, I will get something useful in the end.

Nope!

My P4 2.8 GHz 500 MB RAM WinXP computer crashed with a memory error sometime this past weekend, after 50+ hours of processing trying to create the .lrf version from my .html.

This is the exact command used and output results from calibre's html2lrf:

C:\Program Files\calibre>html2lrf -o PRS-Websters-Dictionary-1913-v2 -t "Webster's Dictionary 1913 (ver. 2.0)" -a "Webster, Noah"  --category="Dictionaries" --publisher="NR" --cover="Cover_SB_NR.jpg" --no-links-in-toc  --disable-chapter-detection --verbose Final12-NR.html
[INFO] __init__.pyo:489: Processing C:\Program Files\calibre\Final12-NR.html
[INFO] __init__.pyo:489:        Parsing HTML...
[INFO] __init__.pyo:489:        Converting to BBeB...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "convert_from.py", line 2013, in <module>
  File "convert_from.py", line 2007, in main
  File "convert_from.py", line 1898, in process_file
  File "convert_from.py", line 272, in __init__
  File "convert_from.py", line 393, in add_file
  File "convert_from.py", line 507, in parse_file
  File "convert_from.py", line 721, in process_children
  File "convert_from.py", line 1751, in parse_tag
  File "convert_from.py", line 721, in process_children
  File "convert_from.py", line 1751, in parse_tag
  File "convert_from.py", line 721, in process_children
  File "convert_from.py", line 1678, in parse_tag
  File "convert_from.py", line 721, in process_children
  File "convert_from.py", line 1751, in parse_tag
  File "convert_from.py", line 721, in process_children
  File "convert_from.py", line 1686, in parse_tag
  File "convert_from.py", line 723, in process_children
  File "convert_from.py", line 870, in add_text
  File "convert_from.py", line 806, in append_text
  File "convert_from.py", line 1233, in font_properties
  File "convert_from.py", line 1168, in font_size
  File "convert_from.py", line 1272, in unit_convert
  File "re.pyo", line 134, in search
MemoryError

C:\Program Files\calibre>

My cache/page memory had been set to a maximum 1440 MB; and that's where it crashed.

Any other takers using a more powerful computer...

[ProDigit]

Maybe good bews is that Sony's PSR-700 will have a search function.
I only hope they port it to the PSR-500 series as well...

[vivaldirules]

In less than 4 weeks, there have been 70 downloads of the 'A' portion of the dictionary I posted. Has anyone found it practical? If no one/no-one/noone has, I'm going to cross this idea off my list.