What e-readers score higher in terms of dictionaries and file formats supported?

Hmcaun · 05-02-2016, 04:41 AM

I've been the owner of a Kindle Paperwhite 6th generation for over a year, when I finally managed to sell it the last November. Reading both native- - I speak italian - and foreign-language books was a pleasure with it, due to the great availability of high-quality dictionaries. However, the fact that it did not support neither EPUB nor DRMed books quite disappointed me.

Now I'm in need of an e-book reader again, and the two other brands I'm most interested in are Kobo and PocketBook. Considering what I wrote and asked for in the title, some considerations and questions follow about Kobo and PocketBook devices:

Kobo seems to support Adobe DRMed and EPUB files and it has pre-installed dictionaries. As for the dictionaries, however, I do not know how good is the monolingual Italian one, and I have heard complaints about translation dictionaries in general.
As Kobo, PocketBook has a wide array of supported file formats too. Even most of its devices have pre-installed dictionaries, although for better ones it may be necessary to purchase on BookLand - which at least, to the disadvantage Kobo, is something that can be done; additionally, those offered by BookLand seem quite good ones. The problem with PocketBook is that it has no monolingual Italian dictionary, neither pre-installed, on its store, nor anywhere else - and that I have no clue of where obtaining one.

Having good dictionaries and being able to make use of a wide range of file formats are fundamentally important features to me. I'm going to ask some questions, but keep in mind that they are only meant to serve as a reference; you may freely answer beyond what is being asked:

How "good" is the pre-installed Italian dictionary, which I presume being Devoto-Oli, on Kobo? How many terms does it have, and how has your experience been with it?
From a thread on this site I came to know that it is possible to load custom dictionaries on Kobo devices. Again, how "good" are those provided from the MobileRead community?
Where can I find an Italian dictionary for PocketBook? I know its supported dictionary formats are .pbi and .dic, but this problem remains unsolvable to me.

I'm not feeling forced to buy from Kobo or PocketBook - these are the only manufacturers I'm most informed about -, so suggestions concerning other brands are also welcomed.

Thank you in advance.

eschwartz · 05-02-2016, 10:55 AM

Why are EPUB and Adobe-DRMed ebooks important to you? calibre can seamlessly and on-the-fly convert EPUB to AZW3, and Apprentice Alf can liberate your DRMed purchases.

meeera · 05-03-2016, 02:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Why are EPUB and Adobe-DRMed ebooks important to you? calibre can seamlessly and on-the-fly convert EPUB to AZW3, and Apprentice Alf can liberate your DRMed purchases.

Library books, perhaps?

eschwartz · 05-03-2016, 07:44 AM

Which should be explicitly mentioned.

Hmcaun · 05-03-2016, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Why are EPUB and Adobe-DRMed ebooks important to you? calibre can seamlessly and on-the-fly convert EPUB to AZW3, and Apprentice Alf can liberate your DRMed purchases.

For a variety of reasons - or, perhaps, to have things kept simple. I'm still actually thinking whether something like calibre conversion tools could really replace the support of EPUB and DRMed files on a device like Kindle. Certainly, I could still not borrow books from a library, and would suffer from some few other specific limitations.

Above everything and for now, however, is having good dictionaries support, and Amazon still seems to win this comparison with every other manufacturer. Apparently, PocketBook has good ones on BookLand, but I can't still find a monolingual Italian one for any of its devices!

Cinisajoy · 05-03-2016, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hmcaun

For a variety of reasons - or, perhaps, to have things kept simple. I'm still actually thinking whether something like calibre conversion tools could really replace the support of EPUB and DRMed files on a device like Kindle. Certainly, I could still not borrow books from a library, and suffer from some few other specific limitations.

Above everything and for now, however, is having good dictionaries support, and Amazon still seems to win this comparison with every other manufacturer. Apparently, PocketBook has good ones on BookLand, but I can't still find a monolingual Italian for one of its devices!

Kindles do not do epubs without a jailbreak. Now you can use calibre to convert to a kindle friendly format. Also not all ebooks at Amazon have DRM. That is up to the publisher.

rkomar · 05-03-2016, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hmcaun

Above everything and for now, however, is having good dictionaries support, and Amazon still seems to win this comparison with every other manufacturer. Apparently, PocketBook has good ones on BookLand, but I can't still find a monolingual Italian for one of its devices.

Dictionary support is not one of PocketBook's strong suits. Dictionaries need to be converted to a proprietary format (using a freely available Windows application). So, there aren't many commercial dictionaries offered for the devices. The dictionary app also doesn't support links within definitions.

eschwartz · 05-03-2016, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hmcaun

For a variety of reasons - or, perhaps, to have things kept simple. I'm still actually thinking whether something like calibre conversion tools could really replace the support of EPUB and DRMed files on a device like Kindle. Certainly, I could still not borrow books from a library, and would suffer from some few other specific limitations.

calibre's conversion produces flawlessly readable results (or at least, as good as the EPUB was, because it can't fix what isn't there

).
DRMed purchases are not a problem, cf. Apprentice Alf.

Yes, you miss out on library books (I assume from your response that you are not in the US), and converting requires an additional step done on a computer which IMHO is not really a burden.

Quote:

Above everything and for now, however, is having good dictionaries support, and Amazon still seems to win this comparison with every other manufacturer. Apparently, PocketBook has good ones on BookLand, but I can't still find a monolingual Italian for one of its devices!

This is exactly why my advice is to just deal with the need to manage/convert your books on the computer, and go with the Kindle. And you did say it (dictionaries) is also more important than library ebooks...
EPUB support is a mere convenience, and not a significant one in my admittedly American OverDrive<->Kindle-supporting worldview.

JSWolf · 05-03-2016, 12:27 PM

You might be best with one of the Android readers that allows you to install apps so you can install the Kindle app, and any app available that you want to read ePub such as Bluefire.

shalym · 05-03-2016, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You might be best with one of the Android readers that allows you to install apps so you can install the Kindle app, and any app available that you want to read ePub such as Bluefire.

How well do those apps support dictionaries?

Shari

Hmcaun · 05-04-2016, 04:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkomar

Dictionary support is not one of PocketBook's strong suits. Dictionaries need to be converted to a proprietary format (using a freely available Windows application). So, there aren't many commercial dictionaries offered for the devices. The dictionary app also doesn't support links within definitions.

I think that this needs to be commented, because I believe - but cannot be totally sure - that PocketBook has indeed a good dictionary support. To get an idea of it, you may check out the BookLand site area reserved for dictionaries. If the dictionaries they provide are as good as they appear - in the English-Italian bilingual ones there seems to be one I used on Kindle, or something similar to it - then we can agree that PocketBook devices may not be so lacking on that side. They may have nevertheless their limitations, because I seem to know that any single dictionary purchased from BookLand can be used on one device only, once purchased.

As far as I know, PocketBook devices support .pbi and .dic file formats for dictionaries. (I know this from an answer received directly from the PocketBook support center.) And perhaps definition links aren't a big issue.

Something I've been wondering until now is: do PocketBook devices have a lookup feature for normal books? If the answer to this were to be affirmative, then who knows if it isn't possible to load dictionaries in the guise of normal books? The optimal condition would be to have the ability to press on a word while reading, with a dialog doing a search on one of the selected library books, which in this case should be a chosen dictionary.

JSWolf · 05-04-2016, 05:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shalym

How well do those apps support dictionaries?

Shari

That would depend on the app used. Given it's running Android, look around and see what's reading apps support what dictionaries.

HarryT · 05-04-2016, 09:28 AM

Does it all have to be in one device? You could get a Kindle for the reading tasks that require good dictionary support, and a cheap Android tablet for reading library books on.

Hmcaun · 05-08-2016, 06:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hmcaun

Something I've been wondering until now is: do PocketBook devices have a lookup feature for normal books? If the answer to this were to be affirmative, then who knows if it isn't possible to load dictionaries in the guise of normal books? The optimal condition would be to have the ability to press on a word while reading, with a dialog doing a search on one of the selected library books, which in this case should be a chosen dictionary.

I opened a thread for answering the quoted passage. I'm advertising here for, well, multiple and not well-defined reasons.

rkomar · 05-08-2016, 12:13 PM

The answer is no, and I doubt if it is possible in any other ereader, either. You can have multiple books open at the same time on a PocketBook, so you can quickly jump between what you're reading and some kind of dictionary document. There is no way to automatically start a search in the latter based on choosing a word in the former, though, in the reading apps that come with the device. You'd have to type in the word yourself for searching in the dictionary document.

As I mentioned earlier, PocketBook dictionaries are in a proprietary binary format. They contain structured information for finding word matches (mappings for character and morpheme translation, as well as the keyboard layout to be used when searching). The dictionary app doesn't just do a straight search for a string in a document. As far as I know, dictionaries loaded on the device have to be in this proprietary format to work with the interface.

What I said above applies to the built-in reading applications. There is a port of koreader for PocketBook devices, which has it's own stardict-format dictionary support.

05-02-2016, 04:41 AM	#1
Hmcaun Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2015 Device: Primarily a Galaxy S3	What e-readers score higher in terms of dictionaries and file formats supported? I've been the owner of a Kindle Paperwhite 6th generation for over a year, when I finally managed to sell it the last November. Reading both native- - I speak italian - and foreign-language books was a pleasure with it, due to the great availability of high-quality dictionaries. However, the fact that it did not support neither EPUB nor DRMed books quite disappointed me. Now I'm in need of an e-book reader again, and the two other brands I'm most interested in are Kobo and PocketBook. Considering what I wrote and asked for in the title, some considerations and questions follow about Kobo and PocketBook devices: Kobo seems to support Adobe DRMed and EPUB files and it has pre-installed dictionaries. As for the dictionaries, however, I do not know how good is the monolingual Italian one, and I have heard complaints about translation dictionaries in general. As Kobo, PocketBook has a wide array of supported file formats too. Even most of its devices have pre-installed dictionaries, although for better ones it may be necessary to purchase on BookLand - which at least, to the disadvantage Kobo, is something that can be done; additionally, those offered by BookLand seem quite good ones. The problem with PocketBook is that it has no monolingual Italian dictionary, neither pre-installed, on its store, nor anywhere else - and that I have no clue of where obtaining one. Having good dictionaries and being able to make use of a wide range of file formats are fundamentally important features to me. I'm going to ask some questions, but keep in mind that they are only meant to serve as a reference; you may freely answer beyond what is being asked: How "good" is the pre-installed Italian dictionary, which I presume being Devoto-Oli, on Kobo? How many terms does it have, and how has your experience been with it? From a thread on this site I came to know that it is possible to load custom dictionaries on Kobo devices. Again, how "good" are those provided from the MobileRead community? Where can I find an Italian dictionary for PocketBook? I know its supported dictionary formats are .pbi and .dic, but this problem remains unsolvable to me. I'm not feeling forced to buy from Kobo or PocketBook - these are the only manufacturers I'm most informed about -, so suggestions concerning other brands are also welcomed. Thank you in advance. Last edited by Hmcaun; 05-08-2016 at 06:12 AM.

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05-02-2016, 10:55 AM	#2
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,421 Karma: 85400180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	Why are EPUB and Adobe-DRMed ebooks important to you? calibre can seamlessly and on-the-fly convert EPUB to AZW3, and Apprentice Alf can liberate your DRMed purchases.

05-03-2016, 07:44 AM	#4
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,421 Karma: 85400180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	Which should be explicitly mentioned.

05-03-2016, 12:27 PM	#9
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 79,157 Karma: 144284184 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	You might be best with one of the Android readers that allows you to install apps so you can install the Kindle app, and any app available that you want to read ePub such as Bluefire.

05-04-2016, 09:28 AM	#13
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,544 Karma: 93383099 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Does it all have to be in one device? You could get a Kindle for the reading tasks that require good dictionary support, and a cheap Android tablet for reading library books on.

05-08-2016, 12:13 PM	#15
rkomar Wizard Posts: 3,042 Karma: 18821071 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Sudbury, ON, Canada Device: PRS-505, PB 902, PRS-T1, PB 623, PB 840, PB 633	The answer is no, and I doubt if it is possible in any other ereader, either. You can have multiple books open at the same time on a PocketBook, so you can quickly jump between what you're reading and some kind of dictionary document. There is no way to automatically start a search in the latter based on choosing a word in the former, though, in the reading apps that come with the device. You'd have to type in the word yourself for searching in the dictionary document. As I mentioned earlier, PocketBook dictionaries are in a proprietary binary format. They contain structured information for finding word matches (mappings for character and morpheme translation, as well as the keyboard layout to be used when searching). The dictionary app doesn't just do a straight search for a string in a document. As far as I know, dictionaries loaded on the device have to be in this proprietary format to work with the interface. What I said above applies to the built-in reading applications. There is a port of koreader for PocketBook devices, which has it's own stardict-format dictionary support.

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