The Official Motion for Introduction of the Epub Dictionary Format

[montsnmags]

I know I've said this before, but user-selected/purchased dictionary lookup from within the read text (and down the track, encyclopaedia-lookup) is an essential feature for me. Without it, I would abandon ebooks altogether, as other benefits are not of significant enough value to me to abandon pbooks.

As such, I thank Abelturd raising the motion, and then others for seconding, thirding, fourthing...eleventying it, and add my own.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ahi

Do people on the Cybook find themselves using the dictionaries a lot though, despite the onerous button pressing to get to words?

- Ahi

Yes, a heck of a lot - and personally I don't find the interface to be "onerous" at all.

[Gaurnim]

Originally Posted by ahi

Do people on the Cybook find themselves using the dictionaries a lot though, despite the onerous button pressing to get to words?

I find it works pretty well considering the limitations of the device's physical interface. Sure it could be improved to be faster and more user-friendly, but I find it perfectly usable in this implementation.

[joedevon]

I was just in a Fry's and an Asian girl who was interested in improving her English was looking at a few different E-Readers (I was trying to steer her to my beloved 505 ). The killer feature for her was a built in dictionary.

This is a great idea!

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, a heck of a lot - and personally I don't find the interface to be "onerous" at all.

How about when it presents a list of alternatives?

I don't know how to choose the one I want - so it's a lucky dip. Am I doing it wrong?

Just went to get an example, using the Chambers dictionary - looking up the word 'male' produces a pop-up window:

male
male

which one do I select?

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Just went to get an example, using the Chambers dictionary - looking up the word 'male' produces a pop-up window:

male
male

which one do I select?

The first one. Then, once you are in the dictionary you can page forward if the first definition does not match the text.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Jellby

The first one. Then, once you are in the dictionary you can page forward if the first definition does not match the text.

Yep, but it might as well take me to the first one straightaway, without imposing the additional thumb trauma.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Yep, but it might as well take me to the first one straightaway, without imposing the additional thumb trauma.

It's worse when there are matches from several dictionaries, then you'd know that one "male" is from the Chambers dictionary and the other is from Collins, but which is which?

Sometimes the menu does not have the same word, I guess if you look "lay" up, you'd get to choose between "lay" and "lie", at least...

But this is getting

[kaan]

I would love to have several dictionary's in ePUB.
Please make it support UTF-8 or other international character sets.

Hmmm. Maybe even a couple of encyclopaedias

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Jellby

It's worse when there are matches from several dictionaries, then you'd know that one "male" is from the Chambers dictionary and the other is from Collins, but which is which?

Sometimes the menu does not have the same word, I guess if you look "lay" up, you'd get to choose between "lay" and "lie", at least...

But this is getting

Yes it is getting off topic. However a second topic could be appropriate for making dictionary access better. There are lots of good techniques to streamline the process without requiring a touch screen (Amazon K1 just looked up all the words on a line requiring only selecting a line of text) but again the idea of a dictionary for ePUB is an important first step. Not all the problems with using it have to be solved before it can be implemented. I believe it is a serious oversight not to have defined it earlier.

Dale

[JSWolf]

Sony may be having ePub dictionary look-up with the new 600. If so, all that needs be done is for Sony to license their approach to all the other reader makes using ADE and voila.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sony may be having ePub dictionary look-up with the new 600.

It is going to be interesting to see what format they are using for the dictionary. One of the advantages of built-in dictionaries is that they don't need DRM, and so could be in any suitable format.

[jgray]

These proprietary approaches to incorporating a dictionary (jetBook and Sony?) are fine as a stopgap measure. However, I hope Sony does not license their method to anyone (assuming that the 600 actually has a dictionary). We don't need more Balkanization in ebookdom. What we need is for the IDPF to do something about a standardized method of implementing dictionaries for epub. This has two major advantages over proprietary implementations: it will be an open standard that doesn't require licensing; you won't be limited to a few dictionaries, as everyone would be able to make or sell a compatible dictionary.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jgray

These proprietary approaches to incorporating a dictionary (jetBook and Sony?) are fine as a stopgap measure. However, I hope Sony does not license their method to anyone (assuming that the 600 actually has a dictionary). We don't need more Balkanization in ebookdom. What we need is for the IDPF to do something about a standardized method of implementing dictionaries for epub. This has two major advantages over proprietary implementations: it will be an open standard that doesn't require licensing; you won't be limited to a few dictionaries, as everyone would be able to make or sell a compatible dictionary.

Even if it is a proprietary method for dictionaries, I would hope that Sony would at some point publish the dictionary format so others can make dictionaries. But at this point, all we have is speculation until the 600 is released.

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by jgray

We don't need more Balkanization in ebookdom

Just FYI, people from the Balkans find this term pretty offensive.