Epub dictionaries

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by Peter Sorotokin

The thread is amusing not so much because someone calls me stupid or misinformed. It is because most people attack a straw man. Suppose I have said, "most people who read ebooks can't read Spanish" - would you infer that Adobe does not plan to support anything but English? This is not a Boolean flag - important or not.

Also, to make it clear - I do not represent Adobe here - not even allowed to. I am an engineer, not a PR guy. So all my posts are strictly personal opinions.

You are correct that a number of posters were making the assumption that Adobe was not interested in supporting dictionary look-up. The statement, "while it's a neat feature, most people don't use it", could lead a reader to make that assumption. Unfortunately, inferences from reading a text of any kind are not as cut and dried as Boolean operators. They are left up to interpretation by the reader based on a number of personal factors and experiences. Because of the ambiguity of the conclusions that could be drawn from the statement and to help clarify the wants/needs of the ebook reader for EPUB developers, this poll was created. The poll results clearly show that the readers here at MR are very interested in the dictionary feature.

I apologize for assuming that you represent Adobe. I was led to that conclusion by your user tag. However, if you do not want to be seen as a spokesperson for that company, you might want to change that to something less corporate.

[eksor]

Hi:

I need a dictionary in my prs700, I am not a native english speaker and reading non tech literature is difficult sometimes. Till the arrive of the prs as a gift :-) for my 40th :-( birthday i used to read on my htc. I read ebooks with vademecum (pdb) haali reader (fb2) and micro reader (plain text). This last one has embedded the 15Mb webster, just double click on a word and select lookup, that's all! Amazing.

Bye!

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How many people here actually NEED a dictionary. Not just want, but actually NEED. I bet the numbers will be a lot different when you vote just based on NEED. So if you want a dictionary but do not NEED one, then you'd vote no.

That's not what the poll asked. I don't think it's even all that relevant. I doubt the manufacturers are as interested in need as they are in competitive advantage. If I will pick their reader over another if it has dictionary support and the other doesn't, that's what they want to know. No one NEEDs an ebook reader. We WANT them. You tried running that poll and tons of people told you that it was slanted and a poor formulation of the question yet you bring it back here.

Edit: Just realized how old that post was. It was before Jon started his poll.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by Lee Crocker

I use dictionary support, but I'm generally disappointed with it--the only words I look up are the really obscure ones that aren't likely to be found in any but an unabridged dictionary. I'd like to see the standard extended so that books could supply their own glossaries for unusual words they use.

I would love to have a better dicitonary in the Kindle. Actually, what I'd really prefer is Cybook's implementation of dictionary lookup. You can have multiple dictionaries at once!