What are your favorite dictionaries (for KOReader or not), and your tips/hacks?

[jasius]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sorry, but the English dictionary used by Kobo is better.

Is there a way to use the Kobo dictionary with Koreader or Plato?

[NiLuJe]

Nope, they're encrypted.

[Jedi]

Originally Posted by mbrisco

Finally, the wonderful fellow has seen it fit to release what he has. StarDict SOED optimized for KOReader!

This is the version styled to work with e-Ink (grayscale):

• SOEDrich StarDict 2022-11-11 (e-Ink): mirror 1, mirror 2

This one is identical to the e-Ink version but uses color (not the best colors and not a lot of time spent on the color choices, but you can play around with the CSS and suggest better ones here):

• SOEDrich StarDict 2022-11-11 (Color): mirror 1, mirror 2

Notes

1. KOReader uses the `sdcv`utility for its internal StarDict lookups. This utility has a bug where it returns synonym matches before primary matches, which is not the designed order for this dictionary (or any dictionary, probably). The `sdcv` repository looks abandoned and they seemingly don't respond to issues or anything, so maybe @NiLuJe can take things into his own hands for the KOReader build as far as this goes.
2. KOReader uses MuPDF to render its dictionary. MuPDF added support for small-caps with version 1.16 in 2019, but KOReader is stuck using version 1.13. There is a stalled effort to bump MuPDF to 1.17 in KOReader, even though 1.20 is the latest version. If we can get at least 1.16 on KOReader, the dictionary will look even better because the CSS uses small-caps to indicate linked headwords within entries (which just show up as bold right now). Again, appeal to @NiLuJe.
3. MuPDF also doesn't even support CSS pseudo-elements even in its latest release for whatever reason, which makes "special notes" blocks in the dictionary entries look rather unremarkable, so that may be fixed in a future version.
4. KOReader doesn't support highlighting text within dictionary lookups. You can chain look up words from dictionary entries by holding down on them. This lack of highlighting makes it almost impossible to know what word you're holding down to lookup and often you end up selecting multiple lines instead of a single word. Once again, @NiLuJe, plz
5. I advise shrinking the KOReader dictionary font size for a better experience with this dictionary. I use font 14 but I have young eyes, so you might go for something larger if you want. The default is 20 in the KOReader settings.
6. I advise reading the SOED guide if you want to get the most out of the dictionary, though most things should be straightforward. First line is the word, pronunciation, part of speech, earliest use date. Then the entry, which can be followed by quotation and example usages in phrases. Afterwards, you have compound phrases that use the word. Then at the end you have derived words, like conjugations. Some entries also have special notes at the end. The last thing in each entry is the etymology. In the download, there is included a list of the HTML tags used in the dictionary and what each of them marks.
7. You can look up phrases. This dictionary is great for that. It'll link you to the main entry since StarDict doesn't support linking to anchors (I think), but if you scroll down, you'll find the phrase you looked up, guaranteed.
8. This takes advantage of bidirectional StarDict synonyms to minimize file size (the same word can point to multiple entries, and the same entry can have multiple words pointing to it), so it's only about 32mb for the entire dictionary.

The fellow in question welcomes any mistakes or suggestions. This is the 6th edition, and several fixes have been made on it already by the fellow to fix mistakes that were present even in the base dictionary.

---

@Martinoptic This is the first time he's uploaded it, so I'm curious what that other dodgy site you found earlier is. PM me

Thanks a lot for sharing

[mbrisco]

New version of the dictionary with more fixes added:

e-Ink version (grayscale):

• SOEDrich StarDict 2023-01-30 (e-Ink): mirror 1

Color version:

• SOEDrich StarDict 2023-01-30 (Color): mirror 1

Changes since last version:

• Replace "var. of" entries with synonyms
• Replace "vars. of" entries with synonyms
• Remove bad synonyms starting with "-"
• Split words/synonyms with parentheses in their names
• Replace 'combining form of next' entries to include the actual word since this is not a paper dictionary and there's no such thing as "next"

To do (probably not tho):

• Replace "see ..." entries with synonyms
• Replace "pl. of ..." entries with synonyms ("plural of")
• Ensure all specified span.var (variant) synonyms actually exist to the target word

[LightReader]

Originally Posted by mbrisco

New version of the dictionary with more fixes added:

e-Ink version (grayscale):

• SOEDrich StarDict 2023-01-30 (e-Ink): mirror 1

Color version:

• SOEDrich StarDict 2023-01-30 (Color): mirror 1

Changes since last version:

• Replace "var. of" entries with synonyms
• Replace "vars. of" entries with synonyms
• Remove bad synonyms starting with "-"
• Split words/synonyms with parentheses in their names
• Replace 'combining form of next' entries to include the actual word since this is not a paper dictionary and there's no such thing as "next"

To do (probably not tho):

• Replace "see ..." entries with synonyms
• Replace "pl. of ..." entries with synonyms ("plural of")
• Ensure all specified span.var (variant) synonyms actually exist to the target word

Thank you for this. Works wonderfully in koreader for my Boox Nova Pro.