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vek (2312)

vek
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Journal of vek (2312)

Wednesday January 16, 2002
02:15 PM

Height Of Laziness

[ #2192 ]

Using the online dictionary means that the one that is sitting in my cubie just collects dust. You know, all that extra effort involved turning pages - phew...


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  • Lazy? Or Pragmatic? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ziggy (25) on 2002.01.16 14:53 (#3263) Journal
    I don't know that using an electronic dictionary as opposed to a printed dictionary is a sign of laziness. A friend of mine working on the OED is seriously interested in keeping a copy on his TiBook, rather than taking the single-volume OED (and magnifying glass!) off shelf and paging through it.

    (OK, lexicographers are exempt from this sign of "laziness"...they're hacking the dictionary after all, and referring to an print copy is like designing Apache 2.0 with a printout of the 1.2.x sources...)

    • I really wish I could work out how to extract the (sg|x)ml (can't remember) and indices from my (legit) copy of the OED, then I wouldn't have to boot into Windows. Hmm. Dictionary.com just doesn't compare.

      I really should have paid attention to the talks about the dictionary when I was on Perl Whirl 1.0 shouldn't I?

      • If there's any chance of helping on such a project, I'd be happy to give a hand. Not being able to access the content other than through the predefined interface is the one reason why I never acquired the OED.

        Perhaps the best approach would be to find a contact inside and somehow explain that having an open API to access their content would make them far more desirable, would produce quality software, and wouldn't encourage stealing since it's probably already rather easy to crack it.

        --

        -- Robin Berjon [berjon.com]

    • One thing an online dictionary misses is a browse ability, or simply finding words near the one you're looking for.

      Same with all online references I guess.

      • This could be helped by all sorts of nifty UI tricks showing neighbouring words and the such, and with actually real "breadcrumbs" widgets that would list all the pages/words you've been to so that you can wander through and not lose track (which is why I still use paper dictionaries when they're available).

        Of course, that's not to say that it would actually be easy to do that without crufting the interface. It's just a matter of programming ;-)

        --

        -- Robin Berjon [berjon.com]

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