OLPC's Dictionary -- A Software Review
StarDict has been chosen by the OmegaWiki and OLPC projects as the
program to display and facilitate querying of dictionary data. Over the
last few weeks, I have taken a look at the documentation and played
with StarDict and compared it with ZBEDic (with which I have
begun to be very impressed recently). This comparison has led me to
believe that both programs should be ported to Sugar (or combined into
a new OLPC dictionary) and that both programs have different strengths
and weaknesses. A comparison of these programs is, therefore, certain
to benefit both OLPC and Free Software users everywhere.
StarDict -- An Overview
StarDict is, in typical *nix fashion, a very versitile and useful
program. It supports Dict.org style dictionaries and can load and
search multiple dictionaries simultaneously and can display definitions
from many dictionaries simultaneously.
It is fast. Even with ten or more dictionaries loaded, there appears to
be no degradation in response time. Amazingly, as well, it has a "scan"
function which defines any word highlighted with the mouse. This is the
closest thing I have yet seen on any platform to Dr. Eye (one of the few
proprietary software programs I would truly claim is awesome. It has a
feature that automagically defines -- in two languages! -- any text on
the desktop that is moused over in popup windows).
StarDict's Drawbacks
Given all that, you are probably downloading and installing StarDict as
you read this. However, StarDict is also classically *nix in its
glaring weaknesses.
Philosophy
Part of this has to do with the Dict.org philosophy which leans toward
an always connected mentality, as opposed to the on again off again
mindset imposed by the early internet. Unfortunately, the OLPC is most
likely going to operate in the latter environment -- or, at the very
least, must be designed to. Dict.org is designed for experienced system
administrators, certainly not for children. The dictionary format that
StarDict uses seems to require at least the completion of an
undergraduate comp-sci degree to implement. So much for kids adding or
creating their own dictionaries. If this were not enough, there is no
graphical or even user level method to add dictionaries.
No Included Dictionaries
No dictionaries -- not even Public Domain ones -- come with the
StarDict packages, and there are no Debian packages of dictionaries. As
far as I know, there are no Fedora/Redhat packages, either. Adding
dictionaries requires root access to the system. This
really is an absurd requirement for a childrens' computer -- it is even
absurd for a desktop computer (in fact this requirement was so onerous
that until a month ago, I have given up every one of many attempts to
use this software over the last few years).
Website
The StarDict website is also nearly impossible to navigate. I had to
use an anonymizer just to get Google to let me complete the search and
show me the dictionary list (For some reason, clicking the dictionaries
link brings up a page with a Google search. Searching causes Google to
accuse the user of being a bot and doing something illicit. Maybe it
is just my connection, but why should I have to use Google to find a
page of dictionaries within the site I was already visiting?).
Documentation
StarDict's documentation is not exactly comprehensive. For compiling
dictionaries, there appear to be exactly two text files: one
describing the StarDict dictionary format in programmerese, and another
containing terse tips on compiling dictionaries. Both are
practically unreadable to a non-programmer. This is to say nothing of
documentation on how to use the program itself -- the program is of
course quite complicated and not always intuitive.
Failure to Read Archives
In addition to the above problems, downloaded dictionaries have to be
unzipped to work. Each archive contains a folder with three files.
StarDict can read the dictzip compressed archive (.dict.dz), but not
.tar.bz2 archive containing all three files. I find it absurd that a
program that requires compression cannot read from a larger archive
containing three files. This extra step is probably assumed to be easy
for seasoned system administrators but is hardly so for ordinary users
-- especially ones that are in the process of learning. The .tar.bz2
archives should not have to be extracted, or if compression will slow
down the program too much, an uncompressed archive (i.e. just .tar or
something similar) should be used since the dictionaries are compressed
anyway.
Ugly Display
StarDict's tooltip and windowed definition presentation is cludgy.
Instead of treating paragraphs as a lump, it renders lines individually
indenting new lines giving the impression of random placement -- some
are indented, some are not. This is not only ugly but also makes
reading quite difficult, especially in the tooltip display.
Selection Problems
The scan feature requires text to be highlighted carefully by hand and
does not automagically use spaces to separate words. As a result,
StarDict often attempts to look up word fragments or even multiple word
fragments. As a word is being highlighted, it attempts to define almost
every group of letters until the word is completed. In this way, the
program's speed actually works against it making highlighting more
difficult. Then again, this feature also makes phrase lookups possible.
No Non-English Dictionaries
For some reason, there are no non-English dictionaries on the list at Stardict's
site. There appear to be many text based dictionary files in other
languages on other parts of the web, but they are sprinkled on many
different sites and hard to find. These files need to be consolidated
so that they can easily be found without having to weed through
thousands of dictionary websites and Amazon like sales entries.
ZBEDic -- An Overview
ZBEDic is a really cool dictionary program for the Zaurus. It is small,
fast and integrates well with programs like FBReader (which has been
ported to Sugar). FBReader has a feature that allows automagic lookups
of any word pressed on the touch screen. Clicking on a special icon
returns one to the book being read. It supports multiple dictionaries,
and the definitions are nicely formatted. Further, it uses a human
readable dictionary format. The dictionary files can be stored anywhere
and added with the included file manager functionality (one need not be
root to add dictionaries).
ZBEDic's definition presentation is pretty and very readable. It not
only displays paragraphs nicely but also separates multiple definitions
with blank lines so the reader does not have to do extra work mentally
separating the elements. It also displays redundant definitions of a
single word.
ZBEDic's Drawbacks
While ZBEDic can access a collection of dictionaries, it can only use
one at a time. This means the only way to have multiple languages is to
compile a dictionary that way or to have two dictionaries.
No Automagic Swapping or Dictionary Combining
Dictionaries must be swapped by hand. There is no reverse lookup within
a dictionary. In other words, checking the words contained in a
definition in another language or dictionary requires changing
dictionaries.
Unidirectional Bilingual Limitation
These two points also make the dictionary unidirectional. An
English-Spanish dictionary will not do Spanish-English lookups. All of
these problems could, in theory, be solved in the dictionary files
(i.e. by compiling a dictionary that contained both English-Spanish and
Spanish-English entries and probably interpolated with entries from
both languages mixed freely and alphabetically), but such a solution
would be difficult to use (to say the least), and I have neither seen
nor heard of such a dictionary file.
This problem is somewhat mitigated by the fact that switching
dictionaries does not affect the input field, so one can display the
definitions in as many languages as one might want without going to the
trouble of reentering the query item -- assuming, of course, the entry
happens to exist in multiple languages. Fortunately, the lack of an
entry in a given dictionary does not stomp the input field, so one need
not fear accidentally loading the wrong dictionary.
Affixes Cause Lookups to Fail
The book integration is nice. Any single word can be clicked resulting
in the dictionary coming up with a definition. However, the authors
failed account for affixes. This means plural words or conjugated words
result in no definition. Switching the virtual keyboard on or off (on
the Zaurus, anyway) triggers a return to the program that initiated the
lookup.
Limited to Supporting Programs
This feature, as implemented, is also specific to programs that support
it and has not been generalized to the entire desktop (then again,
touch screen devices really do not have hover capabilities, so this
question may be moot -- once again, though, the OLPC does have a
pointer device).
One Touch Lookup Not Available in Dictionary Itself
The one touch lookup is not available within definitions in ZBEDic
itself, although highlighted lookup is, but a special lookup
icon/button must be added to the menubar for this to work.
Many Dictionaries Too Small
ZBEDic's
website has a lot of dictionaries available and many appear to be
quite nice. Many of the bilingual dictionaries, however, contain very
few entries. While normal dictionaries contain 30 to 40,000 words, some
of these dictionaries have a mere 5,000 entries. These are clearly
insufficient. Bilingual dictionaries with at least 30,000 entries must
exist in the Public Domain for (at the very least) every combination of
European languages and many others.
Problems with/Shortcomings of Both Programs
Desktop Integration
Neither Stardict's scan function nor ZBEDic's book integration work for
all text on the desktop (unlike Dr. Eye), and neither allows hover
lookups. Both StarDict's scan and ZBEDic's book integration could be
improved (see above).
Compatability Lacking
Dictionaries compiled for one of the programs do not work with the
other program. StarDict does not recognise the existence of a .dict.dz
file outside of a folder and without the accompanying index files, and
ZBEDic gives the error "Database error:entry too long" after attempting
and failing to load StarDict's dictionary files. Both of these programs
should have the capability to read each other's dictionaries or a
mutually compatible format should be created (after all, this is Free
Software, not MacroSuck's proprietary universe -- and standards are
always nice ;-).
Now that I have more or less stated a lot about what I think the
software should be capable of and gotten most of my opinions out in the
open, I should talk about where I think this should be headed in the
short term.
As I have stated before, I think it is possible to obtain Public Domain
dictionaries in practically every major language spoken today and have
multilingual capabilities between many of them by this summer. I am
hoping it will be possible to write Perl and/or Python scripts to
easily convert text files to dict.dz files by that time (however, if it
I am alone in this endeavor, it might take considerably longer as I am
generally not the best programmer around).
In any case, I will do what I can, and I hope these comments lead to an
improvement in this overall situation. While the software is not bad,
the difficulty in obtaining dictionaries is a problem. For once,
copyright is not the major hurdle, so I hope it will be possible to
rapidly compile a large collection of good dictionaries for the good of
children and curious people everywhere.
Sincerely,
LuYu 
|
 |
|
"How a society produces its information environment goes to
the very core of freedom."
|
|
-- Yochai Benkler
|
|
