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Why I built a dictionary app

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Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#31

Post by liquidise »

Well this is... eerie. I just released Stictionary[1] on Friday.

It is an offline, ad free, dictionary that remembers words you look up. It gives a word of the day and provides (admittedly underfeatured atm) flashcards to review your word lists. It includes optional syncing to keep your word lists across devices. I've been holding off posting about it while i complete the website[2].

Love to see someone else had such a similar idea. Great confirmation of the unmet need in the space. Really awesome execution as well. Congrats on the launch!

On a personal note, i built Stictionary after tracking all the words i looked up manually for years. Now i have an app that does it for me (and was a blast to build).

1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/stictionary/id1613214660?platf...

2: https://www.stictionary.com/

Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#32

Post by JackFr »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #12
labster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should governments get to decide which words we use? Unless you are a plusgood citizen making agitprop for the proles.

That's a strange take. They won't they would fund some other org or dept to do the work. Same way you have a public education system, or public health care.

A dictionary is a creative, curated and editorial work. While I could see, in the US for example, the National Endowment for the Humanities supporting the work, it is very far removed from something like the National Institute if Standards and Technology.

It is not a given that such work is best handled through the public purse.

Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#33

Post by ashish01 »

This brings back so many memories. I was in a same situation (reading a book) and needed on digital offline dictionary. I couldn't find anything for my phone back then. It was a Sony Ericson phone with 64MB memory and J2ME as development environment.

So I wrote a offline dictionary with a friend of mine based on wordnet and J2ME polish. It was my first real world project - http://cornucopia.sourceforge.net/

Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#34

Post by podviaznikov »

liquidise wrote: post #31

Well this is... eerie. I just released Stictionary[1] on Friday. It is an offline, ad free, dictionary that remembers words you look up. It gives a word of the day and provides (admittedly underfeatured atm) flashcards to review your word lists. It includes optional syncing to keep your word lists across devices. I've been holding off posting about it while i complete the website[2]. Love to see someone else had such…

Great list of features! I was thinking of building exactly the same app few years ago. So agree with your statement that it is all verification of “unmet need in the space”

Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#35

Post by vxNsr »

liquidise wrote: post #31

Well this is... eerie. I just released Stictionary[1] on Friday. It is an offline, ad free, dictionary that remembers words you look up. It gives a word of the day and provides (admittedly underfeatured atm) flashcards to review your word lists. It includes optional syncing to keep your word lists across devices. I've been holding off posting about it while i complete the website[2]. Love to see someone else had such…

Your website is horrifically mangled on my iPhone 12 Pro iOS v15.5

https://i.imgur.com/hXriy52.gif

Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#36

Post by woojoo666 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #17

> I promise I didn't have my expectations too high, I only had a few core principles Proceeds to list 6 pretty high requirements. The author’s not wrong, those are good requirements, but not to be expected from any standard app these days. To dig on the first: “ Offline support”, this in itself requires a lot of work. Going the technically easy way will often go in direct opposite to your business model (mobile ads o…

Why not just charge for the app itself, instead of trying to place ads or charge for subscriptions?

Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#37

Post by liquidise »

vxNsr wrote: post #35
liquidise wrote: post #31

Well this is... eerie. I just released Stictionary[1] on Friday. It is an offline, ad free, dictionary that remembers words you look up. It gives a word of the day and provides (admittedly underfeatured atm) flashcards to review your word lists. It includes optional syncing to keep your word lists across devices. I've been holding off posting about it while i complete the website[2]. Love to see someone else had such…

Your website is horrifically mangled on my iPhone 12 Pro iOS v15.5 https://i.imgur.com/hXriy52.gif

Yeah, mobile is brutal right now. The website is incomplete by every measure and i've been experimenting with a dekstop concept so far. I'll post a proper Show HN this week once the website is complete and i am on the play store!

Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#38

Post by grujicd »

andrekandre wrote: post #29
labster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should governments get to decide which words we use? Unless you are a plusgood citizen making agitprop for the proles.

> Unless you are a plusgood citizen making agitprop for the proles. what?

1984 newspeak

Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#39

Post by ace2358 »

liquidise wrote: post #31

Well this is... eerie. I just released Stictionary[1] on Friday. It is an offline, ad free, dictionary that remembers words you look up. It gives a word of the day and provides (admittedly underfeatured atm) flashcards to review your word lists. It includes optional syncing to keep your word lists across devices. I've been holding off posting about it while i complete the website[2]. Love to see someone else had such…

Excellent work, just downloaded it, thanks.

Apps that work offline are my favourite as even though I have 4g and wifi, these connections can sometimes be slow or just down and it’s sad seeing apps just not work in those scenarios.

Edit: I know you said it’s not finished, but that website is impressively broken!

Re: Why I built a dictionary app

#40

Post by banana_giraffe »

CharlesW wrote: post #13
Tempest1981 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it was a bit tedious (and expensive) to hammer the server for 30 hours... vs. a downloadable database (which, granted, could get out of date).

Yeah, I wonder why they didn’t just download it from https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/ per https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Help:FAQ .

The source they used (freeDictionary) does all of the work of parsing wiktionary and giving you simple json object for each word. (It actually started life as a way to get the definitions out of Google's "define:" operator, but it seems those days are over)

It also, turns requests for some words, like "rolling" into definitions for their root word like "roll", even when wiktionary has distinct and useful definitions for the word, which makes it less than ideal for me.

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