typo:
> Not really the invetor of the dictionary but the well famous for combine alphabetic and topic order
Why I built a dictionary app
51–60 of 187 posts
Re: Why I built a dictionary app
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very stupid, but I check dictionary definitions in an incognito window because I'm horrified of someday people coming across my browser history and thinking "Wow, he didn't know the definition of that ?! What an idiot!" The idea of a dictionary that tracks my searches horrifies me in a silly way. Ha!
I look up words for which I already know the primary definition all the time. Sometimes it's just to confirm that it doesn't mean something subtly different than I remember. Sometimes it's to find alternate/secondary uses. Sometimes it's to confirm spelling. Sometimes it's a jumping off point for synonyms or related words. I wouldn't assume you were totally unfamiliar with a word just because you looked it up.
Honestly, 99% of the time that's what I'm doing too. I'm pretty sure I'm using it correctly, but want to double-check before embarrassing myself in front of all of 10 people still on Twitter.
Re: Why I built a dictionary app
#53> Noise Free It's incredible how many distractions this kind of app usually has: extra clicks, unnecessary features, rectangular ads, and too many typography styles.
I very much like this adaptation of the term noise. I’m starting to realize a growing angst against intrusive noisy products that present junk to me I did not ask for. I realize there’s a non-zero cognitive load to ads and variable UI that’s unrelated to the product and it increasingly a source of minor frustration in my life I could do without. Social media has socialized the UI to dump suggestions and guides and other junk that gets tossed out in times that are inappropriate, one of those “not now please” moments. That noise can at times break my concentration and then it becomes a strong negative in my mind with a cost to it all. It’s like coming home and finding your desk surface not how you left it then you realize someone moved something trivial or some solicitor left you a note. These visual deltas no mater their motivation, should all be permission opt in settings.
Re: Why I built a dictionary app
#54Well 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…
I've also tracked a lot of words I have needed to look up, but made little posts out of the interesting ones. Of course, I immediately forget all these definitions, but that just makes it fun to go back through them.
Re: Why I built a dictionary app
#55Awesome project. Dune was the book which made me write my own dictionary app as well - https://www.vedaist.com/!
Re: Why I built a dictionary app
#56Great execution, I like the "always-on" dictionary definition panel.
I built an offline mobile dictionary app about 10 years ago for a language where there was no existing app - New Zealand Sign Language. Fortunately, the dictionary work had already been done by the Deaf Studies Research Unit at Victoria University of Wellington [1]. They kindly gave permission for me to use the dictionary data (and images for every entry, because it's a visual language). As a result they properly licensed the dictionary data as CC-BY-NC-SA, so anybody can use it now.
All the dictionary entries and images were built in to the initial download of the app. This was a bit amusing in 2012 when there were still 50 MB app download size limits, I had to sacrifice some image quality (converting PNG to JPEG, among other things) to get the file size small enough. I had always intended to add an optional download of all the sign videos, but never did get around to it, and online on-demand access to the videos always seemed to work well enough for users. (My #1 user is my wife, I built this app at the start of her studies and she is now a qualified NZSL interpreter and still uses the app every day.)
Since then, the DSRU has done a lot of work on the online dictionary web site [2], and I have passed on the responsiblity of app maintenance onto them. All their work (website, apps, conversion scripts) is now open source [3].
Re: Why I built a dictionary app
#57> 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?
Yes, this is of course one of the saner options. It brings a few issues down the line if you intend to have a server component for synching, or plan to maintain the app for a long enough time and/or expand its features etc, as paid upgrades are a PITA in iOS. But it could make sense.
Re: Why I built a dictionary app
#58Actually, iOS already has built-in support for dictionary and thesaurus. In any native text input field, select a word and choose Define or Look Up. The choice of dictionary is customizable; I usually choose New Oxford American Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary of English (not to be confused with the venerable Oxford English Dictionary). They are high quality dictionaries. They are basically the same except that the p…
It's great and it has the same dictionaries as the macOS Dictionary app. I hope they add support for more languages in the future.
Re: Why I built a dictionary app
#59I did the same but not in an app.
On a cli application. And I added a web interface too.
Work's pretty well. I use it every day. It's only in french.
https://git.ache.one/dfr/about/
The web version:
(My use case was that I need pronunciation of the words)
Re: Why I built a dictionary app
#60Hey Hacker News! I'm thrilled to read all the comments with ideas and improvements. I will try to answer and keep up with the thread. Kudos to all the similar initiatives trying to solve the problems I outline in the article. It's wonderful to see a zeitgeist about dictionaries. Who wants to jump the article and try the version I built, feel free to download the iPhone [1] or Android [2] version or run it by itself w…
How did you manage to get the dictionaries for all those languages? If I didn’t miss it, that part is left open in the article after explaining how highly priced they are…