On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:44:56 -0500, thunder
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:18:39 +0700, Bruce In Bangkok wrote:


The dictionary that comes with several versions of Linux is "Dictionary
2.20.0.1 copyright Emmanuel Bassi" doesn't seem to have a database of
words. Each time you ask for a definition it accesses the web which of
course takes time. In addition it assumes that you are always connected
to the Internet, which I am not.

I spent most of an afternoon searching for a decent disk based
dictionary and downloaded several that seemed to have good
recommendations. Of course being Linux they were source and every one I
tried refused to compile as my Gnome based machine lacked some
dependency or another.

www.dict.org suffers from the same problem - won't work unless you are
attached to the Internet.

What distribution are you using? You can do what I do. I run a dictd
server on one of my LAN machines, and add the dictionaries I need there.
It's all local so I don't need to be connected to the Internet. Or, you
can run the server on the machine you are using, as I do on my laptop.

Using several. Ubuntu 8.04 on a Dell in the boat, "Easy Peasy" a
subset of Ubuntu 8.10 on a Asus Eee for a travel computer and Fedora
on a couple of desktops.

I have a dict client, but I usually just use a CGI script that I access
from within my browser. If you tell me what distribution you are using,
I might be able to set you up.

What I want is a simple disk based dictionary - type the word, hit
return and get a description. Seemed simple enough, I had a program
called Word Web running in Windows that even had a hot key to activate
it. Good database of words.

Seemed like a simple problem, but the more I looked the more problems
I had. I found a lot of applications on sourceforge but most of them
wouldn't compile as apparently I don't have the right lib files. I
fought that problem a few hours and finally gave up, at least for a
while. The last straw was a program that demanded a lib file that was
outdated, something like lib.6.0 and all I had, or could find, was
lib.10.0 and it wouldn't work.

I'm down on the boat for a while and will live with what I've got but
when I get back home I'll get after it again.

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)