Actually, 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 pronunciation for the latter is in IPA which I'm more used to.
When I need to look up a word, I create a new note from control center, type in the word, double tap to bring up the contextual menu and then the dictionary.
It pretty much checks all the boxes. For distraction-free reading, turn off "Content from Apple" in the Siri settings to avoid those obnoxious Siri knowledge panels.
Awesome. Did not know I could disable that content. Also, dropped a few dictionaries I had enabled (Russian? Spanish? German?) - hopefully the swipe-to-text will improve accuracy now, too.
This was the feature that sold me on Mac OS X in 2003 or so. Having an operating system where I could get the dictionary definition of any word in any input field, or web browser, or piece of UI just by mousing-over it and hitting ctrl+command+D
I was a Windows user at the time and the _consistency_ of this dictionary lookup throughout the UI just blew me away
Not sure if I’m missing something about this method, but in many apps you can long-press the word directly to get the context menu with “Look Up”, without having to type the word into a note.
The use case here is to look up a word whilst reading a book, not to look up words that are already on your phone screen. If you see a word you don't recognise, you write it into a note and it gives you the definition instantly
Pro-tip: Now you could also use iOS' camera app to recognize the text, select it and look it up. I'm not sure if it's faster than the note route but the option is there.
Dictionaries are one of those things that should be free, at least the digital version. This is 2022 - shouldn't governments pay the dictionary creators using tax payer money and make the digital version available for free, to anyone for any use?
How much does it cost to maintain a dictionary anyway? A few million dollars at best? It is crazy that a ton of projects don't even get started, because these APIs are so expensive and unfriendly
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).
I wondered the same. The main downside is that you need to do some processing to extract the entries from the dump and get the plain text of the fields you want.
I'm also a little surprised they didn't think Wiktionary was sufficient for languages apart from English. I could be wrong, but my impression is that it's pretty good for major languages[1].
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.
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.
Governments fund the arts all the time. Why is there automatically an assumption that this will end with the government editing the dictionary to control speech?
It is the case in France. We have the Académie Française, an institution that edits an "official" dictionary. Unlike other dictionaries that describe the words that are in current usage, this one is supposed to act as a reference for "proper French".
The Académie Française is not a ruling body anymore, however, there is a committee that decides on which words to use, following a very bureaucratic process. French people are still free to use French as the way they want (thankfully!), but it is mandatory for official government communication.
And in case you are wondering, the ones who decide are usually famous French writers who got a honorific position for their past work. They tend to be completely out of touch with the modern world, and with a bureaucratic process that doesn't help the result is more silly than manipulative.
Dictionaries are more free today than ever before. It's actually surprising how free they are given that (good) dictionaries are actually very labour intensive to create.
Nice UX! I imagine I'd prefer your app since it gives me a constant feedback loop with the writing process (vs the select to look up native UX). I've downloaded it and will give it a try.
Just fyi, "Donwload" at the bottom is a typo. Figured as a dictionary app, you'd want someone to flag that
It seems to put the "transitive verb" definition at the top, followed by the noun, even if the verb-usage is less common. Is there metadata that indicates which is more common, to adjust the order?
While we are talking about dictionaries, I really wish more word games would include definitions. My kids (well, me as well) really enjoy word games like Bookworm Adventures, Wordscapes, etc. However occasionally these turn into random guessing of letters until something is accepted.
It would be really neat (and educational) to have the option to view a word's definition after you play it.
What I love about this piece is that the author lays out a specific set of goals for their project. I find this is immensely helpful to do at the start of a project. I often have an idea that I think is cool but after writing down what I want to do I realize that it’s not such a great idea.
> 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 or access info sales). Going for subscriptions or other mechanisms will have you do harder technical solutions, making that specific innocent requirement a decently high hurdle.
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.
For those interested in alternative dictionary apps for the English language I'd also recommend checking out the advanced english dictionary [1] as well. It certainly checks all the boxes the author asked for and then some more.
EDIT: Just noticed the author was kind enough to share the source code. That's super cool - kudos for doing that.
I have always used WordWeb (https://wordweb.info) and I’m yet to find something better (and simpler) either on desktop or mobile. It gives me pronunciations using sounds from commonly spoken words. Sound. Offline support. Multiple dictionaries. Multiple language combos if I want it.
It’s my most favourite and most useful dictionary, only second to the Oxford pocket dictionary I owned as a child and later as a teenager while I learnt English as my second language.
A bit unrelated but, I tried to search for this app on the AppStore. Typing "wordnote" returns it in the 30-40 results. This is despite the fact that there is no other app named wordnote or a derivative of that.
I too wrote a similar app for my personal problem and also served to be a good way to learn about kotlin and Android ecosystem. I also tried a rewrite in flutter and compose. The idea was to use select the word and then click meaning from context menu so that meaning occurs as notification and disappears in 15 seconds. I used Wiktionary as dataset source and app works offline.
I used rewriting as a learning experience. I found flutter to be simpler with respect to UI and state management compared to using XML by default for UI. Since mine was a crud app flutter was okay. I later found jetpack compose which has flutter like UI composition and I liked it better since I can access the existing Android library ecosystem too.
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).
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”
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!
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!
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.
I do this all the time to look up pronunciations. I'm interested in linguistics so I taught myself IPA, and with things like stress being pretty unpredictable in English, while I might know the meaning of a word I like to make sure I'm pronouncing it correctly
I’m amazed how often I “know” the primary definition, only to discover I’m wrong when I look in a dictionary. Same with pronunciation of words I’ve only seen written.
> Same with pronunciation of words I’ve only seen written.
I had the opposite experience when visiting the US for the first time. I saw a bag of 'luh-too-ché' in the store. For about 10 second my mind was wondering what it was. Then I realized that the word that is (to my Dutch brain) pronounced as 'ledice' is not spelled that way, it's spelled 'lettuce'. I came to the US with C2 level proficiency (thanks to subtitled media and MMORPGs), but I still had a lot to learn!
Me too, it’s the most low-key killer feature of the OS imo. I use it automatically just to check my assumptions most most of the time; it’s just so easy and easily ingrained.
> Misusing words because you assume you know what they mean, that is stupid.
But if you're sure you know what it means (albeit incorrectly), because that's what you've picked up or been taught and no-one has ever corrected or queried you, where would the impetus to look it up in a dictionary come from?
You might have a case for "deliberately misusing words [...] is stupid" but there's a long comedic and literary tradition there...
I suppose you could look at it that way. I certainly did, and it has taken me a very (stupid) long time come to a slightly different understanding. Not saying it is better necessarily. I just find it closer to true more of the time in my life.
Misusing words may or may not be stupid—without more information, including some nebulous stuff about intent and interpretation, I have no way of saying for sure in a given encounter.
What I would say instead is that many people seem to see “misuses words because [cocky/pretentious/know-it-all/careless]” as a heuristic for stupid. It isn’t a great heuristic, but knowing that people use it to rank you and choosing speech accordingly…isn’t stupid.
I think this is also a mechanism for languages to evolve: for whatever reason people start using a word differently from the dictionary definition. After a while if it has enough support the new usage gets added in. Sometimes the new way can be so entrenched that the old definition becomes archaic.
Consider this very popular hn link: http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary it gets posted once a year at least and strongly recommends looking up words you already know.
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.
Sorting the definitions by length is a nice touch. What's with the different 'editions'? I thought that they were grouped by perhaps subject or book, but can't figure out what for instance WRITHEN SHINE EDITION exactly represents.
Fantastic tool, thank you! Any chance you could include usage in a sentence for each word? As a non-native speaker, sometimes it is not obvious from the description on how the word is typically used.
> Great confirmation of the unmet need in the space.
Hmmm, I've been using a dictionary app for years that is offline, ad-free, remembers words you look up, and has a word of the day feature. Also has favorites and you can add personal notes on entries. It's also free. It's based on Wictionary. I use the ones for Spanish and Portuguese but I think they have versions for many languages. The name is fairly generic "Spanish Dictionary - Offline" by Livio.
I love it, it definitevely cover and unmet need, as a no native english speaker it is important to me to keep track of words that I have looked up, thank you, please let us know when it is available in android.
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/
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 with the open source repo [3]
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…
When I hear/see a new word I write it in a google doc along with it's definition (from www.tfd.com/<word>) and reference to where I came across it (e.g. a quote or link to youtube video).
The doc has a short and distinct name so can quickly be accessed via command + L (to go to address bar) and the distinct 5 character name for chrome to auto suggest it.
It's now ~10 years old. I used to add to it often, but the pace slowed as my vocabulary grew. It contains around 1-2000 words. I occasionally review it. One day I'll parse/analyse it.
> 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.
It's clean, it has whole sentences mixed in the vocabulary, it links phrases parts to their sub-definitions, and lets you paste a whole sentence at once, defining word by word.
To keep track with the ever changing APIs, and look&feel, of the host OS.
I agree that some apps are feature-complete enough to be both useful and left without updates for years, but sadly they will eventually bitrot after some time and be increasingly annoying to use. This is usually the moment the maintainer is nowhere to be found as they lost interest, are busy, or dead.
The class of software that never needs updates is shrinking rapidly — unless you're ok with using software that looks like it was made for Windows 98. It's fine, but not great
I use ad blocker rules to cut out a lot of that noise. I found the internet impossible to use without it. I have stopped using apps because they bypass those rules.
The worst ones are suggested content feeds. They're everywhere, including in your operating system.
Very true indeed they're cluttering up the OS's and it feels like there's no escape.
This unexpected change to the windows taskbar broke my concentration on some task I was doing the other day, and right away I stopped what I was doing to go chase down how to disable the thing so I wouldn't lose more moments of concentration in the future.
https://superuser.com/questions/1725905/get-rid-of-decorativ...
Such a crazy idea of our own OS's being the source of interruptions. Even iOS is getting in on this with the Maps app I noticed the other week, I'd even count iTunes displaying a bunch of random album titles that are on the ugly end of the spectrum in my opinion. At least iTunes uses the same batch of images so one can train to ignore it. It's kind of interesting to conceptualize the OS as like this pesky idle assistant just hungry for attention and with nothing to do who likewise feels its owner is just as idle as them with free time and free attention to spare. "My owner isn't doing anything special or fun, let me bug him with this visual distraction". It's even funny at a meta level to even observe myself getting riled up over this growing assault.
It's interesting you say impossible to use without it, I wonder if a certain subpopulation of folks are more prone to these traps. Basically those with a high degree of attention to detail, those with sharp powers of observation, and those juggling a ton of things in their lives where spare mental capacity is on the short end of the spectrum.
Great 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].
but wow, this is very eerie—i have not written an app but thought about it!
i am using a combination of three iOS applications right now to achieve what both these apps are offering. the built-in dictionary of course, notes, and reminders. after looking up words using the built-in dictionary, i put them in notes. then about once a week, i do a review and set reminders for a few select words.
i have been doing this for a few years now. it's heartwarming to see these ideas validated not in one but two applications.
186 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 323 ms ] threadWhen I need to look up a word, I create a new note from control center, type in the word, double tap to bring up the contextual menu and then the dictionary.
It pretty much checks all the boxes. For distraction-free reading, turn off "Content from Apple" in the Siri settings to avoid those obnoxious Siri knowledge panels.
I was a Windows user at the time and the _consistency_ of this dictionary lookup throughout the UI just blew me away
This, combined with a spaced repetition feature would be fantastic to have on board.
I always wondered if there is a private API/event to listen for to capture the lookups and store them for later.
How much does it cost to maintain a dictionary anyway? A few million dollars at best? It is crazy that a ton of projects don't even get started, because these APIs are so expensive and unfriendly
I'm also a little surprised they didn't think Wiktionary was sufficient for languages apart from English. I could be wrong, but my impression is that it's pretty good for major languages[1].
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary
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.
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.
It is not a given that such work is best handled through the public purse.
Governments fund the arts all the time. Why is there automatically an assumption that this will end with the government editing the dictionary to control speech?
The Académie Française is not a ruling body anymore, however, there is a committee that decides on which words to use, following a very bureaucratic process. French people are still free to use French as the way they want (thankfully!), but it is mandatory for official government communication.
And in case you are wondering, the ones who decide are usually famous French writers who got a honorific position for their past work. They tend to be completely out of touch with the modern world, and with a bureaucratic process that doesn't help the result is more silly than manipulative.
Scraping government sites for glossaries, mashing up the definitions to create a free comparative international dictionary.
Just fyi, "Donwload" at the bottom is a typo. Figured as a dictionary app, you'd want someone to flag that
It seems to put the "transitive verb" definition at the top, followed by the noun, even if the verb-usage is less common. Is there metadata that indicates which is more common, to adjust the order?
It would be really neat (and educational) to have the option to view a word's definition after you play it.
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 or access info sales). Going for subscriptions or other mechanisms will have you do harder technical solutions, making that specific innocent requirement a decently high hurdle.
What work are you talking about? How is accessing local filesystem more work than calling external API with authorization?
For those interested in alternative dictionary apps for the English language I'd also recommend checking out the advanced english dictionary [1] as well. It certainly checks all the boxes the author asked for and then some more.
EDIT: Just noticed the author was kind enough to share the source code. That's super cool - kudos for doing that.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/advanced-english-dictionary/id...
It’s my most favourite and most useful dictionary, only second to the Oxford pocket dictionary I owned as a child and later as a teenager while I learnt English as my second language.
You must write the full name "Wordnote Dictionary" to find it.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xtreak.not...
https://github.com/tirkarthi/NotificationDictionary
I loved that you built the context menu it's something I was thinking to. Congratulations.
Tried? Mind elaborating? I'm working on a flutter app atm - do you mean it didn't work out? / you didn't end up liking flutter?
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/
https://i.imgur.com/hXriy52.gif
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!
By the way, you may be aware but there's a typo in the iOS app in the "Your Words" tab when your list is empty.
> You can swipe words off your list later if [you] add a word you'd rather not see.
I had the opposite experience when visiting the US for the first time. I saw a bag of 'luh-too-ché' in the store. For about 10 second my mind was wondering what it was. Then I realized that the word that is (to my Dutch brain) pronounced as 'ledice' is not spelled that way, it's spelled 'lettuce'. I came to the US with C2 level proficiency (thanks to subtitled media and MMORPGs), but I still had a lot to learn!
But for dictionary/thesaurus I usually use spotlight to access MacOS' built-in resources, which is faster.
But if you're sure you know what it means (albeit incorrectly), because that's what you've picked up or been taught and no-one has ever corrected or queried you, where would the impetus to look it up in a dictionary come from?
You might have a case for "deliberately misusing words [...] is stupid" but there's a long comedic and literary tradition there...
I also think there is a shared sense of how fancy, big or difficult a word or phrase is considered. Look up the fancier words more often!
Another possibility of course is wanting to correct somebody else, but double checking the definition just to be sure before you do!
Misusing words may or may not be stupid—without more information, including some nebulous stuff about intent and interpretation, I have no way of saying for sure in a given encounter.
What I would say instead is that many people seem to see “misuses words because [cocky/pretentious/know-it-all/careless]” as a heuristic for stupid. It isn’t a great heuristic, but knowing that people use it to rank you and choosing speech accordingly…isn’t stupid.
That's for the ML algorithms to decide.
https://coldewey.cc/tag/vocabulary/
Same goes for the OP?
Hmmm, I've been using a dictionary app for years that is offline, ad-free, remembers words you look up, and has a word of the day feature. Also has favorites and you can add personal notes on entries. It's also free. It's based on Wictionary. I use the ones for Spanish and Portuguese but I think they have versions for many languages. The name is fairly generic "Spanish Dictionary - Offline" by Livio.
Adding to the long list of features,... full verb conjugation tables and audio for most words.
Great execution, thanks for sharing it with the world
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/
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 with the open source repo [3]
1: https://apps.apple.com/app/wordnote-dictionary/id1596537633
2: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zehfernand...
3: https://github.com/zehfernandes/wordnote
Cheers!
Scraping, even via an api, is way less efficient imho.
The doc has a short and distinct name so can quickly be accessed via command + L (to go to address bar) and the distinct 5 character name for chrome to auto suggest it.
It's now ~10 years old. I used to add to it often, but the pace slowed as my vocabulary grew. It contains around 1-2000 words. I occasionally review it. One day I'll parse/analyse it.
> Not really the invetor of the dictionary but the well famous for combine alphabetic and topic order
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.
Non-monetized good apps are few and far between. One of which is actually related, by thai-language.com: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/thai-english-dictionary-tl/id7...
It's clean, it has whole sentences mixed in the vocabulary, it links phrases parts to their sub-definitions, and lets you paste a whole sentence at once, defining word by word.
One of my favorite apps. Updated 5 months ago.
I agree that some apps are feature-complete enough to be both useful and left without updates for years, but sadly they will eventually bitrot after some time and be increasingly annoying to use. This is usually the moment the maintainer is nowhere to be found as they lost interest, are busy, or dead.
The worst ones are suggested content feeds. They're everywhere, including in your operating system.
This unexpected change to the windows taskbar broke my concentration on some task I was doing the other day, and right away I stopped what I was doing to go chase down how to disable the thing so I wouldn't lose more moments of concentration in the future. https://superuser.com/questions/1725905/get-rid-of-decorativ...
Such a crazy idea of our own OS's being the source of interruptions. Even iOS is getting in on this with the Maps app I noticed the other week, I'd even count iTunes displaying a bunch of random album titles that are on the ugly end of the spectrum in my opinion. At least iTunes uses the same batch of images so one can train to ignore it. It's kind of interesting to conceptualize the OS as like this pesky idle assistant just hungry for attention and with nothing to do who likewise feels its owner is just as idle as them with free time and free attention to spare. "My owner isn't doing anything special or fun, let me bug him with this visual distraction". It's even funny at a meta level to even observe myself getting riled up over this growing assault.
It's interesting you say impossible to use without it, I wonder if a certain subpopulation of folks are more prone to these traps. Basically those with a high degree of attention to detail, those with sharp powers of observation, and those juggling a ton of things in their lives where spare mental capacity is on the short end of the spectrum.
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].
1: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/centres-and-institutes/dsru
2: https://www.nzsl.nz/
3. https://github.com/ODNZSL
Work's pretty well. I use it every day. It's only in french.
https://git.ache.one/dfr/about/
The web version:
https://dico.ache.one/
(My use case was that I need pronunciation of the words)
but wow, this is very eerie—i have not written an app but thought about it!
i am using a combination of three iOS applications right now to achieve what both these apps are offering. the built-in dictionary of course, notes, and reminders. after looking up words using the built-in dictionary, i put them in notes. then about once a week, i do a review and set reminders for a few select words.
i have been doing this for a few years now. it's heartwarming to see these ideas validated not in one but two applications.