Zbedic Homepage

[rafm]

zbedic has a new home page (link).

Also, a new version 0.9.3-2 (29.01.2005) is available. Release notes:

Mostly bug fixes and improved documentation. Back/forward navigation should be more reliable and potential problems with reading some library files may disappear. xerox can now handle huge dictionaries, such as Wikipedia (thanks to Latchesar Ionkov).

Comments? Suggestions?

[qx773]

Zbedic is an impressive dictionary program.  Did a group of volunteers enter all of the definitions?

Does anyone know what the second graphics icon from the left does?  I know that you can highlight a word and then click on the third icon to get the definition for that word.  The second icon does not seem to do anything.  -- Scratch that.  I just visited the new home page and read the documentation which states that the second icon switches between the two most recently used dictionaries, if you have more than one dictionary installed.

[qx773]

I noticed years ago that the American Heritage Dictionary does not list the etymology of the word, "hobo."  There is just a question mark for the etymology.  A guest of the Johnny Carson show once said that the word "hobo" derived from the words, "hoe boy," to refer to migrant farm workers (many of whom carried a hoe, a farm implement) during the economic period in the United States that was called The Great Depression.  He said that the distinction between a beggar and hobo is that a beggar will just ask you for money, but a hobo will work for it.

[rafm]

Did a group of volunteers enter all of the definitions?

It would be nice to have all zbedic dictionaries available for editing on web, the same way as everybody can edit Wikipedia. Then, zbedic dictionary files could be created periodically as new definitions and corrections are added.

Currently most of the zbedic dictionary files are based on the dictionaries available in Internet. The dictionaries are converted from whatever format there are in to zbedic format. In the next version of zbedic there should be an extra button, which would show copyright and the source of the dictionary data.