Popmæ dictionary, testers needed

Latin Learning Latin
1

I am working on the Latin-Latin dictionary “De differentiis verborum” (Popma, 1865) and want to try a new format, so need feedback from users.

This version for GoldenDict contains scanned pages (no transcript yet), so looking for a keyword, user takes a preview of the corresponding page. Placing mouse over the preview, full-size image will be shown. Standart GoldenDict’s double-click on preview works as well.

I find this format convinient, but want to hear your opinion about formatting (not about dictionary content, please). One known disadvantage: all works fine in the main window of the program, but the pop-up window (shown by Ctrl-C-C hotkey) usually is too small to show image of readable size. Anyway, it is much faster then opening links to Internet websites, that I used for my previous dictionaries. And, finally, it makes the dicitonary definitely offline.

Dictionary was tested only in Linux, I don’t know does it work seamlessly or not in Windows and MacOS.

Inside of the archive, you will find folder “Popma1865offline” (dictionary) and file article-style.css:

(123 Mb) https://www.dropbox.com/s/k4l48qdfxgxy99p/Popma-test.zip?dl=0

Add dictionary to the GoldenDict as usual (see manual). File article-style.css should be placed into the configuration folder (see menu “Help | Configuration folder”):

  • Linux: ~/.goldendict
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\GoldenDict
  • MacOS: ?

P.S. Index is under proof reading, so not every keyword could be found, but “amor” and “femina” are present.

2

It seems to work, although you might want to give more detailed instruction if you want more people to test it. Given a dictionary pdf file downloaded from Google or archive.org, could you tell me step by step how to build a dictionary?

3

Thank you for the test. Do you use my other dictionaries, such as Dumesnil or Shumway? Don’t you think they will profit from being converted into this format?

In theory it can be done manually, but generally it requires programming because of big amount of data. Two simple steps:

  1. make a list of keywords: you need pairs “keyword - page”;
  2. convert them into XDXF or StarDict format.

Step 1 is the most laborious. Working on Popma’s dictionary I used service OCR.Space because it intentionally marks beginnings of the pages. Before I tried to recognize page numbers from text, but it is very unreliable. Then I used a regexp to catch headwords of the articles. Finally, manually checking produced index, better by several persons independently.

Step 2. I used XDXF because I worked with it before and know it well (and thought about transcribing full text in a distant future), however I am using here undocumented formatting which works in GoldenDict but could be incompatible with other dictionary shells. The most correct choice would be StarDict format. To embbed images, text should contain:

<img src="/res/000093.png" height="100px"/>

Images have to be stored into the folder “res” located next to the dicitonary file (res.zip is not supported). Attribute “height” makes kind of thumb-preview, then user should double-click on them to see full image.

My addition to this scheme is showing full images on hover, that is why I had to write article-style.css. My format is following:

<img src="/res/000093.png" height="100px" alt="preview"/>
<span class="full"><img src="/res/000093.png"/></span>

Here with full image is hidden by default and CSS rule makes it visible on hover (display: none/unset)

Example of XDXF dictionary with 1 record: https://www.dropbox.com/s/f4y0hux6y1pgczb/preview.zip?dl=0 .

Step 3.* Keywords should be normalized. It is optional, but improves experience of work with your dictionary. For example, Popma uses ijv-spelling, whereas Latin hunspell dictionary used in GoldenDict comes with iuv-spelling. Verbs should be in a form of present active indicative 1st sg, so “ACCVMBERE” need to be changed to “accumbo” and so on.

4

Thank you for the explanation. I haven’t tried your other dictionaries yet. For composition I use SMITH & HALL. I’d say it is useful to have synonyms.

5

The link above didn’t work for me. I found it here:

https://www.latinitium.com/smithhall

6

I fixed it, thanks.