Re: Dictionary source

On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 01:27:39PM +0100, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Pedro M.V. wrote:
> 
> > I suggest the www.openoffice.org dictionaries can be obtained from
> > wiktionary and viceversa, wiktionary can obtain words form
> > openoffice dictinaries.
> 
> The common spelling programs spell, ispell, pspell, aspell, and
> MySpell (the latter used by OpenOffice.org) have dictionaries that
> only know how to spell words, but never contain any explanations.
> Is there any free source of dictionaries on a level between these
> simple spelling dictionaries and the full encyclopedia?  E.g. with
> short dictionary-like explanations of each word?

There are lot of Free dictionaries for dictd available.
For example on my Debian box the following dictionaries are installed:
$ dict -D
Databases available:
 gcide          The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44
 wn             WordNet (r) 1.7.1 (July 2002)
 foldoc         The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (12 Sep 2002)
 jargon         Jargon File (4.3.3, 20 Sep 2002)
 vera           V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms June 2002
 elements       The Elements (07Nov00)
 fd-cze-eng     Czech-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-deu-eng     German-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-deu     English-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-ita     English-Italian Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-lat     English-Latin Freedict dictionary
 fd-lat-eng     Latin-English Freedict dictionary
 moby-thesaurus Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
 bouvier        Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856)
 english-german English - German Dictionary 1.1
 german-english German - English Dictionary 1.1
 fd-jpn-deu     Japanese-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-afr-deu     Africaan-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-dan-eng     Danish-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-deu-fra     German-French Freedict dictionary
 fd-deu-ita     German-Italian Freedict dictionary
 fd-deu-nld     German-Nederland Freedict dictionary
 fd-deu-por     German-Portugese Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-fra     English-French Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-hun     English-Hungarian Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-iri     English-Irish Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-nld     English-Netherlands Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-por     English-Portugese Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-rus     English-Russian Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-spa     English-Spanish Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-swe     English-Swedish Freedict dictionary
 fd-eng-wel     English-Welsh Freedict dictionary
 fd-fra-deu     French-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-fra-eng     French-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-fra-nld     French-Nederlands Freedict dictionary
 fd-hun-eng     Hungarian-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-iri-eng     Irish-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-ita-deu     Italian-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-lat-deu     Latin-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-nld-deu     Nederlands-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-nld-eng     Nederlands-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-nld-fra     Nederlands-French Freedict dictionary
 fd-por-deu     Portugese-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-por-eng     Portugese-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-sco-deu     Scottish-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-scr-eng     Serbo-Croat-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-slo-eng     Slovenian-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-spa-eng     Spanish-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-swa-eng     Swahili-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-swe-eng     Swedish-English Freedict dictionary
 fd-tur-deu     Turkish-German Freedict dictionary
 fd-tur-eng     Turkish-English Freedict dictionary


BTW, why don't we import whole FOLDOC into English Wikipedia ?
It's certainly much more valuable than that Rambot stuff.

It doesn't have to happen in single day. I think Wikipedia could
cope with it quite well if it was imported during 2 months or
something like that.