edictionary is a dictionary program written in Perl. It can fetch meanings of the words you supply to it as arguments. edict is capable of using one of the many user defined dictionaries to fetch the word meanings.
NOTE: Please note that edictionary uses various dictionary web-sites to fetch the meanings of the words. Please read the "TERMS OF USE" of the dictionary site before you start using it. Don't use the program if you intend to violate the "TERMS OF USE". The author of this program will not be held responsible for any violations/consequences in any way. The program is provided just to facilitate fetching text using HTTP.
make install
This will install the edictionary program in the /usr/bin directory unless you have "prefix" environment variable set. Run make without any arguments to verify that. If you want to install edictionary in a different directory, you can run the above command as
make prefix=/my/dir install
wininstall [<target dir>]
The <target dir> is optional. If you specify a <target dir>, edict will be installed in that very directory. So you can run the command as
wininstall
Or you can specify a target location
wininstall c:\my\dir
NOTE: The path <target dir> should be an absolute path. This means you CANNOT say
wininstall mydir
Instead, you should say
wininstall c:\path\to\mydir
Now you should edit your PATH variable to include <target dir>. Open the System icon in Control Panel and select the Advanced tab. Now, click on "Environment Variables..." to edit your PATH.
rpm -q perl
This should return something like
perl-5.6.0-9
If you see something like
package perl is not installed
you'll have to install Perl by downloading the rpm for Perl.
perl -v
If you get an error, Perl may not be present on your system. You should download Perl and install it.
perl -v
This should print the version of the Perl interpreter installed on your machine. If, instead, you get an error indicating command not found, your Perl installation failed.
edict <word>
where <word> is the word for which you want to lookup the meaning. The first line in the edict source file specifies the path of the Perl interpreter. If Perl is installed in a path different from /usr/bin, you can change it there.
On Windows platform, you'll have to run edictionary as
perl <edict> <word>
where <edict> is the absolute or relative path of the edict program and <word> is the word you are looking for. So an example run can be
perl c:\bin\edict orotund
This will display the meaning of the word "orotund" provided you have Perl installed on your machine and the file c:\bin\edict exists.
Multiple words may be specified as
edict sexist misogynist dinosaur
It is possible that you don't have a direct connection to Internet and use a proxy-server. In that case you can ask edictionary to use a proxy-server by typing
edict -p server:port orotund
If you supply an invalid word to edictionary as:
edict junkword
you'll see the following as error:
Don't understand Swahili words like junkword! ;)
Listing Available Dictionaries [top]
Since 2.0-beta, edictionary supports an option "-l" (small 'L') to list all the dictionaries available to the user.These dictionary names can be used to specify your default dictionary in the configuration file.
Suggestions/Alternate Meanings [top]
Suggestions and alternate meanings are available starting edict-1.0-beta2. You don't have to do anything to turn on this feature as it is automatically turned on. All you have to do is to use the edictionary to view the meaning.
Let's say you type the wrong spellings for the word dyslexia. You'll get the suggestions as:
C:\>edict dyselxia
Don't understand Swahili words like dyselxia ;)!!
-----------------------------------------------------
Suggestions/Alternative meanings
-----------------------------------------------------
1)
dyslexia
2) dyslexias
3)
dyslexic
4) dyslexics
5)
dieselize
6) dismally
7)
Disraeli
8) decillion
9)
disrelish
10) dustlike
-----------------------------------------------------
Your choice: 1
You can then enter the numeric code for the correct word you want.
Similarly, edict also offers you multiple meanings (if any) for a word.
C:\>edict catch
.... meaning text ....
-----------------------------------------------------
Suggestions/Alternative meanings
-----------------------------------------------------
1)
catch[1,verb]
2) catch[2,noun]
3)
catch-as-catch-can
4) catch on
5) catch
out
6) catch-22
7) catch-up[1,adjective] 8)
catch-up[2,noun]
9) catch
up
10) circus catch
-----------------------------------------------------
Your choice: 6
Thesaurus Support [top]
Staring with edict-1.0, thesaurus support is also available. You can get the thesaurus entries for the word "laconic" by executing the command:
ethes laconic
Rest of the usage is similar to that of edict.
Configuring edictionary - .edictrc [top]
Using the command line options in edictionary to accomplish everything is sometimes painful. Aliases work for some shells, but still don't do everything or do everything as smoothly as you would want them to. I guess, many saw a configuration file feature in edictionary-2.0-beta coming. Each user can now have a separate configuration file to alter the behavior of edictionary. The configuration file is not required for edictionary to operate. However, if present, it will alter the behavior of edictionary, hopefully in a positive way :).
There are two types of configuration files - per-user and system-wide. Under the Unix or Unix based systems, the per-user configuration file is $HOME/.edictrc, where HOME is an environment variable that generally points to users' home directory. The system-wide configuration file is /etc/.edictrc. Under Windows, the per-user configuration file is $USERPROFILE\.edictrc and system-wide file is $SYSTEMROOT\.edictrc. If the environment variables USERPROFILE and SYSTEMROOT are not present on your Windows platform, you must define them lest edictionary will ignore your settings.Copyright (c) 2002-2004, 2010, Vishal Verma