WordNetCE 0.995 Freeware Pocket PC Dictionary/Thesaurus Released

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.ebswift.com/PocketPC/WordNet/' target='_blank'>http://www.ebswift.com/PocketPC/WordNet/</a><br /><br /></div>"The goal of my project is to make a high quality, free dictionary/thesaurus for the Pocket PC platform. To date there is nothing out there that's both free and high quality." <br /><br />That pretty much sums up Troy Simpson attribute towards <a href="http://www.ebswift.com/PocketPC/WordNet/">WordNetCE</a>. It's a program he created to provide a free dictionary/thesaurus solution with modern terms and a very large wordbase of over 144,000 words. The program is based on the popular desktop version of WordNet created by Princeton University which is free to modify and distribute. The dictionary is downloaded separately from Princeton and it's recommended to copy it to a storage card folder due to its large size (~35MB). You can get it <a href="ftp://ftp.cogsci.princeton.edu/pub/wordnet/2.0/WordNet-2.0.exe">here</a>. <br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/WordNet.gif" /> <br /><br />I installed it just now and I have to say I'm impressed with the dictionary. It has extensive, clear definitions and seems to cover most words I can think of. I was apprehensive about using a dictionary with US spelling, but what do you know, it's got UK spelling as well! For example, both Aluminium and Aluminum were listed together, as well as Colour and Color. Nice, very nice in fact. The program interface was simple, yet powerful enough to do exactly what I wanted. It's a keeper!<br /><br />WordNetCE requires Pocket PC 2002 with the compact .Net Framework OR Windows Mobile 2003. Whilst WordNetCE is free, the author asks that small donations be made (particularly if it's used in any type of organisation), so that the website can be kept online and more quality freeware can be produced. You know the drill guys. 8)

[darrylb]

35Mb! 8O

Even with a 512Mb SD Card, that is alot of space! The other competiting (and not free) dictionaries are ~10Mb. Even this was too much! Is there no compression or anything?

Still free is good 8)

[ebswift]

Hey, thanks for the plug guys, it's a really nice gesture, I'm stoked! 8)

Is there no compression or anything?
Good point darrylb, being straight text it will compress a lot. My main aim was to actually get it to work, and as my first project for the Pocket PC I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Although storage cards are getting cheaper and bigger by the minute I'll look into what's needed for searching compressed data. I won't promise any timelines, but maybe someone can give me a kickstart ;)

Enjoy this freeware :D

[Kacey Green]

it might just be me but what files do you copy to the PPC?

[ebswift]

it might just be me but what files do you copy to the PPC?
After you download and install WordNet 2.0, go to where you installed it (normally c:\program files\WordNet\2.0) and copy the "dict" folder to your storage card.

[Kacey Green]

I thought that was it but when I saw dev resouces in the other folders I became unsure.

Thanks

[jlp]

35Mb! 8O

Even with a 512Mb SD Card, that is alot of space! The other competiting (and not free) dictionaries are ~10Mb. Even this was too much! Is there no compression or anything?

Still free is good 8)

I suppose that since WordNet was developped for the PC and 35 MB storage is tiny for that platform, they didn't see fit to compress the data.

However since the porting places it in a totally different environment were space is scarce, it could use compression here.

I'll try to see if I can make space fo 35 MB coz this app will be useful to me.

A big thank you Troy for the app :clap: :clap: :clap:

[jlp]

FWIW I tried zipping the dict directory on my PC and the resulting file is 10.5 MiB. Compression level 6 (normal) or 9 (maximum) give no significant difference in size (~80KiB) but level 9 is much slower by a factor of 2.

Another example is the noun.exc file that compresses from 40,104 bytes down to 13,467 bytes with an exact same size at compression level 6 or 9.

Thirdly noun.dat reduces from 14.4 MiB down to 4.3 MiB.

[ctitanic]

That´s what I have been telling him, he needs to find the way to compress those files ;) and to work with them compressed.

[jizmo]

Free compress/decompress libraries aren't that hard to find, it's just the huge amount of data and working with it that makes it hard.

A quick way of solving this could be splitting the dictionary to number of smaller pieces, and then decompressing the needed part when it's searched for. It would slow down the searching a little, but then again most of the compression methods do.

It's naturally a whole different issue are you allowed to tamper with the original dictionary file. Maybe if you wrote a utility that would do this automatically to the dictionary file on PPC or desktop computer.

/jizmo

[elziko]

Am I right in saying you wrote this using the .NET CF?

If you have then the only 'free' compression component I know of is released under the GNU General Public License & I think you canget the source.

I haven't tried it out but I suggest you could use the code here to comprees & uncompress the data in the file.

I think its developed in C# but this link may help you if you're doing it in VB:

http://www.kamalpatel.net/ConvertCSharp2VB.aspx

and here is another useful link with some classes that were left out of the CF:

http://www.opennetcf.org/CategoryView.aspx?category=Home

I don't have any time to be much more help but I thought you could make use of the links. You definitely need to get the file nearer 10Mb though!

Cheers,

elziko

[snowlion]

i'm curious to as to how you came up with the contents...public-domain info..not so public...or you're a very literate person.

don't take this personally...just curious.

[Zack Mahdavi]

Looks nice, but I can't afford losing 35MB of space. I'll stick with WordBook from TranCreative. However, I'll definitely check in regularly for any new updates on this program. Thanks for putting your time into developing it!

[darrylb]

Hey, thanks for the plug guys, it's a really nice gesture, I'm stoked! 8)

Is there no compression or anything?
Good point darrylb, being straight text it will compress a lot. My main aim was to actually get it to work, and as my first project for the Pocket PC I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Although storage cards are getting cheaper and bigger by the minute I'll look into what's needed for searching compressed data. I won't promise any timelines, but maybe someone can give me a kickstart ;)


If you can compress it - I'll definately put it on! Keep up the good work!

[ebswift]

i'm curious to as to how you came up with the contents...public-domain info..not so public...or you're a very literate person.

don't take this personally...just curious.
:mrgreen: Don't worry I haven't totally lost it, writing a dictionary as my first novel... The dictionary is public domain from Princeton. It is actually centred in a number of products.

[ventivent]

Hi there,

I've been using MDict, which is a software originally developed for English/Chinese, English/Japanese translation, but you can download a Webster's English Dictionary database (around 14mb) for the program as well. It's available here:

http://www.octopus-studio.com/download.en.htm

It's free, check it out.

V

[jizmo]

I can't believe nobody gave Jonathon credit for his "funny" headline with a spelling error.

C'mon guys! :twisted:

/jizmo

[jlp]

"WordNetCE 0.995 Freeware Pocket PC Dictionary/Thesaurus Relaeased

Too her his you man :devilboy:

[jlp]

"WordNetCE 0.995 Freeware Pocket PC Dictionary/Thesaurus Relaeased

To her ease hue man :twisted:

[Jonathon Watkins]

OK, OK, with the plan I get. :wink:

(Guess I really did need that dictionary!) :lol:

[ebswift]

Checkout my new online version WordNetAspNet at http://www.ebswift.com/WordNetAspNet. It's an ASP.Net implementation of Princeton's WordNet. You can test what WordNetCE is meant to do before you download it!

Although still under construction, it is operational, and will have the same capabilities as WordNetCE ( http://www.ebswift.com/PocketPC/WordNetCE ).

[pkbdeb]

I have a Toshiba e750 which has a Intel PXA255 processor. Which platform should I download for? :oops: What is the difference between ARM and ARMV4? :oops:

[ebswift]

I have a Toshiba e750 which has a Intel PXA255 processor. Which platform should I download for? :oops: What is the difference between ARM and ARMV4? :oops:
Try ARMV4, and if that fails try ARM. It should be one of the two, but alas I can't really tell you which.

[5TILLFREE]

Just a quick Thank You for this great dictionary. Yes it is huge but I've got plenty of memory card storage to burn and this is definitely the most complete freeware dictionary for PocketPC. I don't have a PocketPC section on my freeware site, www.freewaremotherload.com, yet but when I do, WordNet will make the cut! Congrats and thanks again! - Troy

[ebswift]

Just a quick Thank You for this great dictionary. Yes it is huge but I've got plenty of memory card storage to burn and this is definitely the most complete freeware dictionary for PocketPC. I don't have a PocketPC section on my freeware site, www.freewaremotherload.com, yet but when I do, WordNet will make the cut! Congrats and thanks again! - Troy
Thanks for the kind words mate, sweet site you have by the way :)

[jake080]

there better still be good freewares like this once im a user instead of just an... uh, 'intellectual' :lol:
~Jake

[ebswift]

WordNetCE 2.5.01 has now been released. New features are wildcard search, regular expression search, anagram solver/creator and scrabble solving assistant.

Download at http://www.ebswift.com, enjoy!

[Jonathon Watkins]

Ha - I was just writing the post as you posted here. :wink:

Duly front paged. :D

[Ketsugi]

If this doesn't currently work with WM2003, I guess I'll have to wait till the bug is fixed =/

[Jonathon Watkins]

If this doesn't currently work with WM2003, I guess I'll have to wait till the bug is fixed =/

Ummm, the current version works fine for me in 2003 and 2003SE.

[ebswift]

If this doesn't currently work with WM2003, I guess I'll have to wait till the bug is fixed =/
Well, I am convinced that some manufacturers have decided to release some of their own bits of the API and/or .Net Framework, which makes things nice and challenging (impossible?) for us programmers. The problem I have is that so far, nobody who has one of the problematic devices has any time to test in beta. So while I acknowlege there's a problem for some people, I don't yet have any way of getting to it.

BTW, the 'bug' I'm referring to involves an actual software crash which shows an exception message, not issues which do not involve exception messages.

To put it into perspective, pretty-much the same source-code works with PPC2002, WM2003, SP2003 and most WM2003SE installations. Why the consistency got lost on that last one is still a mystery to me.

&lt;my 2c>
I think MS gives the manufactures too much freedom to tinker with the operating system. At least if it's left to MS they can release patches for all PPC O/S devices and maintain a standardised list of "known issues". Too many manufactures are quite happy to sweep "known issues" under the carpet. The other option is to maintain the O/S completely separately from manufacturer code - i.e. manufacture code becomes 'applications and drivers' rather than becoming entangled with the operating system itself.
&lt;/my 2c>

[ebswift]

Well, funnily enough one of my kind users has just emailed me to let me know that there seems to be a fix available that might get WordNetCE going on some troublesome devices...

http://www.pc-counselor.com/hx4700.htm
This site has a fix that might enable the buggy Ipaq HX4700 to run your WordnetCE. I saved the hx4700fix.zip file in the Temp folder of the Ipaq, doubleclicked on it. It takes care of the ATI Bitmap cache bug in the HX4700. At least for my Ipaq. Just post this for your users.
If someone could confirm that this solves the problem it'd be great! I suspect it will actually work, given where the crash actually occurs.

[ebswift]

There is now an official fix targeting all devices, including the problem which was crashing WordNetCE on the Hx4700 and hx4705.

Download the Microsoft .Net Compact Framework 1.1 SP3 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&amp;FamilyID=a5a02311-194b-4c00-b445-f92bec03032f) Redistributable for the offical fix.

[ebswift]

2.5.03 released this morning. It allows VGA users to up the font size, adds a "sounds like" search (for really fast devices), adds WordNet 2.0 relation searching and fixes morph bugs (where eg. 'miles' is morphed to 'mile' - before that would return no results). My desktop version made a quantum leap too, with full word hyperlinking, so you might want to check that out while you're at it.

Enjoy ;)

[Jonathon Watkins]

2.5.03 released this morning....

Nice, very nice. I'll try to look at this later tonight.

[ebswift]

Argh, the curse has struck again! :cry:

There was a bug in the build and I've now fixed it, so all should be good again 8)

[ebswift]

Version 2.6 is now released. It has full-colour formatted results with every word hyperlinked. You can now click on any word in the results to bring up an overview search for that word.

Check it out at http://www.ebswift.com.