dictionary.el is a package by TorstenHilbrich for querying RFC 2229 dictionary servers. Get it from,
Features (from the web page):
Other Features:
This behaves a little more like the emacs help functions that you might be accustomed to:
(defun my-dictionary-search ()
(interactive)
(let ((word (current-word))
(enable-recursive-minibuffers t)
(val))
(setq val (read-from-minibuffer
(concat "Word"
(when word
(concat " (" word ")"))
": ")))
(dictionary-new-search
(cons (cond
((and (equal val "") word)
word)
((> (length val) 0)
val)
(t
(error "No word to lookup")))
dictionary-default-dictionary))))The Texinfo source files and Info generated output, both for English and Spanish, are in http://gnu.manticore.es I added an Index (concepts, functions, variables, keys and programs) to the documentation.
– SuSo
AFAIK, there is a dictionary.el is present with XEmacs distribution.M-x dictionary RET --GirishB
I have briefly tried dictionary-el and lookup-el, the former worked out of the box here.:) – DeepakGoel
Ding comes with a quite usuable German ←> English dictionary. apt-get install it or get it from
You can access the dictionary from emacs (change the path if needed) with
(defun my-ding (&optional query)
(interactive (list (read-string "Query: " (current-word))))
(let ((coding-system-for-read 'latin-1)
(coding-system-for-write 'latin-1))
(grep (concat "egrep -nHih " query " /usr/share/trans/de-en"))))dictionary.el works beautifully with utf-8 but, I can’t seem to get it to work for my mandarin dictionary (encoded in big5). Seems that dictd is configured properly as I can search chinese characters using the dict client (even in eshell). I have set
(setq dictionary-coding-systems-for-dictionaries
'( ("test" . chinese-big5))where “test” is the name of my dictionary. I can sort of see what the problem is, in that, if I execute (dictionary-encode-charset “han-zi “test”), where. “han-zi” is actually a chinese character that seached just fine using dict in eshell, the result is gobbledy gook. Any ideas as to how to debug this would be greatly appreciated. I’ve got dictionary-1.8.7, on GNU Emacs 21.4.1 (stock Debian install). – BrianTodd
Emacs 24 drops support for make-local-hook. The Debian package linked above includes a patch to get round this. Those unfamiliar with patching can also grab the updated dictionary.el from git. – antono
See also: DictWeb.