Well, we have a dictionary in there don't we? So why not, it would be handy. Especially for writers, people in school, etc.

I'm a 1st year undergraduate molecular biologist, and take notes in OpenOffice (I'm a much faster typist than writer). So it's highly annoying to see the spellchecker go absolutely nuts and highlight about half the words on a page red, because they are technical words not in its dictionary. And believe me, we get through quite a few new technical / scientific words every day.

I'm sure this rings true for students and scientists in many other disciplines. Please could there be some work on expanding the dictionary to include much, much more scientific vocabulary. (If this is done, it'll also give Ubuntu one up on MS Office which currently doesn't have much scientific vocabulary in its dictionary either.)

I appreciate that not every user needs all the extra words in the spellchecker, but when we have to input words like ethylmaleimide, and have the spellchecker tell us the nearest suggestion is dimethylglyoxime, it starts to get annoying. The worst bit is the dictionary includes some obscure scientific words but not others, so you can't argue that they've been left out for the sake of the average user.

It's really technical language where a spellchecker comes into its own, particularly in long documents where a scientist really wants to be concentrating on the science, not on hunting down slight errors where they may have missed out a single letter.

Of course a user can add words to the dictionary, but I don't doubt people in a similar situation to me really don't want to face 4 years (and the rest) of right click -> add to dictionary -> [dictionary of choice] dozens of times a day. And of course, the day your computer breaks or you install Ubuntu on a new one, is the day you start that process all over again (because you probably backed up your photos and documents, but not your dictionary).

Naturally, as far as the English language is concerned, there will have to be US and UK English versions of this because of the differences in how we spell the words. For example, cytosol (US) vs cytoplasm (UK). This doesn't even account for technical vocabulary in other languages, which I can't vouch for but may also need fixing.


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Many English speaking countries have words that are unique to them and can't be found in Ubuntu's Standard Dictionary.

If you use more than one computer or every time up create a fresh install all custom words have to be manually added to every computer.

I just setup a local DICT server (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=982326), but it was only after endless hours of trying to find a solution to my offline dictionary needs. Getting a local dictionary was a lot harder than I ever imagined it should be. In "add and remove programs," old or bloated dictionary programs like StarDict are billed as offline dictionaries, but they have lots of problems and are annoying to use. But the GNOME Dictionary program works a charm. So how about making an option in Dictionary's preferences to allow certain dictionary databases to be downloaded and installed locally for offline use?

This idea is very straightforward. Just like is OSX, where the dictionary triples as a thesaurus and an encyclopaedia, my idea is to add a tab or just list encyclopaedic and thesaurus references in addition to the definitions. This could be done by working together with Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Thesaurus.com or a variety of sources to provide succinct but informative entries on searched terms and words.

The user selects text and drags-n-drops it to the little handy dictionary applet in the panel. Then they have to trim the text (extra spaces), and then hit enter. There is an obscure menu option "Lookup" as an alternative of hitting enter, but that involves 3-4 clicks. Moreover, if a word was already in the box, the user has to clear it before entering the new word. The entire process takes about 5-10 seconds per lookup.

It would be very convenient to have something like a "dictionary lens" in the dash for quick reference.

In order to make the dictionary grow faster and a lot bigger, I think that a wiki-like system should be implemented.

There should be, in the gnome-dictionary, an action to suggest a word and a meaning to it, that would be automatically added with a tag explaining that the word is not yet approved. Simultaneously, a team selected to supervise this would recieve notifications to approve the new word suggestions.

So far I can't find a Chinese-English DICT dictionary package to download, although there are two English-Chinese ones.