Welcome to my HomePage! You are probably wondering why Ojster.com? Ojster is my nickname and it is a kind of short version of my surname ( in a dialect - that's the reason for letter j ) - they called me by this name at collage and it is pronounced same as Oyster. What can you find on these pages? It's about what I like and do in my free time. You can find eBook commentaries and links to eBook related sites (especially for .lit formatted eBooks), Dashboard skins, images for Today's The Day program and PocketPC related links. I have my own Photo Gallery with mostly nature photos, but it's not just nature - check it out - it will be time well spent! I also have my own discussion board where you can find/post discount codes, eBook commentaries, comments and suggestions concerning my photography and skin creations. Don't forget to bookmark now! You can also reach my page via http://www.PocketPCstuff.com. Currently both URL's bring you to the same page.

Sunday, February 22, 2004

Want to have a dictionary always with you? Wordbook 3.0 from Trancreative is a great PocketPC Eng/Eng dictionary, but what if you'd also like a bilingual dictionary with your first language and it is not available for the PocketPC?

If your mother language is not English you probably have a kind of a dictionary installed on your desktop PC. But when you are not seated behind your desk you are left with a paper version - well, unless you speak one of the "popular" languages that is. In my case (Slovene language) there is no dictionary for the PocketPC except for a light version that Paragon Software offers and even that is only a one-way version.
I have some dictionaries on my PC from the Windows 3.11 days and I am still using them. Two weeks ago I thought how great it would be to have that on my iPaq. I was searching for a solution and finally found a way to do it. And I've been using it extensively for the past few days. I am going to port the whole collection to my PocketPC.

So now I guess your question is how I did it. If you have a dictionary on your PC you can do it without a problem. What I did was, find a software that is capable of repeating tasks. You simply record a series of mouse/keyboard commands necessary to copy a word definition into text editor and make that software repeat it till it comes to the last word. I just used a demo version of a macro recording software and it finished the whole dictionary in less than a day. The downside is you can't use the computer while it's running and you can not set the speed too high because it'll get messed up.

When I got that, I bought the dictionary editor for PPCLINK eDictionary and imported the file. You can then use this with PPCLINK eDictionary which works on the PocketPC and offers much more than just plain English/English dictionary. You can download many free dictionaries including Glossary of Electronic Terms, Project Management, International Economics, Dictionary of Medical Terms and even the Holy Bible to name just a few.

I had some problems with the eDictionary editor (v1.5) and their support sent me a new version that solved the crashing problem. I think the main problem were Slovene characters and long definitions. There is still place for improvement what this editor is concerned, and it would also be great to be able to edit dictionaries on the PocketPC - perhaps in the future version.

This is it! It doesn't take much to port a dictionary from the PC to your PDA. Or any other similar database.

Posted by Ojster @ 11:53 AM CET [Link]