Anyone fancy trying a dictionary app?

Note to mods: I hope it is OK to peddle my wares here, if not please feel free to remove the thread. The app is free and without ads.

I've just uploaded an app to the market called "Arcus Dictionary". It's a 5MB download but it does give you 140,000+ words and definitions without requiring network access.

It's my first foray into making an app so and it is pretty simple but on the other hand it is quite fast and relatively small considering the amount of data there. I was only able to test it on a Hero and a Desire so I'd be really grateful if my fellow boardsies would give it a try.

Thanks

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/reference/arcus-dictionary_iijr.html

oleras

I'll give it a spin mate, fair play, would love to get into the making apps thing, first need to master the Desire i think !!

bluefirefly

gona try it out! been trying to find a dictionary that doesnt require web access! thanks.

Thanks guys. It is pretty simple but if there's enough interest I will put more features in it. I have another dictionary app that retrieves all of the nyms (syno / anto / hypo / hyper etc) and sample sentences but it weighed in at almost 30MB so I thought that wasn't practical.

It's all about the balance of the download size vs functionality. I didn't go the web-service way as I found those too slow. One thing I'd like to put in soon enough would be a search history feature.

JohnK

Looks good and its working fine on my nexus :cool:

28064212

Would love it, but I'm already perilously close to my paltry limit of 147MB for apps on the Samsung Spica . Don't suppose you want to completely redesign your app so most of the space is taken up on the SD card instead? No? Ok, guess I'll have to wait and hope that Samsung decide to upgrade it to Froyo (yeah right)

wireless101

Don't have an android phone yet but am planning on getting the desire. Just expressing my interest as a dictionary and possibly a thesuarus would be the first apps I would get!

It's on the cards all right Installing to sd would not take a lot of time to do, but the swapping from phone to sd memory would need a bit of testing because of the way I'm handling the data. In froyo you can request an install to sd card but it may or may not be honoured and the user can switch install locations at any point.

wireless101

wireless101 wrote: »

Don't have an android phone yet but am planning on getting the desire. Just expressing my interest as a dictionary and possibly a thesuarus would be the first apps I would get!

Adding synonyms would be one of the priorities too, I'd have to see how it would affect the size of the DB. Another approach that I might take is to get rid of the word database out of the app entirely and download it over mobile data or wifi, that way the app install size would be something more like 30K

killbillvol2

baz8080 wrote: »

Adding synonyms would be one of the priorities too, I'd have to see how it would affect the size of the DB. Another approach that I might take is to get rid of the word database out of the app entirely and download it over mobile data or wifi, that way the app install size would be something more like 30K

That option would be more attractive to me - have 2GB data per month so I don't have an issue with downloading.

Until froyo comes I'll have to be very selective about installing apps and 5MB is pretty big for something I'd only use very occasionally.

In any case good luck with it and thanks for sharing

Brian

Doesn't seem to be working for me on Nexus One running Froyo 2.2 FRF50. First time I opened it it FCd, remaining times I type in a search term and it returns no results

Baza210

Baza210 wrote: »

Doesn't seem to be working for me on Nexus One running Froyo 2.2 FRF50. First time I opened it it FCd, remaining times I type in a search term and it returns no results

Thanks Baza, I didn't test it on 2.2 so it is possible something has changed. I'll grab the SDK and run it through the emulator this weekend and see what is up.

Sounds like it wasn't able to do the initialisation for some reason

I tracked down the froyo issue. There's a fix uploaded to the market but if you have already tried you will need to delete the com.arcuscomputing.dictionary directory on your sd card and before you get version 1.0.2.

There's no real need for anybody else to upgrade to this build however.

mathew

Just installing this now. I had a great dictionary on my E66. Glad to have this now too

KoolKid

Installed on my Nexus 1.
Working fine. Any problems I'll let you know;)

Thanks guys, there's enough interest in this now to take it a bit further. I'm planning on a 1.1 release that will have a favourites system. You'll be able to "star" results and then get them from a list and I'll probably order them based on how often you look that particular definition up.

I'm also going to add an option to enable auto-complete and auto-correct on the search box. I didn't like it personally as I thought it kind of got in the way but others might think the opposite.

I'm going to try and rebuild the index I use with some synonym definitions and see how the size is affected and if it isn't too bad I'll stick them in.

The longer term goal would be to have an optional downloadable "full mode" with a lot more features but I like the idea of keeping the core as small as I can possibly have it.

KoolKid

Sounds good. Keep us informed.

I just regenerated my data files with up to six synonyms, if they are available. The download size increase is ~800KB. Just wondering if that's acceptable to you guys?

I think it is OK considering it adds some nice functionality. I could probably use the synonyms to build up a full text search database as you used the app too.

KoolKid

I would find that ok,

JohnK

A further 800kb wouldnt bother me

Thanks to everyone who has tried this so far. I'm just about to go over 500 downloads and the app is at ~#20 in the rankings for dictionary.

V1.1 is going to hit the store in the next couple of days with:

* 25,000 new definitions (up to a little over 165,000)
* Synonyms (up to 6 if available)
* Minimum query length to get results is now 2, was 3.
* Favourites
* Option for purely alphabetical sorting. (Currently frequency analysis based)
* Various bug fixes
* Mechanism for data file upgrades & auto-repair at startup
* Still no need for network access to search
* Still ad-free

The size is up to 6.21MB from 5.15MB. I tried to keep it down but with 25,000 new definitions, synonyms & more features it had to go up a bit.

Stephen

Nice app!

Cheers Stephen, the update has just been pushed to the market.

BeciMester

Just downloaded from the market, looks and works great! Love the 'search-as-I-type' feature. Good work OP!

KoolKid

Upgraded this morning. Everything fine.

Just a note to say that 1.2.1 hit the market recently. This has a few tweaks including:

* Install to SD card support
* Start-up performance increases
* Auto-complete option.

I'm sincerely grateful to all of the Boardsies who tested this for me and this release will probably be the final one as I want to have a look at making another app.

KoolKid

Got that upgrade this morning.