The Meaning of Life
By David Shamah, The
Snappy headline, huh? Step right up, folks – we've
got all the answers right here!
I don’t mean to get all philosophical on y'all, but
it's a question that crops up occasionally – even in the world of computers. PCs
that talk, think, and do just about everything more efficiently and at a higher
level of quality than humans do are one of those conundrums that beg an answer.
Fortunately, discovering the meaning of Life is
simple – if you know where to look. Life is a "characteristic state or
mode of living." And a "mode" is a "manner of
performance." And a "manner" is a "way of acting or
living."
Or maybe Life is "the course of existence of an
individual." And a "course" is "a connected series of
events." And "events" are "things that happen at a given
place and time."
I could go on all day like this – in fact, I actually
did recently, with one of the best free programs I have ever come across – StarDict, the most amazing dictionary you will ever use,
online, download, print, or otherwise!
I almost missed StarDict,
because it's not promoted by a shareware or commercial software manufacturer. It's developer home page and on-line documentation are in
Chinese, and it’s located on an obscure Web site dedicated to non-Windows
software. But if you’re looking for a complete off-line all-in-one dictionary,
thesaurus, style book, gazetteer, and translation database for about 35
languages, StarDict has everything you need.
Most of us use Windows systems on our home an office
computers, but if you've ever used non-Windows systems like Linux for purposes
other than programming – in other words, employing them for Web surfing,
e-mailing, word processing, etc. – you are immediately struck by the amount of
sophisticated software available, almost all of it free. Many of the available
free competitors to Microsoft Office, including StarOffice
and OpenOffice, are programs that were ported
(translated) from Linux, which is based on Unix, to Windows. There programs
don't cost any money, but they are not necessarily freeware; they are
distributed under a set of licenses that reserve the copyright to the
manufacturer or distributor, but ensure that the user community gets the
maximum benefit from the writer's efforts. It's a refreshing change of pace
from the philosophy you find among commercial Windows software manufacturers.
The StarDict we are talking
about here has been ported to Windows, but the program's Linux origins require
that you install a couple of prerequisite programs in order to use it. StarDict was written in GTK (Gimp Toolkit), a software
environment often used in Linux. In order to install StarDict,
you need to download the GTK+ runtime toolkit for Windows at the program's
site, http://stardict.sourceforge.net. It's a big file (84 MB), but without it,
StarDict won’t work – and it is free.
The other thing you need to install is a program that
can unzip the dictionary files you are going to be downloading for StarDict, which are in the BZ2 compression format (there
are dozens of compression schemes out there, most of them used outside of
Windows). Most Windows users are
familiar with zipped files created and unzipped with Winzip.
Winzip does not work properly in Windows XP, which
has its own decompressor that I discovered does not
recognize BZ2 files. In keeping with the freeware/open source theme of StarDict, I recommend downloading and install IZArc (http://www.izsoft.dir.bg/download.htm), a free
program that can handle nearly every compression scheme out there. You can
configure it to decompress just the BZ2 files, or use it in place of Winzip (which you are supposed to pay for).
When everything is in place, you can download StarDict itself from the aforementioned http://stardict.sourceforge.net
site. For Windows, download the file called Stardict-2.4.3.exe, and install it
as you would any other program.
Now it's time to download those dictionary files.
There are dozens of dictionaries available on the seven download links, many in
English, but also in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French, Afrikaans – even
Arabic (I didn't see any Hebrew, but the authors do take requests). When you
download a dictionary file, right click on it and decompress it with IZArc, which should appear in your right click contextual
menu. You should end up with one or two subdirectories with three files (with
their names ending in .dz, .idx.
and .ifo) in them. Copy all the files to the
following directory on your C: drive (or whatever drive
your Program Files directory lives: Program Files\StarDict\dic.
(don't open up StarDict
until you've copied them over). As you will discover, there are many
dictionaries to choose from. I installed the Webster's Unabridged 1913 Edition,
WordNet dictionary, U.S. Gazetteer, Hitchcock's Bible
Names Dictionary, The Devil's Dictionary CIA World Factbook
1995, and the Elements Database 2000, along with an English-Spanish and
English-French dictionary.
I know this process will seem messy and geeky to
many, but it's actually very easy. It's the same as downloading and installing
a "regular" program, just different. Now that all the unzipped files
are in the right place, it's time to open up StarDict,
and see what we were working for!
When you open the program, you will note the dialog
box on top, where you will type your word. Let's try one- type in the word
"life." Most of the 14 definitions come from Webster's, which gives
you a definition, synonyms, and sample sentences (all taken from works of great
literature – an education in itself!).
So far, so good – until you
highlight one of the words.
I aimed in on the word "potential" in the fourth definition on my
list of definitions on Life. ("Figuratively: The potential or animating
principle… of anything"). I highlighted the word – and a definition for
"potential" popped up! Since it looked interesting, I clicked on the
Query button (the first one on the left in the popup menu), and into the main
window came the word potential with its six definitions, one of which was
"The energy of an electrical charge measured by its power to do work."
Feeling energetic, I highlighted the word
energy, with the same result – a popup list of definitions for the word, this
time with about seven English language definitions, and the French and Spanish
translations of the word (energie and vertud, respectively). But what's this? Along with the
verbs and nouns, there was a listing for Energy,
On the left side of the program you see a
list of the next 30 some words in the installed dictionaries that come after the one you are
examining, and there were a few other words having to do with energy. One of
them, energy-absorbing, caught my eye, so I checked it out, and found that it
had a reference to bumpers on vehicles that absorb energy. Vehicles interest
me, so I highlighted that word – and discovered that there was a usage for the
word in pharmaceuticals and painting, which led to an examination of a
reference in that definition of Gum Arabic, which, as it turns out, comes from
trees grown mostly in the South Pacific, as opposed to Arab countries – which
led me to click on Polynesia, which is in the Pacific, which I checked out,
which – well, I'm sure you get the idea by now!
If all this cross-referencing is not enough, StarDict has a couple of other tricks up its sleeve – like
letting you do "fuzzy queries." Let's say you're thinking of a word,
but only remember one syllable. No problem; run a fuzzy query and StarDict will show you all the words it can find that seem
like likely candidates. For example, typing in "idra"
gives you a list that includes disray, hydra, array,
- and midrash, which I highlighted,
which led to a discussion of the Talmud, which led to – oops, there I go again!
To do a fuzzy query, put a backslash in front of your term in the input box on
top and click away. StarDict also does wildcard
searches with the * or ? characters
in place of letters.
Did I mention, by the way, that all the
while, StarDict was reciting words that I was
highlighting? At the site, there is a text to speech package you can download
with thousands of recorded WAV files that pronounce the word when you highlight
it! It's not an advance vocabulary, although I imagine you could record your
own WAV files and place them in the sound file directory, but even if you limit
yourself to the many wav files it does come with, you can use StarDict as a tool to teach your kids proper English pronunciation.
Now, is that a dictionary or is that a
dictionary? I haven't been able to stop playing with StarDict
since I installed it – it's just that much fun (yes, my life obviously is
dull). The only caveat I found was a problem when quitting – don't use the
regular close button on the top right (the "x") as with most
problems; there is a quit function on the bottom left of the program window.
Other than that, you'll thoroughly enjoy using StarDict
– you will get pleasure from it, and pleasure is a fundamental feeling that is
hard to define but that people desire to experience; and to experience is to
have firsthand knowledge of states, situations, emotions, or sensations; and
sensations are…
StarDict is free for all Windows and Linux systems;
download all programs and dictionaries from http://stardict.sourceforge.net/
Questions/Comments to ds@newzgeek.com