Radheef for OSX dictionary.app (beta)

Before I say anything more... BETA means I want YOU...to give me feedback.. got it? alright let's proceed.

A few months ago I twought (thought + tweeted) that I, for one, would like to have the radheef available on the native mac dictionary app. This was met with some positive response (yes you @bandey); which motivated me for about 15 minutes until I started playing Uncharted 2… and everything went downhill from there.

I had already done something similar for linux (which I talked about here and here), so I figured it wouldn't be too difficult. So tonight - since I'm bored and have nothing better to do - after an hour or two of toiling around I've managed to get it up and running.

point to note here BEFORE people start asking me how to setup thaana keyboard or something stupid like that, you CAN use ASCII to search. (as in you can search for 'mwkunu' or 'މަކުނު' to the same effect. Also not that you don't have to type in the entire word (dictionary.app does prefix matching on the headword against the query)

screenshots ahoy! Scroll all the way down for the download link (only if you read the above of course) and setup instructions.



edit: new easy to use installer HERE

the dictionary database can be downloaded HERE..HERE HERE MIYOTHEE

extract the zip file and copy the "dv_MV radheef.dictionary" file to either ~/Library/Dictionaries (for single user) OR /Library/Dictionaries (for all users).

that's all folks.

Experimental Thaana Spell-checking with Hunspell

During our (MOSS) recent meeting with the presidents office about the Zekr translation project, we came to realize that "spell checking" thaana writing is something that people really want - especially in government offices. This gave me incentive to follow up on my previously failed experiments with this.

[NOTE: I am aware that this feature is available in "Xiosis Scribe", however their approach to this appears to be somewhat lacking and IMHO disappointing. Also, the closed source nature of their system pisses me of]

I decided to try and implement this by building a custom dictionary for hunspell. This approach has several advantages too great to be ignored. a) it eliminates the need to write the spell-check engine from the ground up. b) It provides immediate integration into software like openoffice and firefox (and potentially even MSWord) to name a few. Of course there is the risk that it might not be able to handle dhivehi's "rules" - but as I always say if the Arabs and the Hebrews can do it - and it has been done - then so can we.

So I used the scripts I wrote for The Radheef project to generate words, and wrote a simple affix file to munch it down with. Using a dictionary comprising of all the "headwords" in the Radheef, and this affix file I was able to obtain some promising results - enough to convince me that it just may be possible to achieve reasonable results using Hunspell.

and the saga continues...

The contents of the Affix file

The test file to run the spell check on

We give hunspell a chance to process it...

and this is the resulting output ("misspelled" words with their suggestions)

I hope I got the attention of some talented young out there and hope that you take an interest in this.

Dict Database for Dhivehi Radheef Update

I'm releasing a minor update to the previously released database.

by minor I mean a complete overhaul - I had to rewrite the entire conversion script because of the recent "hard drive crash". I've managed to fix the "number reversal" problem, and also changed the formatting a little. Also included in the dictionary now are additional information about the words like "kan ithuru","nan ithuru" and so on....

Otherwise everything is pretty much the same. Installation instructions can be found on the previous post HERE

updated files are here:
RAW zip: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5385653/radheef/dict-radheef.zip
deb : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5385653/radheef/dict-radheef1-03.deb

DICT database for Dhivehi Radheef

An year ago I asked myself "wouldn't it be cool if you could lookup words from the Radheef right from gnome-dictionary?"

and so dict-radheef was born.... (bear with me)

a screenshot should give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

now isn't that just dandy?

Anyway I've put it all together in a neat little deb file for you kids to install. It should tell you all the dependencies and stuff. Grab it..install it..voila.

Setup

at this time, you'll need to setup a DICT server on your local machine (or intranet..however you wanna roll) if you're installing from the deb, it should grab all the necessities for you, and all you have to do is point gnome-dictionary to the local DICT server.

do do this, go to edit->preferences and click "add". Enter whatever in the fields except hostname. HOSTNAME: 127.0.0.1 and that's it.

for you hardcore types.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=145949

Download

deb package : debian-all http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5385653/radheef/dict-radheef1-02.deb
no deb : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5385653/radheef/dict-radheef.zip