Dictionary Integrations

adventures in integrating GNU Emacs with dictionary apps on macOS and GNU/Linux

background

I’m tempted to blame Ross Baker for this; he had posted a link to his Emacs config on the Fediverse, and while scrolling through it I had noticed that he had added a dictionary package that, on macOS, would send dictionary queries to dict.org.

As Baker himself observes, this is a less-than-ideal setup. He would rather run dictd locally on his Mac. So would I since I prefer to turn off wifi when I’m writing.

However, while the Nix package manager provides dictd in the “dict” package, it doesn’t provide much in the way of dictionary packages. There’s a version of the WordNet dictionary that can be used with dictd, but doesn’t include other dictionaries like GNU’s version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English or the Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.

integration with macOS

However, macOS comes with a dictionary app called, naturally enough, Dictionary.app. Furthermore, it is possible to add custom dictionaries that have been formatted for this app by unzipping them into ~/Library/Dictionaries/. I was thus able to add a version of the 1913 Webster’s dictionary formatted for use in Dictionary.app in the websterParser repository on GitHub.

However, all of the above is prep work. I might have Webster’s 1913 in Dictionary.app, but I’d still have to open that app and focus it if I want to do lookups unless I adjust my Emacs config.

Fortunately, I don’t have to do the integration myself; there’s a package for this. This is how I’ve got it installed in my config:

(cond ((eq system-type 'darwin)
       (use-package osx-dictionary
         :bind (("C-c d l" . osx-dictionary-search-word-at-point)
                ("C-c d i" . osx-dictionary-search-input)))))

integration with GNU/Linux

Integration between Emacs and dictd on GNU/Linux should be far simpler.

(cond ((eq system-type 'gnu/linux)
       (use-package dictionary
         :bind (("C-c d l" . dictionary-lookup-definition))
         :config
         (dictionary-server "localhost"))))

I’ll have to test this the next time I’m on one of my Linux machines.

sdcv

There’s a CLI utility called sdcv that uses StarDict-formatted dictionaries. There’s an Emacs package, but I’m already using it in Emacs’ eshell so installing sdcv-mode isn’t an espeically high priority for me. Maybe next weekend.

further reading