Support for DictionaryForMIDs needed !!

Want to be part of an open source project ? The DictionaryForMIDs project gives you a lot of opportunities to get engaged ! There are plenty of different tasks in the project, much much more than just Java programming ! See below for the areas where the project needs support.

When you want do some work on DictionaryForMIDs, be invited to do some co-ordination with us (see contact.html).
 

Publicity

The DictionaryForMIDs application is freely available for all - but there are many people who don't know that DictionaryForMIDs exists !! Who can do some publicity/advertisement for DictionaryForMIDs so that people who are searching a dictionary application for their cell phone/PDA know DictionaryForMIDs ? For example in internet forums, or uploading a dictionary to an application hoster from which people can download the dictionary.
 

Maintaining dictionaries available with the latest version of DictionaryForMIDs

This is a very important job ! DictionaryForMIDs is continuously improved and updated. The existing dictionaries should be migrated to a recent version of DictionaryForMIDs. For example right now many dictionaries still use the 2.3 or 2.4 versions of DictionaryForMIDs even though DictionaryForMIDs is now available in much newer versions. Who volunteers to maintain the dictionaries with the latest version of DictionaryForMIDs ? That can be done easily by using the existing tools, a detailed description is found here. Just contact us for any questions on this topic !
 

Setting up additional dictionaries for DictionaryForMIDs

Who is also working on setting up additional good-quality dictionaries for DictionaryForMIDs ?

If you have a dictionary that you think people would like to use, see the section on setting up dictionaries, and just do it ... you can make DictionaryForMIDs with that dictionary available for download yourself. Please send us a notice if you made an additional dictionary available for download, then I can put a link there.

When you set up a dictionary for DictionaryForMIDs, you need to convert this dictionary to a standard 'Comma Separated File' (CSV-File). The DictionaryGeneration tool reads such standard CSV-Files. Coverting to a CSV-format can typically be easily done with a text processing utility such as Word or Star Office, or by writing a simple script. Just contact us if you plan to set up an additional dictionary and I can give you a few tips.
 

List of some dictionaries:

There is a plan to set up the popular Wikipedia dictionaries ("wiktionary": http://www.wiktionary.org) for DictionaryForMIDs. As a tool there is Wik2dict (http://www.industree.org/guaka/index.php/Wik2dict). Someone could do a great job and set these dictionaries up for DictionaryForMIDs with Wik2dict !! These Wikipedia dictionaries supposedly have a bright future, so extracting the translations from these to DictionaryForMIDs would be of enormous help ! The wikipedia dictionaries can be downloaded from http://download.wikimedia.org/#wiktionary . The format is explained at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Entry_layout_explained.
Also the format of the "Ultimate Wiktionary" (now also called "WiktionaryZ") can be interesting once it is available.

An important task is to get incorporated in the build process of FreeDict: The FreeDict dictionaries (http://www.freedict.org) are a great source of dictionaries. There you find a lot of languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Czech, Turkish, etc. Interesting are also the other dictionaries that are listed at http://freedict.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Other_DICT_databases, plus see the big DICT dictionary archive at ftp://dict.kurtwerks.com/pub/dict/pre/. The tool DictdToDictionaryForMIDs which is able to convert those DICT-format directories to a CSV-file that can be read by DictionaryGeneration. Via DictdToDictionaryForMIDs all of the DICT dictionaries can be used for DictionaryForMIDs (please check the dictionary's copyright statement).
The plan is to incorporate DictionaryForMIDs in the build process for FreeDict. This means that for each FreeDict dictionary, automatically the set up for DictionaryForMIDs will be done. By this all of the FreeDict dictionaries will be available for DictionaryForMIDs in their latest version. Who can do the job to incorporate DictionaryForMIDs in the build process of FreeDict ? Contact us for support on this task !

A Spanish-English dictionary with a big vocabulary is the "The American Heritage© Spanish Dictionary" that is used by Yahoo at http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dict_en_es/. Can someone check if it is possible to get a permission to use this dictionary with DictionaryForMIDs ?

There are several Japanese dictionaries available, as listed at http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/onlinejdic.html
For German-Japanese, who can check for Ulrich Apel's dictionary at http://www.wadoku.de/ ?

The Stardict project is an open source project too and the plan is that DictionaryForMIDs will bring the Stardict dictionaries to cell phones / PDAs (search our DictionaryForMIDs Forum for "Stardict"). They have plenty of dictionaries, and their format is derived from the DICT format. So with the DictdToDictionaryForMIDs tool, these dictionaries can be converted to DictionaryForMIDs. The DictionaryForMIDs format is much more powerful than the original DICT format (see the DfM content feature). Maybe Stardict uses some extensions to the DICT format, that makes the dictionaries nicer to look, such as with the DfM content feature. Could someone check this on http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Documentation.php and convert the Stardict dictionaries for DictionaryForMIDs ? There is also the tool stardict2txt which may be useful.

A source of dictionaries is also the web site of the Babylon translator. They have quite a few free dictionaries there which can also be set up for DictionaryForMIDs.

Who knows further useful dictionaries ? Beyond language dictionaries, also domain dictionaries (medical, technical, ...), acronym lists, and other lists/dictionaries can bet set up with DicionaryForMIDs !

Again: contact us if you need some support for setting up new dictionaries.
 

Translations for DictionaryForMIDs user interface

DictionaryForMIDs supports different languages for the user interface. That means that DictionaryForMIDs will display all menu texts, dialogue texts, etc. in people's native language. For example French users will have French language and Vietnamese users will have Vietnamese language. Well, we need support to get the translations of for additional languages ! See User Interface Translations for more information.
If you are working on the translations for the DictionaryForMIDs user interface, please also send an email to Gert and Vu Van Quynh (see contact.html).
 

Java ME/MIDP Java Development (Java Micro Edition)

Supporting Java development for DictionaryForMIDs: that would be appreciated also ! Here are some features that need to be implemented:

• DictionaryForMIDs requires some more nice elements for the user interface. At startup a small animation should show up, e.g. just a 3gp file that is played; or a vector graphic that is animated. Also a few details should be improved, for example the existing startup display (with the icon and the information on the dictionary) should be better adapted to the screen size of the device. Who can provide this ?
• Support for 'Loadable Dictionaries': DictionaryForMIDs will then also run on several entry level cell phones that allow only small JAR-file sizes. See here for more information. This task also involves to check about a 'certificate' for DictionaryForMIDs, because a certificate is needed to access dictionary files in the file system (the problem is that certificates from commercial 'Certificate Authorities' cost money).
• The different pieces of information of a dictionary (e.g. pronounciation, explanation) can be declared as contents. The user shall be able to switch on and off the display of certain contents, i.e. that content where languageXContentNNDisplaySelectable is true. This could be done by implementing a 'content display' dialogue and/or possibly by implementing an expand/shrink functionality in the translation result. Who can implement this ?
• A fundamental extension: 'multimedia support' ! There shall be the new specific 'predefined contents' (see contents) contentRefVoice, contentRefPicture and possibly more. These contentRefxxx contain the file name with the corresponding content, such as [01house][02voice/house.mp3]. When the translation result is displayed to the user, then the user shall be able to play/display a multimedia content. That's a rough thought how it should work - but nothing of this is implemented - who can work on this interesting task ?
• It turned out, that DictionaryForMIDs in general runs perfectly on all cell phone models (as long as the resources are sufficient), however on certain cell phone/PDA models there sometimes seem to be problems. It would be helpful if someone could try to track down where the problem comes from - check our forum (see 'Forum' on left side pane) if somebody did report any problem with a certain cell phone/PDA.
• Specifically for the SonyEricsson 'story': is there someone how can develop for the SonyEricsson models ? There seems to be a bug in the firmware of some SonyEricsson JPs; we implemented workarounds, but several SE models still have problems with DfM ! Maybe someone has a good contact to a SonyEricsson developer ?? Help on the SonyEricsson will be appreciated very much !

One word on Java development: if you send us some Java source code, please do an effort to provide a good implementation. Ensure proper modularisation and break down your code in well-thought classes and methods. Also take care to have meaningful identifiers for variables etc. And do a thorough testing !
Don't send us any 'quick and dirty' implementation please - DictionaryForMIDs shall serve as a good example for education purposes !
 

Java SE Development (Java Standard Edition)

• The current version of 'DictionaryForMIDs on PC' should be improved specifically for the horizontal scrollbars, see DictionaryForMIDs on PC, "Known Bugs". We need a real Java Swing expert to help on this problem !
• And here an easy task: the tools DictionaryGeneration and JarCreator are Java SE command line applications. Those two tools should be enriched by a graphical user interface, excactly the same as the BitmapFontGenerator.
  When the tools are started with command line arguments, then the command line arguments shall be used. When the tools are started without command line arguments, then the graphical user interface shall be displayed.
   

Java EE Development (Java Enterprise Edition)

Here is a nice study project: make DictionaryForMIDs SOA-compliant (Service Oriented Architecture) and publish the DictionaryForMIDs dictionaries via Web Services to the internet ! For the tasks, see here.
 

Web page improvements

These web pages should be further improved. For example

• The "Instructions & Usage" section should be updated by a nicely animated introduction (the current description is still for version 2.0). Who has a didactic talent for this ?
• Making the "Dictionaries for Download" section more attractive (needs to be co-ordinated with Peter, see contact).
• Any other ideas that you can implement ? Highly appreciated !
   

Icon design

We need an icon designer: for more information see here.
 

Testing

Who can work as a tester ? Before a new release of DictionaryForMIDs is done, there needs to be done a thorough test, to ensure that there are no bugs.
 

Collecting information on different cell phones and PDAs

Who can collect further information for the section "Supported cell phones & PDAs" and keep this section updated for new devices ?
 

Support for users of DictionaryForMIDs

Who would answer questions and requests from people who are using DictionaryForMIDs or would like to use DictionaryForMIDs ? The job would be responding to forum posts and emails. Many questions are around using DictionaryForMIDs on specific cell phone models. While in general DictionaryForMIDs works fine on most cell phone models (as long as the JAR-file size is supported), there are also people who have questions such as "why can't I install DictionaryForMIDs on my cell phone, is there anything that I can try ?".