Juicing up Mac’s Dictionary app

BuJSgFPDQk29pd2whaLX7e13o1_500.jpgOne of the most underrated app, built in every Mac OS X is Apple’s own Dictionary. It is by far the most integrated, small and powerful app money can’t buy, a cloud of wisdom, an extendible eco-system of its own.

Little known that one can simply press a key combo to search for definitions even without launching the app, tiger/leopard users can just spotlight any word and get the meanings in seconds, fire up dashboard and the dictionary widget will be at your service, type & bingo!

But there’s a problem; Basically only English-Japanese is available out of the box.

Worry not, as you can download additional dictionaries from apple.com to extend your dictionary app. Furthermore, there’s a freeware app called DictUnifier, that converts & installs dictionary data files.

There’s a group of nice guys who maintains these dictionaries, they form their own database standard where many of the dictionaries can be downloaded for free. We can then use DictUnifier convert & automatically install—as an addon—any startdict standard dictioarny files, as a result, you can have a smarter & comprehensive definition without even spending a dime, just a little time of yours.

Links: Apple.com (search for ‘dictionary’)

Dictionaries: stardict.org DictUnifier Dictionary for Bahasa Indonesia

More extensive tutorial: David Tse’s Blog

(from the archive ://World Wide Will)