Software Review: Palm English Dictionary

Before I bought my T3 I was using HandEra 330, so I had to completely update all my software. I'm not a native English speaker, but I have to read and write in English a lot, so I decided to review English dictionaries for Palm OS, and find the best for myself.

I was looking for English dictionary for Palm that uses WordNet dictionary as I use it on the desktop and find it very attractive and useful. Another requirement was pronunciation transcriptions support. The latter brought me to AbsoluteWord's English dictionary as the original WordNet database doesn't contain transcriptions, and all software titles I tried simply copy WordNet with no extension, except the dictionary by AbsoluteWord.

I'm experienced Palm user, so I hadn't any problems downloading and installing the dictionary but the installation process is well-documented, and you can choose from either zip archived package or self-installing package. For quick-install I downloaded the latter one.

Two files were installed on my device: RoadLingua.prc (130 KB) and WrdNet.pdb (15 MB). I put RoadLingua to RAM, and database to expansion card (highly recommended if your device has less than 32 MB RAM)

The dictionary database appears to be compressed, it takes about 50% of original database, but content stills the same. And the dictionary browsing stills to be fast, and I didn't find any delays (of course T3 is quite fast PDA :) )

When I tried AW English dictionary on HandEra it was an old version, and the latest one extends it with crosslinks between synonyms, colored abbreviations, and larger database based on WordNet 2.0. So it looks very nice:

Another advantage I got - my Tungsten T3 dynamic input area and landscape modes are completely supported by this software. Other devices (Sony Clie, Treo, and even quite old devices with expansion cards are supported). Here are some screen shots:

T3 Normal, Graffiti area hidden	T3 Landscape, Graffiti area hidden
Clie NV70 (320x480) Landscape	Early 320x320 Clies
Palm m505 / m515

There are advanced features provided by RoadLingua, a dictionary browser software. One of the most useful is an integration with a popular Plucker offline browser and TiBR Pro, a e-book reader. The screen shots illustrating how it works is below (taken from absoluteword.com). Also RoadLingua can be called within any standard text application to display the translation or definition of the selected word.

RoadLingua + TiBR e-book reader

RoadLingua + Plucker offline browser

I must say that software is reliable and stable, I've been using RoadLingua with WordNet database for 2 years, and didn't meet any problems. This software is a great value for those $25 it costs.