Re: what is the easiest way to install a thesaurus feature in emacs?

[Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com>]

> How can I install a thesaurus in emacs?

> http://www.myrkr.in-berlin.de/dictionary/index.html
> by Torsten Hilbrich
> which is a interface to dict.org, which includes a similar words dict.

Richard Riley wrote:
> This seems to be a subset of the excellent dictem package
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/dictem

i tried it before and somewhat hated it.

It requires you to install a third party dict software. But it does
not mention this fact explicitly until you try to install it. I
vaguely recall it was originally a modification of Torsten's package,
but i think it's worse in one important respect because now it
UNCESSARILY relies on another software.

dict protocol is a simple text based protocol. Elisp can handle it
completely, perhaps even better than other langs. It is extremely
silly to throw away the core of Torsten's engine. Further, if i have
to install another dict program for accessing online dicts ... i
really have a million choices, the last would be something from the
linux world.

i can also simply have few lines of elisp so that i can have emacs as
interface to access any web based dict thru w3 engine.

somehow i find dictem distasteful, perhaps dishonest and technically
stupid. I could be wrong ...

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄