Re: [PATCH] gnu: sdcv: Add new variable.

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Tomáš Čech <sleep_walker@gnu.org> skribis:

> On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 09:39:49AM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>>Tomáš Čech <sleep_walker@gnu.org> skribis:
>>
>>> * gnu/packages/dictionaries.scm (sdcv): New variable.
>>
>>You pushed it already but I have some comments anyway:
>
> Oh, I took that there are no objections already. Sorry about that.

That’s OK, I just happened to have comments.  ;-)

>>> +(define-public sdcv
>>> +  (package
>>> +    (name "sdcv")
>>> +    (version "0.5.0-beta4")
>>
>>The policy is to provide only stable versions, unless there’s a very
>>good reason to do otherwise.  Could we use the previous version until
>>0.5.0 is out?
>
> Previous version of this tool is 0.4.2, which is 8 years old, it won't work with recent compilers (it's their statement, not my experiment though), could suffer with allignment issues on more exotic architectures (ARM among them).

Sounds like a good reason.  “beta4” suggests 0.5.0 will soon be released
though, no?

> I can add comment with the reasoning.

Yes please.

>>> +    (synopsis "Command line variant of StarDict")
>>
>>Could you change it to be self-contained–i.e., without referring to
>>StarDict (which I don’t know, and perhaps is not very well known.)
>
> sdcv stands for - StarDict Command line Variant
> This is where I took the synopsis from.
>
> It's hard to believe that you have never heard of StarDict. I'm not
> aware of any offline sotfware dictionary software which does not
> support StarDict dictionary format and doesn't state it's relation to
> stardict - be it GoldenDict, QStardict or this sdcv.

What I have heard of doesn’t really matter–hopefully I’m not the only
user of this.  ;-)

Anyway, “StarDict-compatible command-line dictionary program” maybe?

Now that I try to learn about StarDict, I stumble upon this at
<http://stardict.sourceforge.net/>:

  The original StarDict project has recently been removed from
  SourceForge due to copyright infringement reports.

And at <http://sdcv.sourceforge.net/>, sdvc describes itself as the
“console version of [the] StarDict program”, which is not
confidence-inspiring.  Some files such as dictziplib.cpp do indeed seem
to come from StarDict.

Could you check if you can find more information?  It’s in Debian and
not on <http://libreplanet.org/wiki/NONFSDG>, which is encouraging.

> Is this satisfactory?:
> "Sdcv is command line dictionary utility with support of StarDict

“with support for the StarDict”

> dictionary format.  For word in one language it can find translation
> in all installed dictionaries at the same time and without specifying
> original language.

What about “It can translate words from any language to any other language
for which a dictionary is available.”?

> With proper dictionary it can also work as encyclopedic dictionary."

“can also work as an encyclopedia”

Thanks,
Ludo’.