hacking dict.org with ubuntu linux
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I got bored one day and decided to try out some of the functionalities offered by the dict.org server. Dict is dictionary server protocol designed to give access to definitions from a set of natural language dictionary databases.
Here's how I access dict.org server using only 'telnet' application available on my Ubuntu desktop.
- Launch a terminal app, telnet to dict.org port 2628
- List all available dictionaries by typing "show db"
- Get definitions of word using, "define [dictionary] word" (define wn boring)
- In this case i choose 'boring', since I'm pretty bored at this time to do this stuffs
- For more dict commands, please refer to RFC 2229
Screenshot dict on Linux
A friendly dict client (named "Dictionary Lookup') is included as a panel applet in Ubuntu. You can easily lookup word definitions from your desktop panel :
And with the information on the RFC 2229, i'm there's a lot more of dict clients out there, that might suit your needs.
Tags: ubuntu, debian, dict, dictionary, rfc
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November 17th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Apart from the regular dict clients that are commonly available on most GNU/Linx distros, you will be surprised to note that nifty tools like ‘curl’ also support dict:// protocol.
Cheers
–arky
November 17th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
thanks Arky, i didn’t realise it until now. usually i use curl for http/ftp protocol only :)