Re: How to make Emacs popular again.

[Eduardo Ochs]

Hi Richard,

try:

  sudo apt-get install dict dictd
  sudo apt-get install dict-gcide dict-jargon dict-wn dict-foldoc
  dict smop

in the setting that I get in my machines after doing that the "dict"
client only accesses the locally installed dictionaries, and AFAICT
the licenses of all these programs and data files are public domain,
(L)GPL, BSD, or WordNet3.0.

  [[]], E.

On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 at 01:37, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> Hold your horses!  I am concerned that promoting 'dict' is going in
> the wrong direction.  I don't know all the facts, so I won't assert
> that it is a problem; but we need to check.
>
> The program 'dict' seems to be intended to access dictionaries on
> internet servers.  Probably on servers that don't belong to the user.
>
> Does it have the ability to use a locally stored dictionary?  That's
> what we should encourage -- not dependence on servers by default.
>
> 'dict -D' gave me a list of dictionaries that the program knows about.
> I presume these are found on various servers.  It does not say what their
> licenses are.  Which of those dictionaries is downloadable with
> a free license?
>
> There IS a free English dictionary that people can download.  It is
> Wiktionary, packaged by kiwix.  It uses a special format, .zim, that
> is compact and suitable for searching.  That project packages
> Wiktionary for various languages.
>
> Does the dict program have the ability to access a dictionary
> in that format?
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>