Oxford Talking Dictionary (Version 1.0)
Win Old App | 552 Mb | MG.COM & UPL.COM
| “ | A CD-ROM dictionary is to be rated, I think, in accordance with two main criteria: content and software usefulness. Regarding contents, a dictionary might be given an excellent rate, but its poor software might spoil its usefulness and damage user's work effectiveness. This is the case, in my opinion, with the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary version 2 (year 2002) - it has all those 500 000 entries which the Oxford Talking Dictionary (OTD) (OTD is based mostly on the SOED's predecessor - the 1994 release of The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) does as well (and they are even improved), but its appearance and performance customizing opportunities are far poorer than those of OTD. In the SOED there is practically zero opportunity for the user to customize its appearance in order to adapt it to his/hers preferences and needs. One cannot change even the font size of entry's text which is definitely a great disadvantage in my (and in many others) shortsighted eyes. The OTD's screen appearance is the most useful one I have encountered mostly for its capability of OUTLINING - OTD's screen is split into three very clearly outlined fields so that the user could automatically, with only a quick glance, visually recognize the three very successfully distributed different areas of the full word reference, of the thesaurus and the quotations and of the alphabetically ordered "All Entries" pane. I find it very important that this pane occupies the right end of the OTD screen, because English speakers are accustomed to reading in left-to-right direction and when one is looking up a word his/her look falls not first on the "All entries" with all those words he/she is NOT looking for, but directly to the word reference, because the alphabetical list of words is on its right side - this is indeed the only such appearance decision I have ever seen which I strongly approve of (this is not the case with SOED unfortunately). None of this is to be belittled when a user (especially a non-native English speaker such as myself) spends long hours in in-depth-familiarizing him-/herself with a certain word's history and typical usages. So this 1998 release might seem outdated to some, but I think right on the contrary - it has certain features and offers certain opportunities extinct in more "up-to-date" Oxford English dictionaries which make it far better and efficient than most of them. P. S. Oh, and I am running it under Windows XP with no problems whatsoever. | ” |
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