Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2020-09-29 17:25]:
> > Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2020 08:45:46 +0300
> > From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, alexander.adolf@condition-alpha.com,
> >   rms@gnu.org, drew.adams@oracle.com
> > 
> > > Btw, we have a similar functionality built in: try "M-s M-w" after
> > > marking a word or a phrase.
> > 
> > I did not know, that is good to search words online, it does not
> > really define words, it searches for whatever is marked, that is
> > good. It is not a dictionary though.
> 
> First, what it does by default has an advantage of being able to look
> up phrases, not just words.
> 
> And second, you can customize eww-search-prefix in a way that will
> search dictionaries: for example Google does that when the query
> begins with "define:"

Similar like that, yet, looking up word online would be a fallback.
First would need to come local dictionaries, as majority of the world
is offline. A student in East Africa is regarding online use very
disabled. Majority of schools in this world are poor schools. Reality
is quite different globally. Offline dictionaries need no network. If
offline dictionaries are not available, then online would be used,
that is done automatically by dict/dico clients, and then if none of
clients exists, then the online lookup could ask for !define word in
Duckduck.com or similar.

> > There are hard coded settings for Google Chrome browser in {M-x 
> > customize-group RET browse-url RET}
> > in Emacs, so why not have hard coded settings for dictionary features.
> 
> That is a completely separate issue: you are talking about setting up
> the dictionary _servers_ to which the client will talk, something that
> IMO should be entirely up to the Emacs users.

Yes, analogous is the Google Chrome browser, it is up to user to
install it, but settings are available in Emacs. It would be up to
user to install dict server, but settings could be, if possible, put in
Emacs.