Edward William Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon - a digital version
Q and A
- Will it be free?
Yes. It will be doubly-free: the sources will be released
(free is in freedom) and it won't cost anything (free as in beer).
- What will it run on?
I'll be releasing installers for Windows and OSX together
with build instructions for other platforms.
- When will it be ready?
Probably some time in the first quarter 2015. Check here for progress reports.
- What do I need to build a version for my OS?
You'll need a copy of the Qt framework, LibXSLT
and Perl (to build the database). I have done test builds on Windows 7, OSX Mavericks and FreeBSD. The software is being developed under Debian Linux
using free, opensource licensed tools.
Some features
- You can search for a root, a head word, or do a full-text search for an English word or an Arabic word (with or without diacritics).
If you know regular expression syntax, you can even search that way.
- The text from the Lexicon can be copied and pasted into whatever you like.
- Entries can be printed.
- It can be customized - for example,if you don't like the Arabic font it ships with, you can
choose your own font.
- It comes with a virtual Arabic keyboard to let you enter Arabic text. If you know the Buckwalter
transliteration, you can also enter Arabic that way.
- It has a simple note taking facility that allows you to attach your own comments to Lexicon entries.
- Bookmarks, history, shortcuts, the usual stuff...