Subject: Custom dictionaries on Kobo e-readers

I do most of my reading on a Kobo Clara e-reader. As I've written about
over gopher, I also produce ebooks for Standard Ebooks[1] and opperate
a magazine that releases books in ebook format. While working on proofing
a Richard Jefferies novel I decided it would be easier to look up words
that I don't know and thus, sometimes, look like misspellings in a
dictionary rather than flagging them with an annotaion and then comparing
to page scans (to make sure there was not a transcription or OCR error).

The problem I was running into was that despite the kobo coming with a
_ton_ of dictionaries... none of them would work. I side load all of my
books and used a hack to get around ever logging in to kobo. I do not
ever turn on WiFi. I am happy with how the device runs and am not
interested in firmware updates, phoning home, or other shenanigans.

The dictionaries would not work, because the device wanted them to
"sync". Which is not something I would do. So I downloaded the newest
version of the Kobo english dictionary. I side loaded it. I activated
it... to no avail. The "Spanish->English" dictionary I side loaded
worked fine. I could not figure it out. In the end, I downloaded an
alternate dictionary I found on a mobileread thread[2]. Following
their instructions, I got it to work!

It is a Websters dictionary from 1913. Most of the books that I would
be interested in using the dictionary with are all from the 1800's,
so the age is not a problem at all. I am actually really quite
impressed with it. I think it is better than Miriam-Webster, whose
quality has gone down over the years (in my opinion). I really like
that even in the very small definition window I get word etymology
for any words I look up, in addition to the definition. This helps me
connect new, often old or archaic, words to my modern speech by
comparing to the most recent root that I know (sometimes Spanish,
German, or Norse... but more often than not Middle English or Latin).

It was a frustrating, but ultimately fruitful adventure. I found out
while trying to figure it out that the newer Kobo firmware version
comes with a "Side-load Mode" so that when you get a device you can,
you know, use it...without having to make a Kobo account or use the
internet on said device. I don't know what their use case/intention
is with that mode, but I would have liked it to have been an option
when I got my Kobo. I'm all set by now, though, and do not require
it.


As a further aside:

  If you are at all into nature writing in essay form, or fiction
  that comes from the mind of a nature writer:

    Do check out the works of Richard Jefferies. They are really
	great. I did the production work for all of the Standard Ebooks
	versions of his work[3]. "After London", is likely the most
	famous. But I like "Amarylis at the Fair" the best. For his
	essays, you can look on Gutenberg.org or archive.org. I
	recently saw a great youtube video[4] with a snippet of some
	prose from an essay  entitled "Wild Flowers", found in the
	essay collection "The Open Air".


  1. https://standardebooks.org
  2. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=196925
  3. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/richard-jefferies
  4. https://youtu.be/h0ERRLSVs3I?si=E1ZBccH7MTl32NHY