Dictionary services (for linguistic research)

[MasterInQuestion]

    Various dictionary services and their query parameters.
    Covered: English, French, Chinese, Arabic-Persian

    First read # English, French ; for technical background.
    (primarily Google things and URI/URL)

== English, French ==

    Wiktionary:
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Search?ns0&search=
    ; not passing "ns0" may cause 1 unnecessary redirect.
    Also viable for most MediaWiki services. (Wikipedia etc.)

    E.g. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Search?ns0&fulltext=1&limit=100&search=-intitle:/%5C/全%5B覽览覧%5D/+
    See also: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:CirrusSearch#Filters

    Google Dictionary:
[ 218.190.230.240 @ CE 2021-05-29 07:04:18 UTC:
https://en.wiktionary.org/?diffonly=0&diff=prev&oldid=62622324
    Enjoy it or not, a present for all:
    https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&num=1&expnd=1&q=define:present
    https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&num=1&expnd=1&q=define:%22at+present%22

    Parameter explanation:
    |*| "hl": Home Locale
    |*| "gl": Geo-Location
    |*| "num": Number (of results to return)
    |*| "expnd": Expand (the Dictionary interface automatically)
    |*| "q": Query
    .
    In which:
    "%22" (URI encoded representation of `"` (Quotation Mark) (U+0022, 0x22, ") ) may be replaced with literal `"` if viable.
    [ E.g. https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/142344#discussion-7355016 ]
    "+" may be replaced with "%20" without affecting semantic meaning.

    Presenting Google Dictionary:
    I suspect not many know that Google may be used this way.

=== Further reading ===

    [
    |*| XML API reference appendices # International Values
    |*| https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/xml_results_appendices#international-values ]

    [
    |*| XML API reference
    |*| https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/xml_results
    |*| Note:
[[
    How to google guide.
    |*| Query Terms: #query-terms
    |*| WebSearch Query Parameter Definitions: #websearch-query-parameter-definitions
    |*| Special Query Terms: #special-query-terms
]] ] ]

    Google Translate:
    https://translate.google.com/?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&text=
    https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=
    ; the 2nd is for page translation. ("u" is URI encoded URL)
    "sl": Source Language
    "tl": To Language

    Merriam-Webster:
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/
    ; use "%20" to represent Space, canonically. ("+" may work, may not)
    .
    Alike: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/110250#discussion-6279732
    ("_" won't translate to Space for GitHub repository files)

    OneLook Dictionary Search:
    https://onelook.com/?w=
    ; "w" supports wildcard.
    E.g. https://onelook.com/?sswo=1&scwo=1&w=p*let
    "sswo": Search Single Words Only
    "scwo": Search Common Words Only
    [ Useful for listing words. ]

    Etymonline - Online Etymology Dictionary:
    https://www.etymonline.com/word/

    Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales:
    https://cnrtl.fr/definition/

== Chinese ==

    Baidu Translate:
    https://fanyi.baidu.com/mtpe-individual/multimodal?lang=en2zh&query=
    https://fanyi.baidu.com/mtpe-individual/multimodal?lang=zh2en&query=
    ; interesting one.
    "auto" as lang code before "2" for auto language detection.
    Sending no (or invalid) "lang" defaults "auto2zh"; cached settings override.
    Note this service may use some non-standard lang codes. (e.g. "per" instead of "fa" for Persian)
    Regardless, seemingly only of interest for Chinese <-> English.

    汉语国学字典:
    https://www.hanyuguoxue.com/zidian/search?words=
    ; use "cidian" for words (character sequence).

    汉典:
    https://zdic.net/search/?sclb=tm&q=
[[
    "sclb": [ 搜查类别? (sōu chá lèi bié) ]
    |*| 条目:
    |*.*| "tm": 条目 (全部类别)
    |*.*| "zi": 汉字 (单字)
    |*.*| "ci": 词语 (多字)
    |*.*| "cy": 成语 (特定短语)
    |*| 字典:
    |*.*| "ids": (independents) 汉字拆分
    |*.*| "py": 拼音
    |*.*| "bis": 笔顺编号
    |*.*| "wb": 五笔编码
    |*.*| "cj": 仓颉编码
    |*.*| "fc": 四角号码
    |*.*| "uno": Unicode Code Point

    Keyword search across titles:
    https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=cn&num=100&filter=0&q=site:zdic.net/hans+intitle:%22字的基本解释%22+
    ; e.g. "lament"
]]

    CTP Dictionary:
    https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&remap=gb&char=

    Chinese Etymology 字源:
    https://hanziyuan.net/#
    ; JS-only.
    Require "Referer" header or croaks 404 for queries.
    [ ^ https://github.com/MasterInQuestion/talk/discussions/11#discussioncomment-8591289 ]
    [ Issue filed: https://github.com/Dixin/Etymology/issues/182 ]

    汉字全息资源应用系统:
    https://qxk.bnu.edu.cn/
    ; poorly accessible and ridiculously resource consuming.
    [ ^ Primarily bandwidth: 10+ MiB wasted for simple lookup..? ]
    Obfuscript based JS-only site.
    No typical query parameters. And partly loginwalled.
    Brilliant example of counter-productive web.
    [ Probably just thoughtlessly designed unintentional? ]

== Arabic-Persian ==

    Abadis Dictionary:
    https://abadis.ir/fatofa/
    ; note it expects a trailing "/" after the term.
    (automatic redirect nevertheless; just 1 unnecessary one)
    "-" is equivalent to Space in this interface. (Arabic-Persian typically won't hyphen between words)
    "_" as Space may auto-redirect to "-" variant.

    Caveat the BiDi disorder:
    https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/11770#issuecomment-1320735785

    "almaany.com" ~~is~~ was gated behind broken Cloudflare Turnstile:
    https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/139311#issuecomment-2266721390
    ; so haven't examined.