![]() If you un-check the option to "Look up words from other applications" the OED will stop monitoring the pasteboard. Fortunately, while writing this review I stumbled across a preference (under the "Options" faux-tab inside the app itself). If you kept a definition open in the window to refer to it, you might suddenly find that it has been replaced with another word and not know why. That means if you select the paragraph you are now reading and copy it, the OED would display the definition for the word "Bizarrely" and the words "the OED a" would also appear in the search box. Anything which is cut/copied in any application will result in the entire text of the pasteboard being pasted into the search field in OED. In fact, the text which is copied is stripped of all formatting, leaving you without even basic "rich text" such as bold or italics.īizarrely, the OED monitors the systemwide pasteboard. If you are expecting that copied definition to have any sort of citation information, you will again be disappointed. If you want to copy a definition, use the 'Copy' button at the bottom of the application window, which will have the effect of doing a "Select All" (which you cannot choose because there is no "Edit" menu) followed by a "Copy". I have trained myself (mostly) to only click on the window bar of the application when trying to move it forward. To work around this, be sure only click on the edge of the application or where no words appear in the main section of the window. If you click onto the main portion of the window (even when the OED application is not active), the app will interpret that click as a request to lookup the word which was clicked. If you are expecting to click into the main portion of the window, select some text, and copy it, then you are in for a surprise, because it will almost certainly not work as you expect. (Help can be accessed from within the application, which will open several exceedingly plain HTML files with absolutely no images or other frivolities which might guide you through the application.) There is no Edit menu with the usual Copy and Paste commands, which may prepare you for news that pasting into the application works strangely, but not nearly as strangely as copying out of the application. In fact, there are no menu items at all except Services (which don't work), Hide, and Quit. Not long after starting the app, I looked for preferences. Unfortunately, that is only the sad beginning to the "user interface" of the OED on the Mac. Have you ever seen an uglier icon? Have you ever seen an uglier icon for a $300 Mac application?īy subscribing, you are agreeing to Engadget's Terms and Privacy Policy. If there was a way to emphasize the quotation marks around the word "native" I would do so, because as I quickly learned, the OED puts the "ugly" in "butt ugly Windows port." The image you see above is the application icon. The CD-ROM lists itself as "version 4" but this is the first version to be "native" on the Mac. ![]() (I should probably note that Mac OS X comes with the "New Oxford American Dictionary" which is not the same thing as the OED, despite the similar sounding name.) But a CD-ROM? That doesn't take up any space at all, and it's at a fraction of the price! Since I am-and hope to remain-married, I did not even consider spending $1000 on the complete 20 volume set (for very long). The printed version of the two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary sells for $350, The Compact Oxford English Dictionary "in slipcase with reading glass" sells for $400, and the 20 volume complete dictionary set sells for $995. Due to Amazon's "pre-order price guarantee" the final price was just under $200. Upon learning that the Oxford English Dictionary was going to be released on CD-ROM for the Mac, I pre-ordered it from for $244 back in December (list price $295, currently $212).
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