At the risk of getting greedy (the Grand Ricci is terrific, as is the Taiwanese MoE dictionary that alex_hk90 kindly Plecofied), I thought I'd try to start up a running list of suggestions/wishes for future Pleco dictionary licensings. As a graduate student in Chinese history, two immediately leap to my mind:
- 漢語大詞典
I know this has been mentioned on other threads, but as much as I despise the company that makes it (ever since they decided to require re-purchase of the v3.0 DVD for use on Windows 7 in lieu of releasing a simple update to the XP version), it would be an awesome resource to have in the Pleco ecosystem. An automatic buy. (This is the dictionary professors harp on their students to consult, and while the online 漢典 has lots of the same entries, I often wind up double-checking my understanding of 漢典's definitions using Wenlin. Having the 漢語大詞典 in Pleco would be far, far less unwieldy.)
- Morohashi's 大漢和辞典
This is more of a swing for the fences. As far as I know, it's the largest and most detailed dictionary of Chinese around - 500,000ish entries in 13 print volumes. That said, it's also in Japanese (which might be moderately inconvenient for many, although most of its users would probably be scholars, and therefore probably know enough Japanese to manage), and my understanding is that it has a large quantity of rare and difficult-to-encode characters. Plus, I don't think it's been digitized at all yet. So from a business perspective, the costs might outweigh the benefits. But for what it's worth, I think it would (especially alongside the 漢語大詞典) make Pleco the ultimate, unquestionably-best Chinese language resource for advanced learners/scholars.
Two other, slightly less great but also perhaps more feasible possibilities:
- Mathews's Chinese-English Dictionary
It's old, yes, and has flaws, but it wouldn't hurt to have it available. Harvard University Press reprinted it for a while, though I think a smaller house (Taius Press) put out the most recent run in 2011.
- Giles's A Chinese-English Dictionary
Older than Mathews, but - in my understanding - somewhat better. It might actually be public domain by now.
Perhaps others could add their ideas, and let this serve as a little online focus group? (Though I'm sure what's yet to come in terms of dictionaries will be great regardless)
- 漢語大詞典
I know this has been mentioned on other threads, but as much as I despise the company that makes it (ever since they decided to require re-purchase of the v3.0 DVD for use on Windows 7 in lieu of releasing a simple update to the XP version), it would be an awesome resource to have in the Pleco ecosystem. An automatic buy. (This is the dictionary professors harp on their students to consult, and while the online 漢典 has lots of the same entries, I often wind up double-checking my understanding of 漢典's definitions using Wenlin. Having the 漢語大詞典 in Pleco would be far, far less unwieldy.)
- Morohashi's 大漢和辞典
This is more of a swing for the fences. As far as I know, it's the largest and most detailed dictionary of Chinese around - 500,000ish entries in 13 print volumes. That said, it's also in Japanese (which might be moderately inconvenient for many, although most of its users would probably be scholars, and therefore probably know enough Japanese to manage), and my understanding is that it has a large quantity of rare and difficult-to-encode characters. Plus, I don't think it's been digitized at all yet. So from a business perspective, the costs might outweigh the benefits. But for what it's worth, I think it would (especially alongside the 漢語大詞典) make Pleco the ultimate, unquestionably-best Chinese language resource for advanced learners/scholars.
Two other, slightly less great but also perhaps more feasible possibilities:
- Mathews's Chinese-English Dictionary
It's old, yes, and has flaws, but it wouldn't hurt to have it available. Harvard University Press reprinted it for a while, though I think a smaller house (Taius Press) put out the most recent run in 2011.
- Giles's A Chinese-English Dictionary
Older than Mathews, but - in my understanding - somewhat better. It might actually be public domain by now.
Perhaps others could add their ideas, and let this serve as a little online focus group? (Though I'm sure what's yet to come in terms of dictionaries will be great regardless)