Exclude proper noun result from notification

[Aethelflaed]

First of all, thanks for the app, it's great!

I've just noticed a quirk, where it sometimes display a pseudo-meaning for a proper noun match in the notification:

This quick patch makes a difference:

Now I understand that it's a potentially breaking change, as it would suddenly stop finding a meaning if the only meaning that exists is a proper noun.

Maybe I could conditionally enable this behavior with a switch?

We'd probably need a dedicated settings page at this point though, which I don't mind providing in another PR if you want

[tirkarthi]

Thanks for the feedback and creating a pull request. This has came up in one of the app store reviews too where human gave the meaning "surname". My initial thoughts would be to use a priority where "Proper noun" has the last priority. Meanings with "Proper noun" form around 10% of the items so filtering them out might filter out genuine cases.

sqlite> select count(*) from dictionary where lexical_category = "Proper noun";
count(*)  
----------
117817    
sqlite> select count(*) from dictionary where lexical_category != "Proper noun";
count(*)  
----------
1041376

Current query where surname is the top result :

select * from dictionary where word = "dell" collate nocase;
id          word        lexical_category  etymology_no  definition_no  definition
----------  ----------  ----------------  ------------  -------------  ----------
49083       Dell        Proper noun       0             0              surname   
49084       Dell        Proper noun       0             1              place: uni
921266      dell        Noun              0             0              A valley, 
921267      dell        Noun              1             0              (obsolete)

Change to use a case statement to have definitions with "Proper noun" as low priority

sqlite> select case when lexical_category like "Proper noun" then 2 else 1 end as priority, * from dictionary where word = "dell" collate nocase order by priority;
priority    id          word        lexical_category  etymology_no  definition_no  definition                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
----------  ----------  ----------  ----------------  ------------  -------------  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                                                                     
1           921266      dell        Noun              0             0              A valley, especially in the form of a natural hollow, small and deep.<ref name= "isbn0-19-861271-0">Brown, Lesley , The New shorter Oxford English dictionary on historical principles , Clarendon , Oxford Eng. , 1993 ,  , 0-19-861271-0 ,  ,  , </ref>
1           921267      dell        Noun              1             0              (obsolete) A young woman; a wench.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
2           49083       Dell        Proper noun       0             0              surname                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
2           49084       Dell        Proper noun       0             1              place: unincorporated community, s/Montana, c/USA

While playing around I also found a way where it can do like match on definitions so this enables pushing down meanings with "(obsolete)" which are mostly outdated and present for historical reasons.

sqlite> select case when definition like "%obsolete%" then 3 when lexical_category like "Proper noun" then 2 else 1 end as priority, * from dictionary where word = "dell" collate nocase order by priority;
priority    id          word        lexical_category  etymology_no  definition_no  definition                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
----------  ----------  ----------  ----------------  ------------  -------------  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                                                                                     
1           921266      dell        Noun              0             0              A valley, especially in the form of a natural hollow, small and deep.<ref name= "isbn0-19-861271-0">Brown, Lesley , The New shorter Oxford English dictionary on historical principles , Clarendon , Oxford Eng. , 1993 ,  , 0-19-861271-0 ,  ,  , </ref>
2           49083       Dell        Proper noun       0             0              surname                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
2           49084       Dell        Proper noun       0             1              place: unincorporated community, s/Montana, c/USA                                                                                                                                                                                                        
3           921267      dell        Noun              1             0              (obsolete) A young woman; a wench.

Related : #52

[tirkarthi]

Another point adding as a note to myself is that I added collate nocase so that even "Dell" can give meanings for "dell" and vice versa. It seems there are two entries in Wiktionary and "Dell" comes up first. I guess there are languages where capitalization/case matters and maybe this needs to be revisited in future.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dell#English
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dell#English

[Aethelflaed]

I updated the PR with your SQL query giving proper nouns a lower priority, it makes more sense indeed!

While playing around I also found a way where it can do like match on definitions so this enables pushing down meanings with "(obsolete)" which are mostly outdated and present for historical reasons.

That's an idea, but I'm guessing they most likely already appear after the other meanings on wiktionary. Also, in that case it might be better to match (obsolete) and make that a language-dependent string.

Another point adding as a note to myself is that I added collate nocase so that even "Dell" can give meanings for "dell" and vice versa. It seems there are two entries in Wiktionary and "Dell" comes up first.

It makes a lot of sense to me, I didn't even question it. Dell is a very good example indeed, it just came up in a book I was reading and I never would have guessed it could have a meaning :)

I guess there are languages where capitalization/case matters and maybe this needs to be revisited in future.

As far as I know, even when it matters there might be some speaker that do not do it. Also, considering many language also capitalize the first letter of a sentence, the case can probably be safely ignored if we want to provide the user with the definition they are looking for.

For example, a cooking recipe in English might have a sentence like "French the ...", and a user would be looking for french and not French

[tirkarthi]

LGTM. I tested the patch locally and it works fine improving results for the users. Thanks @Aethelflaed .

[tirkarthi]

@Aethelflaed Since you seem to have tested the patch locally, if you faced any setup or build issues regarding the codebase or general feedback I would be happy to take them. Thanks.

[Aethelflaed]

@tirkarthi sorry I can't really help you with that! It's my first time working on Android after something like 10 years, I didn't have a very good memory of the build system and it seems it only got worse since then (Android studio is constantly downloading stuff for gradle apparently, it's a real issue for me as I'm traveling and using my phone connection :/)

After I let Android Studio do whatever it is it needs doing (it doesn't seem like there's an easy way of knowing what it does, apart from a few characters at the bottom of the screen), then it just works, so I guess that's not too bad :)

Maybe refresh the readme though, this section is confusing and not needed (although it's nice to have a local copy of the database, but for that you can just copy the link used in the source)

[tirkarthi]

Thanks, makes sense. The section was before CDN when the only database supported was English added to assets. I will refresh the whole readme. The changes in this PR will go as part of the next release this month end or so.