Odia Bhashakosha

About Odia Bhashakosha Android App

The Praharaj Purnnachandra Odia Bhashakosha Dictionary app is a product of the Digital South Asia Library program (http://dsal.uchicago.edu) at the University of Chicago (http://www.uchicago.edu). The app offers a searchable version of G.C. Praharaj's "Purnnachandra Odia Bhashakosha," Cuttack: Utkal Sahitya Press, 1931-1940.

The Praharaj dictionary app can be used both online and offline. The online
version interacts with a database that runs remotely on a server at the University of Chicago.
The offline version uses a database that is created on the Android device upon first download.

By default, the app operates in the online mode.

The Praharaj dictionary allows users to conduct both headword and fulltext queries.

The default mode for this app is to search headwords. To search for a headword,
touch the search box at the top (magnifying glass icon) to expose the on-screen keyboard and begin searching. Headwords can be entered in Oriya, accented latin characters, and unaccented latin characters. For example, headword searches for ଦିବୋଳ୍କା, Diboḻkā, and Dibolka all yield a definition for "Shooting star."

After entering three characters in the search box, a scrollable list of search suggestions will pop up. Touch the word to search for and it will automatically fill in the search field. Or ignore suggestions and enter the search term completely. To execute the search, touch the return button on the keyboard.

For fulltext searching and advanced search options, select the "Search Options" sub-menu in the overflow menu (usually the three vertical dots icon at the top right corner of the screen).

By default, headword searches expand off the end of the search term. In other words, searching for "dib" will generate results for headwords that begin with "dib" and have any number of trailing characters, like "Diba" (Ḍibā ଡିବା), "Dibi" (Ḍibi ଡିବି) etc. To expand the front of a query, users can enter the "%" character at the beginning of search term. For example, "%dib" will find "ardiba" (Aṟḍ̠ibā ଅଡ଼ିବା), "Alra pardiba" (Ālrā paṟḍ̠ibā ଆଲରା ପଡ଼ିବା) , etc. The wildcard character at the front of a word also expands search suggestions.

For fulltext searching, check the "Search all text" box then enter a term in the search field. Fulltext searching supports multiword searching. For example, the search "elephant goad" returns 20 results where "elephant" and "goad" can be found in the same definition. Multiword searches can be executed with the boolean operators "NOT" and "OR" as well. The search "elephant OR goad" returns 716 fulltext results; "elephant NOT goad" returns 665 fulltext results.

To conduct substring matching, select an option from the "Search Options" sub-menu, enter a string in the search field, and touch return. The default for all searching is "Words beginning with." But for example, selecting "Words ending with," "Search all text," and then entering "scent" as the search string will find 149 examples of words that end in "scent."

Search results come first in a numbered list that displays the Oriya headword, the accented latin transliteration of the headword, and a chunk of the definition. To see a full definition, touch the headword.

In online mode, the full result page also has a page number link that the user can click to get the full page context of the definition. Link arrows at the top of the full page allow the user to click to previous and next pages in the dictionary.

To select either online or offline mode, simply check or uncheck the "Search offline" box in the overflow menu. When in online mode, the world icon at the top of the screen will appear dark; in offline mode, it will appear light.

Note that on start up, the app will test to see whether the device has an internet connection and the remote server is available. Again, the app operates in online mode by default. The user should select the appropriate mode before conducting a search.