Info about my "The Firefly Five-Language Visual Dictionary" CD

The Firefly directory on the CD that I put together includes 800+ pages (45 of
the 765 .JPG files are double pages) from "The Firefly Five-Language Visual
Dictionary". The Index pages will follow. The ISBN # of the hardcover book is:

1-55297-778-1

I am offering this smaller collection in the hope that I will find some people
who want to reciprocate a little... I will never upload scans of the full book
to ShareBig or any other site. I am willing to share more material _only_ with
those who are willing to collaborate --people who scan similar material, people
who can put things together in Photoshop or similar program. Read on for further
info.

Before finding out about this dictionary, I had scanned over 400 pages from
"The Macmillan Visual Dictionary" the 4-language "Multilingual Edition".
The ISBN # of that hardcover book is:

0-02-578115-4

The two dictionaries are based on the same database of computer-generated
pictures. The editors of the two dictionaries are the same. The Macmillan Dict.
has been around longer, and there are several bilingual versions of it.
However, the Firefly Dict. has many additional pages. Even though a few of the older
pages are missing in the Firefly edition, I can assure those who are interested that
the Macmillan version has certainly been surpassed. (Inexcusably, its list price is
higher.) It appears that the images either originally came from, or ended up at this
Canadian site, which licenses them:

http://www.qadigital.com/

In Jan. 2007, I found out about the CD-ROM version based on the same database.
You can find more info at:

http://www.qa-international.com/Multimedia/TheVisualDictionary/Description/Index.htm

or, let TinyURL take you there by typing:

http://tinyurl.com/2pxazp

The New Visual Dictionary on CD is the only multimedia dictionary that defines words
through images - it's truly revolutionary! It features more than 800 subjects in 28
thematic groupings, with 6,000 high-quality illustrations and 35,000 clear and
correct terms, with pronunciations. Contains up to 4 languages. Features up to 3
languages at a time. Through animated sequences, discover how complex mechanisms work
or take a guided tour of the world through a magnifying glass, thanks to the zoom
feature. Thousands of links take you to the heart of every section of the dictionary,
so you can explore all the nooks and crannies.

Rediscover words with The New Visual Dictionary!

The New Visual Dictionary

List of topics:
Astronomy Transport
Geography Office furniture
Vegetable kingdom Music
Animal kingdom Creative leisure activities
Human beings Sports
Farming Indoor games
Architecture Measuring devices
House Optical instruments
House furnishings Health and safety
Gardening Energy
Do-it-yourself Heavy machinery
Clothing Weapons
Personal adornment Symbols
Communications

Specification
6,000 high-quality illustrations
35,000 terms
Pronunciations in 3 languages at a time
Contains up to 4 languages

Macintosh:
* System OS 8,6 at 9 / OS X V10.1.5
* Minimum:
* PPC 266 MHz processor
* Recommended:
* G4 533 MHz processor or better
* Mac OS 9, 32 MB available RAM on hard disk
* Mac OS X, 128 MB available RAM on hard disk
* 60 MB available on hard disk
* Thousand of colors 800 x 600 monitor
* Minimum 4X-speed CD-ROM drive
* QuickTime 6.X or better


Windows:
* Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP
* Pentium II 400 MHz

Recommended:
* Pentium III 1.0 GHz
* 128 MB RAM
* 60 MB available on hard disk
* Video card : 800 x 600, Thousand of colors (16 bits) monitor, compatible Direct X
* Sound card : 16 bits, compatible Direct X
* Minimum 4X-speed CD-ROM drive
* QuickTime 6.X or better


Languages Available:
Arabic*
Catalan*
Croatian
Czech
Danish*
Dutch*
English (American)
English (British)
French
German
Greek
Hungarian*
Indonesian
Italian
Korean
Norwegian*
Polish*
Portuguese*
Slovak
Slovenian*
Spanish
Swedish*
Thai*
Turkish

==============

I skipped the following pages (which were table of contents pages
or pages that showed the subdivisions of the given sections):

vi - vii: Contents
viii - 1: Contents, List of Chapters
2 - 3: Astronomy
26 - 27: Earth
72 - 73: Vegetable Kingdom
90 - 91: Animal Kingdom
144 - 145: Human Being
178 - 179: Food and Kitchen
242 - 243: House
296 - 297: Do-It-Yourself and Gardening
334 - 335: Clothing
372 - 373: Personal Adornment and Articles
392 - 393: Arts and Architecture
466 - 467: Communications and Office Automation
536 - 537: Transportation and Machinery
644 - 645: Energy
678 - 679: Science
706 - 707: Society
786 - 787: Sports and Games

Being a man of peace, I also skipped a few pages related to modern weaponry.
The Firefly Visual Dictionary is certainly a laudable effort. However, it
shows little effort to cover 'anthropological awareness'. You do not see
pages devoted to, say, Innuit families in their habitats, surrounded by their
characteristic artifacts, or of hunter-gatherer tribes in their tents, etc.
On the other hand, almost all popular 'sports' and diversions of westerners
is given half a page, or even double pages! I chose not to waste my time on
many such 'sports and games' pages.

Of course, I intend to scan and OCR the indexes, and offer them as .DOC and
.PDF files. (In fact, I may end up combining the English index of the Firefly
Visual Dictionary with the index of "What's What", and some other word lists.)

English Index: 921 - 952

1092 is the last page.

The back cover of the book (which I have scanned) claims that there are 6000
color pictures in this dict. The Macmillan Visual Dictionary boasted only
3,500.

Note that an earlier visual dict., "What's What", is also a worthy product to
add to your library (ISBN #: 0-8437-3330-6). Although it is English-only, it
demonstrates more creativity, variety, and sense of humor in the selection of
pictures and photos that are offered. Also, many 'nodes' have more words (or
phrases) than one. (Understandably, the Firefly Dict. could ill afford to do
the same in 5 languages.) I scanned over 200 pages from "What's What" as well,
and usually include the pages on CDs where I copy the Firefly Visual
Dictionary.

I also had been collecting many visual dict. pages from a variety of sources.
Most notably, I have over 950 anatomical images from Frank H. Netter's "Atlas
of Human Anatomy", dozens of images from Encyclopedia Britannica, and more
than 40 images from Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary Dictionary.

At the following URL, you can view illustrations from AHD4:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/indexillus.html

So-so copies of 950+ pages from a world-famous anatomical atlas is:
Netter - Atlas of Human Anatomy [950+ images, mostly .GIF], 68.5 MB
Available at:

http://nano.sharebig.com/share.php?id=s4ahedinchzSSauP
http://s3.quicksharing.com/v/3444909/Netter_Atlas_of_Human_Anatomy.zip.html

18 months after I scanned "The Firefly Five-Language Visual Dictionary", I was
pleasantly surprised that a 160 MB .PDF file was offered through
http://www.avaxhome.ru/ebooks [a messy but rich resource] --a so-so scan
of The Oxford-Duden Pictorial English Dictionary (ISBN: 0198641559).

The Oxford-Duden Pictorial Japanese & English Dictionary (Paperback, 1997)
[ISBN: 0198601190] is another useful visual dictionary. Most of the
drawings, however, are rather amateurish, and smell badly of the 1960s
and 1970s. The idea of numbering the links, and offering the words on another
page (or elsewhere) is indeed good, and should be emulated. I hope someone
makes a better scan of that book.

For me, this is a labor of love. I intend to continue collecting visual dict.
images. You may be able to obtain updated copies from a user named:

dost62

on Skype (www.skype.com)

-- New Jersey, USA, assuming that he is still alive and online.

A Windows program that is free to everyone is Picasa (available through
Google). It can make many of these pages 'brighter'. If you click on the "I'm
Feeling Lucky" button of the program, very often, the colors of the pictures
may get closer to the original. However, the file size will increase as well.
Partly for that reason, I will not spend the time to improve these pages.

Also, another Windows program, Corel KnockOut (currently Ver. 2), can be used
to get rid of the 'background' (including the text, and redo the lines with
different languages.

You can get in touch with me through:

http://laruunash.blogspot.com/