HTTP: , FTP:, and Dict:?

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

dict:// protocol and tools

  • Many commenters hadn’t heard of the DICT protocol before; others have used it for years and install dict/dictd on every machine.
  • The CLI client dict is widely available via package managers, but not typically preinstalled. Some argue it’s unreasonable to expect a newcomer to guess there’s a matching command-line tool.
  • Emacs and macOS have integrations (M-x dictionary, dict://word opening Dictionary.app). Behavior varies by browser and OS; sometimes it fails, sometimes it prompts to open an external app.

curl support and distro choices

  • curl dict://dict.org/d:Internet works on some systems but fails on Fedora’s default curl-minimal, which omits DICT support.
  • Switching to the full curl/libcurl packages restores DICT and many other protocols. Some see the minimal default as “crippling,” others frame it as a space/security tradeoff.

Design of old text-based protocols

  • Several people admire human/machine-friendly text protocols (status codes plus explanations, built-in help).
  • Others argue they’re messy in practice and prefer well-structured formats like JSON, or even binary protocols, for robustness and ease of parsing.
  • There’s debate over XML vs JSON: XML is defended as powerful and compressible but criticized for complexity and security footguns; JSON is praised for simplicity and readability but blamed for ecosystem inconsistencies (dates, number handling, top-level arrays, naming conventions).

Implementing and storing dictionary data

  • One detailed subthread explores how dictd stores data efficiently with dictzip (gzip-compatible, chunked for random access) and TSV indexes, comparing it to zip-based approaches and tools like strfile, ctags, and other index formats.
  • Conclusion: with modern hardware, compressed chunked storage (e.g., zip, ~256KB chunks) offers near-random-access performance with small size penalties.

Availability, licensing, and alternate sources

  • Public dict servers still exist (e.g., dict.org, FreeDict servers). Some users run personal dictd instances.
  • There is interest in classic dictionaries like Webster’s 1913 and OED, but full OED hosting is acknowledged as legally problematic; many existing OED data files are of unclear provenance.
  • Conversion from StarDict to DICT format is possible but yields mixed-quality results.

Protocol ossification and HTTP dominance

  • Commenters note how non-HTTP protocols (DICT, Gopher, WHOIS-like services) largely died as NAT, firewalls, and corporate/university filtering blocked most ports except 80/443.
  • Some lament being forced to tunnel everything over HTTP; others claim HTTP+JSON (or REST-ish APIs) is a pragmatic, even superior, common foundation.