The default dictionaries in OSX as pretty sweet (J-E, J-J, etc) but my only complain is that you can't search by kanji as starting a word, within a word, or at the end of a word (and by "word" I mean compound...). Has anyone thought about this problem? Is there a solution native to OSX? An option I'm missing? Thanks for any feedback.

K.

You can actually search kanji starting a word in the OSX Dictionary. There's also an option in my OSX EPWING dictionary to search for kanji which start or end a compound.

I recommend using EPWING dics if you want to have advanced search options. The choice of dictionaries is better as well.

Well I've looked into using some of the EPWing dictionaries but I've been mostly disappointed with the software -- it seems buggy most of the time and prone to crashes. OSX's dictionary has a nice functional interface and is satisfactory for all purposes other than being limited to search with kanji as the start of a compound.

If you recommend any specific OSX epwing software I'll give it another shot.

Hmm, that's weird. [url="http://www31.ocn.ne.jp/~h_ishida/MacOS/Mac.html']EBMac[/url], Qolibri, Kotonoko, and Manabi Dictionary all work fine for me on Snow Leopard, with the first two being my favorites. I mainly like EPWING dictionaries so much, because there are EPWING viewers for all the major OSs and smartphones, so I can take my dictionaries where ever I am, and I can search all my five kokugo dics, and Kenkyuusha's "Green goddess" dictionary all at once. ^-^