Stardict

[Gert]

The Stardict project (http://stardict.sourceforge.net) seems to be open source now too. They have plenty of dictionaries, as far as I know they use the DICT format.

So with the DictdToDictionaryForMIDs tool, these dictionaries can be converted to DictionaryForMIDs. The DictionaryForMIDs format is much more powerful than the original DICT format. (see the DfM content feature at http://dictionarymid.sourceforge.net/newdictContent.html).

Maybe Stardict uses some extensions to the DICT format, that makes the dictionaries nicer to look, such as with the DfM content feature.

Could someone check this on http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Documentation.php and convert the Stardict dictionaries for DictionaryForMIDs ?

Gert

[dreamingsky]

Yes, Stardict has a lot of nice dictionaries, especially Chinese dictionaries.  Unfortunately many of them are commercial and should not be posted on the internet.  The Stardict webpage says the dictionaries are GPL, but many of them are not.

For example, this is a really nice dictionary:
http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries_zh_CN.php
oxford-gb dictionary(en - zh_CN) 牛津现代英汉双解词典
http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries_zh_TW.php
oxford-big5 dictionary(en - zh_TW) 牛津現代英漢雙解詞典

This dictionary is actually:
"Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary" 4th edition (1995)
Simplified (GB): 牛津高阶英汉双解词典
Traditional (Big5): 牛津高階英漢雙解詞典

It is a commercial dictionary published by Oxford University Press.

StarDict also has these dictionaries:
http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries_dictd-www.dict.org.php
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
Collins Cobuild English Dictionary

They are great English to English Learner's dictionaries.  But they are all commercial dictionaries.

StarDict does have some nice GPL dictionaries, however.
http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries_zh_CN.php
Soothill-Hodous Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms(zh_CN - en)
http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries_zh_TW.php
Soothill-Hodous Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms(zh_TW - en)

This dictionary is freely available here:
http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/soothill/soothill-hodous.html
It is an old paper dictionary whose copyright ran out:
http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Chinese-Buddhist-Terms-Sanskrit-Pali/dp/0700714553/ref=ed_oe_p

So, it would be nice to convert some of the StarDict dictionaries to DictionaryforMIDs.  But, first we must check that the dictionary is not commercial.

[Gert]

I had a 'fruitful' email exchange with Hu Zheng, the StarDict project leader.

The idea is that the StarDict dictionaries would get set up on DictionaryForMIDs as well, thus making available the StarDict dictionaries on mobiles. In turn StarDict can use the .cvs (= inputdictionaryfiles) to extend its collection of dictionaries.

For StarDict there exist the stardict tools, which include the stardict2txt tool. stardict2txt seems to do a similar thing as Dictd2DictionaryForMIDs, it does generate a txt/cvs file from a StarDict dictionary.  The stardict tools can be downloaded from the sourceforge StartDict project.

So by using the stardict2txt, it will be possible to create the .csv files which then can automatically run through DictionaryGeneration. Informtion for the DictionaryForMIDs.properties file can be easily taken from the .ifo files from the StarDict dictionaries.

Even the "\n" sequence for including a newline in the translation text is the same in StarDict. So I would not expect too many problems in the conversion.

We just need to find someone who has the time do this conversion !! Who can help ??

Gert

P.S.: ... not for dictionaries where there is a copyright violation ...