Is it possible to use these dictionaries on other platforms (Linux, Windows)

[x-ji]

If dictionaries can be converted into OS X .dictionary format from existing dictionaries, then is there also a way to use/convert .dictionary folders such that they can be used on other platforms? For example in the famous GoldenDict app on Linux.

[christopheranderton]

Apple Dictionary files (.dictionary is a container format) is a proprietary format (with the actual dictionary file in a binary format). So you need to use reverse engineering.

There are two blog posts about this over here:
Part 1: https://josephg.com/blog/reverse-engineering-apple-dictionaries/
Part2: https://josephg.com/blog/apple-dictionaries-part-2/

But maybe there some other tools or ways around this.

[gingerbeardman]

I think it's probably best to start with the original source material and convert to a dictionary format readable by GoldenDict.