/pyglossary

A tool for converting and modifying dictionary files aka glossaries with various formats for different dictionary applications

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PyGlossary

PyGlossary is a tool for converting, modifying and workig with dictionary files aka glossaries, with various formats used by different dictionary applications

Screenshots

Linux - Gtk-based intreface

Linux - Tkinter-based interface

Linux - command line interface

Supported formats

Format Extension Read Write
ABBYY Lingvo DSL .dsl X
AppleDict Source .xml X
Babylon .bgl X
Babylon Source .gls X
DictionaryForMIDs X
DICTD dictionary server .index X X
FreeDict .tei X
Gettext Source .po X X
SQLite .m2, .sdb X X
Octopus MDic .mdx X
Octopus MDic Source .txt X X
Omnidic X X
PMD X X
Sdictionary Binary .dct X
Sdictionary Source .sdct X
SQL .sql X
StarDict .ifo X X
Tabfile .txt, .dic X X
TreeDict X
XDXF .xdxf X
xFarDic .xdb X X

Requirements

PyGlossary uses Python 2.7, and works in practically all operating systems. While primarilly design for GNU/Linux, it works on Windows, Mac OS X and other Unix-based operating systems.

As shown in the screenshots, there are multiple User Interface types, ie. multiple ways to use the program.

  • Gtk-based interface, the best one, use PyGTK and Glade (Glade will be removed later). You can install it on (although PyGTK is pre-installed in most of desktop Linux distributions):

    • Debian: apt-get install python-gtk2 python-glade2
    • openSUSE: zypper install python-gtk
    • Fedora: yum install pygtk2 glade2
    • Archlinux: pacman -S pygtk

  • Tkinter-based interface, works in the lack of Gtk. Specially on Windows where Tkinter library is installed with the Python itself. You can also install it on:

  • Command-line interface, works in all operating systems without any specific requirements, just type:

    python2.7 pyglossary.pyw --help

    You may have to give --no-progress-bar option in Windows when converting glossaries (becouse the progress bar does not work properly in Windows command window)

When you run the program without any command line arguments or options, PyGlossary tries to find PyGTK, if it's installed, opens the Gtk-based interface, if it's not, tries to find Tkinter and open the Tkinter-based interface. And exits with an error if neither are installed.

But you can explicitly determine the user interface type using --ui, for example:

python2.7 pyglossary.pyw --ui=gtk

python2.7 pyglossary.pyw --ui=tk

Other requirements for Mac OS X

If you want to convert glossaries into AppleDict format on Mac OS X, here is what you need:

  • BeautifulSoup4(with html5lib as backend) required to sanitize html contents.

    sudo easy_install beautifulsoup4 html5lib

  • GNU make as part of Command Line Tools for Xcode.

  • Dictionary Development Kit as part of Auxillary Tools for Xcode. Extract to /Developer/Extras/Dictionary Development Kit

HOWTOs

Convert Babylon (bgl) to Mac OS X dictionary

Let's assume the Babylon dict is at ~/Documents/Duden_Synonym/Duden_Synonym.BGL:

cd ~/Documents/Duden_Synonym/
python ~/Software/pyglossary/pyglossary.pyw --read-options=resPath=OtherResources --write-format=AppleDict Duden_Synonym.BGL Duden_Synonym.xml
make
make install

Launch Dictionary.app and test.

Convert Octopus Mdict to Mac OS X dictionary

Let's assume the MDict dict is at ~/Documents/Duden-Oxford/Duden-Oxford DEED ver.20110408.mdx.

  • Use GetDict to extract Mdict dictionary (.mdx). Choose "UTF-8 TXT" output format and Duden-Oxford DEED ver.20110408.mtxt output file name.

  • Run the following command:

    cd ~/Documents/Duden-Oxford/
python ~/Software/pyglossary/pyglossary.pyw "Duden-Oxford DEED ver.20110408.mtxt" "Duden-Oxford DEED ver.20110408.xml"
make
make install

Launch Dictionary.app and test.

Convert Octopus Mdict to Mac OS X dictionary

Let's assume the MDict dict is at ~/Downloads/oald8/oald8.mdx, along with the image/audio resources file oald8.mdd.

Run the following commands: :

cd ~/Downloads/oald8/
python ~/Software/pyglossary/pyglossary.pyw --read-options=resPath=OtherResources --write-format=AppleDict oald8.mdx oald8.xml

This extracts dictionary into oald8.xml and data resources into folder OtherResources. Hyperlinks use relative path. :

sed -i "" 's:src="/:src=":g' oald8.xml

Convert audio file from SPX format to WAV format. You need package speex from MacPorts :

find OtherResources -name "*.spx" -execdir sh -c 'spx={};speexdec $spx  ${spx%.*}.wav' \;
sed -i "" 's|sound://\([/_a-zA-Z0-9]*\).spx|\1.wav|g' oald8.xml

But be warned that the decoded WAVE audio can consume ~5 times more disk space!

Compile and install. :

make
make install

Launch Dictionary.app and test.