DICT
Encyclopedia
DICT is a dictionary
network protocol created by the DICT Development Group. It is described by RFC 2229. Its goal is to surpass the Webster protocol and to allow clients to access more dictionaries during use. Dict servers and clients use TCP port 2628.
Combined, they make up the Free Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia.
Dictionaries in the standard DICT file format are made up of two files, a .index file and a .dict file (or .dict.dz if compressed). These files are not usually written manually but are compiled by a program called dictfmt. For example, the Unix
command:
dictfmt --utf8 --allchars -s "My Dictionary" -j mydict < mydict.txt
will compile a Unicode
-compatible DICT file called mydict, with heading My Dictionary, from mydict.txt which is in Jargon File
format i.e.:
:word1:definition 1
:word2:definition 2
etc
Once the dictionary file has been produced, installing it in the server is normally a matter of typing something like:
mv mydict.dict mydict.index /usr/share/dictd/
/usr/sbin/dictdconfig --write
/etc/init.d/dictd restart
. For example, to connect to the DICT server on localhost, on a Unix system one can normally type:
telnet localhost dict
and then enter the command "help" to see the available commands. The standard dictd package also provides a "dict" command for command-line use.
More sophisticated DICT clients include:
There are also programs that read the DICT file format directly. For example, S60Dict, is a dictionary program for Symbian Series 60 that uses DICT dictionaries. Additionally, some DICT clients, such as Fantasdic
, are also capable of reading the DICT format directly.
compression format (also the name of the utility) can be used to compress a .dict file.
Dictzip compresses file in chunks and stores the chunk index in the gzip file header, thus allowing random access to the data.
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
network protocol created by the DICT Development Group. It is described by RFC 2229. Its goal is to surpass the Webster protocol and to allow clients to access more dictionaries during use. Dict servers and clients use TCP port 2628.
Resources for free dictionaries from DICT protocol servers
- A repository of source files for the DICT Development group's dict protocol server (with a few sample dictionaries) is available at ftp://ftp.dict.org/dict/
Dictionaries of English
- Bouvier's Law DictionaryBouvier's Law DictionaryBouvier's Law Dictionary is a book with a long tradition in the United States legal community. The first edition was written by John Bouvier.John Bouvier was born in Codogno, France, but came to the United States at an early age. He became a U.S. citizen in 1812, was admitted to the bar in 1818,...
, Revised 6th Ed (1856) - CIA World Factbook
- Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)
- Elements database
- Free On-line Dictionary of ComputingFree On-line Dictionary of ComputingThe Free On-line Dictionary of Computing is an online, searchable, encyclopedic dictionary of computing subjects. It was founded in 1985 by Denis Howe and is hosted by Imperial College London...
- Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary
- Jargon FileJargon FileThe Jargon File is a glossary of computer programmer slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon...
- Moby Thesaurus
- Oxford Advanced Learners' dictionary
- The Devil's DictionaryThe Devil's DictionaryThe Devil's Dictionary is a satirical "reference" book written by Ambrose Bierce. The book offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language, lampooning cant and political doublespeak, as well as other aspects of human foolishness and frailty. It was originally published in 1906 as The...
(1911) - The U.S. Gazetteer (1990 Census)
- V.E.R.A. – Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms which are used in the field of computing
- Webster's Revised Unabridged DictionaryWebster's DictionaryWebster's Dictionary refers to the line of dictionaries first developed by Noah Webster in the early 19th century, and also to numerous unrelated dictionaries that added Webster's name just to share his prestige. The term is a genericized trademark in the U.S.A...
(1913) - WordNetWordNetWordNet is a lexical database for the English language. It groups English words into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides short, general definitions, and records the various semantic relations between these synonym sets...
Combined, they make up the Free Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia.
Bilingual dictionaries
- Big English–Russian Dictionary
- English–French dictionary
- FreedictFreedictFreedict is a collection of free bilingual dictionaries, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License .The primary format of the dictionaries is XML complying to the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines. Most dictionaries have databases in the DICT format. Other occasionally available...
currently provides a collection of roughly 70 translating dictionaries, as xml source files with the data, mostly accompanied by databases generated from the xml files in the format used by DICT servers and clients. These are available from the Freedict project section at SourceForge. - FREELANG DictionaryFREELANG DictionaryThe on-line and free dictionary FREELANG is a bilingual dictionary for Microsoft Windows. Founded in 1997 by Beaumont.FREELANG is free but is under copyright of the authors, and it is collaborative.- History :...
- Lingvo English–Russian and Russian–English dictionaries are not free, but when purchased, can easily be converted into DICT format
- Mueller's English–Russian dictionary
- Slovak-English legal dictionary available from
DICT servers
- dictd (the standard server made by the DICT Development Group)
- DictD++ – modern powerful server written in C++ with heavy usage of STL and boost
- GNU Dico
- JDictd – a JavaJava (programming language)Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
-based DICT server implementation (abandoned)
DICT file format
The standard dictd server made by the DICT Development Group uses a special DICT file format, although other dictd servers (such as GNU Dico) may optionally use other file formats.Dictionaries in the standard DICT file format are made up of two files, a .index file and a .dict file (or .dict.dz if compressed). These files are not usually written manually but are compiled by a program called dictfmt. For example, the Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
command:
dictfmt --utf8 --allchars -s "My Dictionary" -j mydict < mydict.txt
will compile a Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
-compatible DICT file called mydict, with heading My Dictionary, from mydict.txt which is in Jargon File
Jargon File
The Jargon File is a glossary of computer programmer slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon...
format i.e.:
:word1:definition 1
:word2:definition 2
etc
Once the dictionary file has been produced, installing it in the server is normally a matter of typing something like:
mv mydict.dict mydict.index /usr/share/dictd/
/usr/sbin/dictdconfig --write
/etc/init.d/dictd restart
DICT clients
A dictd server can be used from TelnetTELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
. For example, to connect to the DICT server on localhost, on a Unix system one can normally type:
telnet localhost dict
and then enter the command "help" to see the available commands. The standard dictd package also provides a "dict" command for command-line use.
More sophisticated DICT clients include:
- cURLCURLcURL is a computer software project providing a library and command-line tool for transferring data using various protocols. The cURL project produces two products, libcurl and cURL...
- dictc (DICT Client), client for Windows written in Delphi.
- dict.org's own client (part of the dictd package)
- dictem, for the EmacsEmacsEmacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
text editorText editorA text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code.... - DictionaryDictionary (software)Dictionary is an application developed by Apple for its Macintosh computers. It was introduced with Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger", and provides definitions and synonyms from the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition and Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, 2nd Edition...
, an application included with Mac OS X. Online dictionaries can be accessed by setting it as the helper for 'dict://' URI schemeURI schemeIn the field of computer networking, a URI scheme is the top level of the Uniform Resource Identifier naming structure. All URIs and absolute URI references are formed with a scheme name, followed by a colon character , and the remainder of the URI called the scheme-specific part...
s. - FantasdicFantasdicFantasdic is a DICT client. It is multiplatform although it is with the GNOME desktop that it will be the most visually consistent. It is written in the Ruby programming language....
- Gnome-dictionaryGnome-dictionaryGNOME Dictionary, also identified as gnome-dictionary, is a DICT client written in C by Emmanuele Bassi and others. It is part of the free software GNOME desktop suite, inside the gnome-utils meta-package...
, comes with GNOMEGNOMEGNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software... - GNU dico's own client (part of the dico package)
- Kdict, comes with KDEKDEKDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
- KTranslator, KDE dictionary
- MaemoDict, for the Nokia 770
- Mozdef.org's 'dict' a Firefox/MozillaMozillaMozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
extension - OKDict, an OpenOffice.orgOpenOffice.orgOpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
extension - OmniDictionaryOmniDictionaryOmniDictionary is a DICT client by The Omni Group. Unlike Apple Computer's Dictionary, it retrieves definitions from the internet via the DICT protocol instead of a file on the hard drive. Starting with the release of version 2.0.4 is now a universal binary....
, for Mac OS XMac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems... - sdcvSdcvsdcv developed by Evgeniy A. Dushistov and HuZheng, is the command line version of StarDict. It can employ all the dictionary files that belong to StarDict.The word sdcv stands for StarDict under Console Version....
- StarDictStarDictStarDict, developed by Hu Zheng , is a free GUI released under the GPL for accessing StarDict dictionary files . It is the successor of the program StarDic, developed by Ma Su'an...
- ZopeDictDB for Zope from Pentila
There are also programs that read the DICT file format directly. For example, S60Dict, is a dictionary program for Symbian Series 60 that uses DICT dictionaries. Additionally, some DICT clients, such as Fantasdic
Fantasdic
Fantasdic is a DICT client. It is multiplatform although it is with the GNOME desktop that it will be the most visually consistent. It is written in the Ruby programming language....
, are also capable of reading the DICT format directly.
DICT converters
- Linguae Software is able to convert from/to wb, dict (stardict and dictd) csv, xdxf, txt, ini and ling (native) file formats, Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.
- XDXF XML Dictionary Exchange FormatXDXFXDXF is a project to unite all existing open dictionaries and provide both users and developers with universal XML-based format, convertible from and to other popular formats like Mova, PtkDic, StarDict...
converts between various dictionary formats using pluggable codec architecture.
dictzip
In order to efficiently store dictionary data, dictzip, an extension to the gzipGzip
Gzip is any of several software applications used for file compression and decompression. The term usually refers to the GNU Project's implementation, "gzip" standing for GNU zip. It is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of Lempel-Ziv and Huffman coding...
compression format (also the name of the utility) can be used to compress a .dict file.
Dictzip compresses file in chunks and stores the chunk index in the gzip file header, thus allowing random access to the data.
External links
- RFC 2229 – Definition of the DICT server protocol
- dict.org DICT Development Group. A WWW interface to several freely available on-line dictionaries.
- A collection of free dictionaries in DICT format at the XDXF SourceForge page
- DICT protocol server list