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Encyclopedia
GoldenDict is a computer open-source dictionary
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...

 program that gives translations of words and phrases for different languages. It allows to use several popular dictionary file formats simultaneously and without conversion.

The project aims to create a feature-rich dictionary search program.

Features

  • The program is freeware
    Freeware
    Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...

     and open-source.
  • Supports multiple dictionary file formats, namely:
    • Babylon
      Babylon (program)
      Babylon is a computer dictionary and translation program for Microsoft Windows, developed by Babylon Ltd., an Israeli public company .-History:...

       (.bgl) files with images and resources
    • StarDict
      StarDict
      StarDict, 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...

       (.ifo / .dict / .idx / .syn) dictionaries
    • Dictd
      DICT
      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...

       (.index / .dict / .dz) dictionary files
    • ABBYY Lingvo (.dsl) source files, together with abbreviation files. The files can be optionally compressed with dictzip. Dictionary resources can be packed together into a .zip file
    • ABBYY Lingvo (.lsa /.dat) audio archives. Those can be indexed separately, or be referred to from .dsl files
  • Uses WebKit
    WebKit
    WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...

     layout engine for a more accurate articles' representation (including formatting, colors, images and links)
  • Supports lookups in Wikipedia, Wiktionary, or any other MediaWiki
    MediaWiki
    MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...

    -based sites
  • Can use arbitrary websites as dictionaries via templated URL patterns
  • Can translate long text of many languages (e.g. through Babelfish, by adding this line in GoldenDict : http://fr.babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt?trtext=%GDWORD%&lp=fr_en for translating from French to English)
  • Hunspell-based morphology system, used for word stemming and spelling suggestion
    Spelling suggestion
    Spelling suggestion is a feature of hi computer software applications used to suggest plausible replacements for words that are likely to have been misspelled....

    s
  • Can index arbitrary directories with audio files for pronunciation lookups
  • Full 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...

     case, diacritics, punctuation and whitespace folding. This means the ability to type in words without any accents, correct case, punctuation or spaces (e.g. typing 'Grussen' would yield 'grüßen' in German dictionaries)
  • Scan popup functionality. A small popup window displays the translation of a word chosen from another application
  • Support for global hotkeys (to activate the program window or translate a word from the clipboard)
  • Tabbed browsing in a Qt 4
    Qt (toolkit)
    Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers...

     interface
  • Cross-platform: Linux/X11, MacOS and Windows + portable to others
  • Allows playback of pronunciation sound clips in different languages using Forvo
    Forvo
    Forvo.com is a website that allows access to, and playback of, pronunciation sound clips in many different languages in an attempt to facilitate the easier learning of languages. Forvo.com was first envisioned in 2007, and came to fruition in 2008. Forvo.com is owned by Forvo Media SL, who are...

     online service

Advantages and shortcomings

Compared to other similar software GoldenDict:
  • Supports several popular dictionary file formats whereas Babylon and ABBYY Lingvo support only one (native) format and Stardict
    StarDict
    StarDict, 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...

     supports only two formats.
  • The program's internal use of the WebKit layout engine allows displaying articles in a format similar to web pages in a web browser
    Web browser
    A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

     which ABBYY Lingvo, StarDict and Babylon are unable to do.
  • The current version (1.0.1) cannot perform full-text searches inside articles of a dictionary. However, finding text in the currently displayed article is possible.

See also

  • Machine translation
    Machine translation
    Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...

  • Comparison of machine translation applications
    Comparison of machine translation applications
    A machine translation application is a program which can translate text or speech from one natural language to another. Machine translation applications are essential to the modern language industry...

  • StarDict
    StarDict
    StarDict, 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...

  • Lingoes (a single click translation software)
    Lingoes (program)
    Lingoes is a single-click multi-lingual translation software program released as a freeware translation utility. Lingoes is often compared to Babylon dictionary due to similarities in the GUI, same functionalities and most importantly being free of charge.-Features and Expandability:Lingoes has the...

  • Esperanto dictionaries for GoldenDict (in Esperanto)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
Silverdale Interactive © 2024. All Rights Reserved.
 
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