GoldenDict
GoldenDict is a computer open-source dictionary 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 and open-source.
- Supports multiple dictionary file formats,[1] namely:
- Babylon (.bgl) files with images and resources
- StarDict (.ifo / .dict / .idx / .syn) dictionaries
- Dictd (.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 layout engine for a more accurate articles' representation (including formatting, colors, images and links)
- Supports lookups in Wikipedia, Wiktionary, or any other MediaWiki-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 suggestions
- Can index arbitrary directories with audio files for pronunciation lookups
- Full Unicode 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 interface
- Cross-platform: Linux/X11, MacOS, Maemo and Windows + portable to others
- Allows playback of pronunciation sound clips in different languages using Forvo 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 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 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
References
External links