gdcv

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#+TITLE: gdcv - GoldenDict console version and emacs module

• Description gdcv is a command-line interface for searching [[https://github.com/goldendict/goldendict][GoldenDict]] dictionaries(*.dsl.dz). The program is a very rudimentary workaround to allow searching until an official command-line interface is available.

As an example of a similar interface, [[https://github.com/goldendict/goldendict][GoldenDict]] has [[https://github.com/dohliam/gdcl][gdcl]] (Command-line interface for Goldendict), but for my dictionary collection(10 GB) it works really slow due to no pre-made index for faster searching.

[[http://code.google.com/p/stardict-3/][StarDict]] has [[http://sdcv.sourceforge.net/][sdcv]] (StarDict Console Version), but it can only handle dictionaries in the StarDict format. For users of GoldenDict who have large collections of dictionaries in DSL format, converting and maintaining two parallel sets of dictionaries is not a practical solution.

gdcv does not require an installation of GoldenDict and does not use GoldenDict's pre-made index files, it creates new one.

The main catch is that gdcv is written in C by a person who has never programmed anything before. It seems the program does not leak memory, but the software architecture is horrible.

Please [[https://github.com/goldendict/goldendict/issues/37][vote]] for official command-line interface for GoldenDict.

• Features

• Search a word in a dictionary
• Find words that contain a substring
• Syntax highlighting
• Extracting media files
• Emacs dynamic module, if necessary

• Installation ** Requirements

1. gcc or clang
2. zlib
3. unzip (in order to unpack resources in zip files) For Ubuntu: #+BEGIN_SRC sh sudo apt install zlib1g-dev unzip #+END_SRC ** Compilation #+BEGIN_SRC sh git clone https://github.com/konstare/gdcv cd gdcv make gdcv #+END_SRC

Put gdcv into a directory from the $PATH.

** Configuration *** Convert dictionaries from UTF-16 to UTF-8

Sometimes GoldenDict dictionaries (DSL) comes in UTF-16. It is above my pay-grade to deal with it, all dictionaries should be converted to UTF-8. It is not the problem for GoldenDict as it supports both UTF-16 and UTF-8. Moreover dictionaries in UTF-8 take 20% less space

To convert dictionaries dos2unix is needed.

In the GoldenDict directory: #+BEGIN_SRC sh find . -name '.dsl.dz' -exec gunzip -S .dz {} ; find . -name '.dsl' -exec dos2unix --add-bom -f {} ; find . -name '.dsl' -exec gdcv -z {} ; find . -name '.ann' -exec dos2unix --add-bom -f {} ; #+END_SRC

*** Create Index

#+BEGIN_SRC sh gdcv -i /path/to/directory/in/DSL/format /path/to/second/directory/in/DSL/format #+END_SRC

Two index files will be saved in the directory: =$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gdcv/= or =$HOME/.config/gdcv/= if =XDG_CONFIG_HOME= is not defined.

• Usage To look up a word "cat" #+BEGIN_SRC sh gdcv cat #+END_SRC

[[./video/cli.gif]]

To search words containing "cat" #+BEGIN_SRC sh gdcv *cat #+END_SRC

Put all additional media files to directory =/tmp= #+BEGIN_SRC sh gdcv cat --unzip=/tmp/ #+END_SRC

** Create dictionary

It is easy to create a dictionary in GoldenDict format. Essentially the format is specified [[http://lingvo.helpmax.net/en/troubleshooting/dsl-compiler/your-first-dsl-dictionary/][here]], except that @ tag is not supported. One can use typical dictionary in [[https://github.com/Tvangeste/SampleDSL][DSL format]]. The dsl file has to be compressed in [[https://linux.die.net/man/1/dictzip][dictzip format]] and moved to GoldenDict directory.

#+BEGIN_SRC sh gdcv -z dictionary.dsl #+END_SRC

Note, that the result dsl.dz file can be uncompressed back with gzip:

#+BEGIN_SRC sh gunzip -S .dz dictionary.dsl.dz #+END_SRC

• Emacs module For many years I have successfully used sdcv-mode and [[http://sdcv.sourceforge.net/][sdcv]] in my work flow. Turn out all modern dictionaries are formatted in GoldenDict format (DSL). I tried to convert DSL to StarDict format with [[https://github.com/ilius/pyglossary][pyglossary]] but the result was mediocre. There is [[https://github.com/stardiviner/goldendict.el][goldendict-el]] for Emacs but I wanted something similar to sdcv-mode.

** To install gdcv-mode **** compile and create index files.

#+BEGIN_SRC sh make gdcv emacs-module gdcv -i /path/to/directory/in/DSL/format #+END_SRC

**** copy gdcv-elisp.so and gdcv.el to load-path. For example: #+BEGIN_SRC sh cp gdcv-elisp.so ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/ cp gdcv.el ~/.emacs.d/site-lisp/ #+END_SRC ** Configuration Add to the init file #+BEGIN_SRC elisp (use-package gdcv :load-path "~/.emacs.d/site-lisp" :bind (("C-c d" . gdcv-search-word))) #+END_SRC

If the index file is not saved in default directory, add: #+BEGIN_SRC elisp (setq gdcv-index-path "path/to/index/file") #+END_SRC

To show the selected dictionary first, modify =gdcv-default-dictionary-list= #+BEGIN_SRC elisp (setq gdcv-default-dictionary-list '("OxfordDictionary (En-En)" "Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's Dictionary (En-En)")) #+END_SRC

All media files for the translated word are unpacked to =gdcv-media-temp-directory= and are played by =gdcv-play-media= function (by default it is just wrapper around xdg-open).

#+BEGIN_SRC elisp (setq gdcv-media-temp-directory "/tmp/gdcv/" gdcv-play-media (lambda (file) (let ((process-connection-type nil)) (start-process "" nil "xdg-open" file)))) #+END_SRC

** Usage =C-c d= to translate word (or text selection) under the cursor.

[[./video/emacs.gif]]

The gdcv-mode goes with simple ivy interface ivy-gdcv, which can be used to search a word. By default, the prefix search is used, for example for "cat", one can get: "cat","catamaran", "cater"... For the substring search one can type "*cat" and get: "cat","muscatel",...

[[./video/ivy.gif]]

• Useful links **** Examples of dictionaries in DSL

• [[http://dadako.narod.ru/paperpoe.htm][DaDaKo]] Dictionaries for all languages (the website interface is in Russian)
• [[https://github.com/konstare/Dictionaries][ Webster and WordNet]] English-English
• [[https://github.com/open-dsl-dict/wiktionary-dict][Bilingual dictionaries from Wiktionary]]

**** DSL format specification: http://lingvo.helpmax.net/en/troubleshooting/dsl-compiler/your-first-dsl-dictionary/ **** Typical dictionary in DSL format https://github.com/Tvangeste/SampleDSL **** Tools for creating DSL-format dictionaries https://github.com/dohliam/dsl-tools **** Command-line interface for Goldendict dictionaries written in ruby https://github.com/dohliam/gdcl **** Lingvo dictionaries decompiler

• https://github.com/nongeneric/lsd2dsl C++ implementation
• https://github.com/sv99/lsdreader python implementation **** A tool for converting dictionary files aka glossaries with various formats for different dictionary applications https://github.com/ilius/pyglossary