apple.md

Required Python libraries for AppleDict

• Reading from AppleDict Binary (.dictionary)

  sudo pip3 install lxml

• Writing to AppleDict

  sudo pip3 install lxml beautifulsoup4 html5lib

Requirements for AppleDict on Mac OS X

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

• GNU make as part of Command Line Tools for Xcode.
• Dictionary Development Kit as part of Additional Tools for Xcode. Extract to /Applications/Utilities/Dictionary Development Kit

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/
python3 ~/Software/pyglossary/main.py --write-format=AppleDict Duden_Synonym.BGL Duden_Synonym-apple
cd Duden_Synonym-apple
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.

Run the following command:

cd ~/Documents/Duden-Oxford/
python3 ~/Software/pyglossary/main.py --write-format=AppleDict "Duden-Oxford DEED ver.20110408.mdx" "Duden-Oxford DEED ver.20110408-apple"
cd "Duden-Oxford DEED ver.20110408-apple"
make
make install

Launch Dictionary.app and test.

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/
python3 ~/Software/pyglossary/main.py --write-format=AppleDict oald8.mdx oald8-apple
cd oald8-apple

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.