FreeDict Tools

The FreeDict tools are used to import, export (build) and manage FreeDict dictionaries.

As a dictionary data provider, our goal is to use our TEI dialect to be able to import and export into a variety of output formats. This repository collects the tooling for this.

Getting Started

FreeDict databases are encoded in the TEI XML format (chapter 9), see http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/DI.html.

The conversion is based on XSL stylesheets (see directory xsl/). These can in principle transform to any format, but only the .dict format is supported at the moment.

More information is in the wiki at https://github.com/freedict/fd-dictionaries/wiki/.

Dependencies

FreeDict requires a few essential tools to generate phonemes and compile the XML sources. However, most of the tools are determined by the output format.

0. Basic tooling: perl, python, make, xsltproc, tar, gzip, espeak-ng
1. For dictd: dictzip, dictfmt
2. For stardict: pyglossary
3. For slob: slob, tei2slob

Debian/Ubuntu Dependencies

If you use Debian/Ubuntu, you should install the following packages:

0. Basic: sudo apt install make xsltproc libicu-dev pkg-config python3 python3-icu virtualenv python3-virtualenv espeak-ng git
1. For dictd: sudo apt install dictzip dictfmt
2. For stardict: install pyglossary, for instance, pipx install pyglossary
3. For slob:
   1. Get the sources: https://github.com/itkach/slobn https://github.com/itkach/tei2slob/
   2. Use the official installation instructions OR
   3. Use a virtualenv; we recommend that to bundle all our tooling
   4. fetch the mentioned sources and use pipx install ., which is easiest.

Windows

On Windows, it is easiest to install Msys2 or Cygwin. Both offer an easy method to install the required tools. Note that we are not officially using Windows, so your mileage will vary.

Setting Up The Build System

You should clone this repository to a path with no spaces and add an environment variable FREEDICT_TOOLS to point to this directory.

A lot of the internal scripts need additional Python libraries. To fully make use of them, you should set up a Python virtual environment for that. To help you getting started, make mk_venv is there to guide you through the process and make mk_venv-help will explain you why and how you should use make mk_venv.

Hint: It is possible to set up a environment without virtualenv. See the file requirements.txt for more details.

Once done, you can get help on the available actions in any directory containing a Makefile by typing make help.

Documentation

Most of the documentation can be found in the FreeDict HOWTO at

https://github.com/freedict/fd-dictionaries/wiki/FreeDict-HOWTO

In general, it is a good idea to have a look at our wiki at

https://github.com/freedict/fd-dictionaries/wiki

Furthermore, the whole build system is explained in chapter 8 of the HOWTO, mentioned above.

Additional Output Formats

For creating slob files, you need to install tei2slob:

virtualenv env-slob -p python3 --system-site-packages  # create self contained python env
source env-slob/bin/activate  # activate it
pip install git+https://github.com/itkach/slob.git  # install general slob tools
pip install git+https://github.com/itkach/tei2slob.git  # install tei2slob converter

Now tei2slob will be in your path. For new shells, you will have to execute source env-slob/bin/activate again, or put env-slob/bin/tei2slob into your PATH.

For creating StarDict files, you need to install PyGlossary:

pip install git+https://github.com/ilius/pyglossary.git

Sebastian Humenda, Mar 2018