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ilius / pyglossary

A tool for converting dictionary files aka glossaries. Mainly to help use our offline glossaries in any Open Source dictionary we like on any modern operating system / device.
GNU General Public License v3.0
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dictionary dictionary-conversion dictionary-tools glossaries gtk linux pygi python stardict tkinter

readme

PyGlossary

A tool for converting dictionary files aka glossaries.

The primary purpose is to be able to use our offline glossaries in any Open Source dictionary we like on any OS/device.

There are countless formats, and my time is limited, so I implement formats that seem more useful for myself, or for Open Source community. Also diversity of languages is taken into account. Pull requests are welcome.

Screenshots

Linux - Gtk3-based interface

Windows - Tkinter-based interface

Linux - command-line interface

Android Termux - interactive command-line interface

Supported formats

Format Extension Read Write
Aard 2 (slob) 🔢 .slob ✔ ✔
ABBYY Lingvo DSL 📝 .dsl ✔
Almaany.com (SQLite3, Arabic) 🔢 .db ✔
AppleDict Binary 📁 .dictionary ✔ ❌
AppleDict Source 📁 ✔
Babylon BGL 🔢 .bgl ✔ ❌
CC-CEDICT (Chinese) 📝 ✔ ❌
cc-kedict (Korean) 📝 ✔ ❌
CSV 📝 .csv ✔ ✔
Dict.cc (SQLite3, German) 🔢 .db ✔
DICT.org / Dictd server 📁 (📝.index) ✔ ✔
DICT.org / dictfmt source 📝 (.dtxt) ✔
dictunformat output file 📝 (.dictunformat) ✔
DictionaryForMIDs 📁 (📁.mids) ✔ ✔
DigitalNK (SQLite3, N-Korean) 🔢 .db ✔
DIKT JSON 📝 (.json) ✔
EDLIN 📁 .edlin ✔ ✔
EPUB-2 E-Book 📦 .epub ❌ ✔
FreeDict 📝 .tei ✔ ❌
Gettext Source 📝 .po ✔ ✔
HTML Directory (by file size) 📁 ❌ ✔
JMDict (Japanese) 📝 ✔ ❌
JSON 📝 .json ✔
Kobo E-Reader Dictionary 📦 .kobo.zip ❌ ✔
Kobo E-Reader Dictfile 📝 .df ✔ ✔
Lingoes Source 📝 .ldf ✔ ✔
Mobipocket E-Book 🔢 .mobi ❌ ✔
Octopus MDict 🔢 .mdx ✔ ❌
QuickDic version 6 📁 .quickdic ✔ ✔
SQL 📝 .sql ❌ ✔
StarDict 📁 (📝.ifo) ✔ ✔
StarDict Textual File 📝 (.xml) ✔ ✔
Tabfile 📝 .txt, .tab ✔ ✔
Wiktextract 📝 .jsonl ✔
Wordset.org 📁 ✔
XDXF 📝 .xdxf ✔ ❌
Yomichan 📦 (.zip) ✔
Zim (Kiwix) 🔢 .zim ✔

Legend:

Note: SQLite-based formats are not detected by extension (.db); So you need to select the format (with UI or --read-format flag). Also don't confuse SQLite-based formats with SQLite mode.

Requirements

PyGlossary requires Python 3.10 or higher, and works in practically all modern operating systems. While primarily designed for GNU/Linux, it works on Windows, Mac OS X and other Unix-based operating systems as well.

As shown in the screenshots, there are multiple User Interface types (multiple ways to use the program).

UI (User Interface) selection

When you run PyGlossary without any command-line arguments or options/flags, PyGlossary tries to find PyGI and open the Gtk3-based interface. If it fails, it tries to find Tkinter and open the Tkinter-based interface. If that fails, it tries to find prompt_toolkit and run interactive command-line interface. And if none of these libraries are found, it exits with an error.

But you can explicitly determine the user interface type using --ui

Installation on Windows

Feature-specific requirements

Some formats have additional requirements. If you have trouble with any format, please check the link given for that format to see its documentations.

Using Termux on Android? See doc/termux.md

Configuration

See doc/config.rst.

Direct and indirect modes

Indirect mode means the input glossary is completely read and loaded into RAM, then converted into the output format. This was the only method available in old versions (before 3.0.0).

Direct mode means entries are one-at-a-time read, processed and written into output glossary.

Direct mode was added to limit the memory usage for large glossaries; But it may reduce the conversion time for most cases as well.

Converting glossaries into these formats requires sorting entries:

That's why direct mode will not work for these formats, and PyGlossary has to switch to indirect mode (or it previously had to, see SQLite mode).

For other formats, direct mode will be the default. You may override this by --indirect flag.

SQLite mode

As mentioned above, converting glossaries to some specific formats will need them to loaded into RAM.

This can be problematic if the glossary is too big to fit into RAM. That's when you should try adding --sqlite flag to your command. Then it uses SQLite3 as intermediate storage for storing, sorting and then fetching entries. This fixes the memory issue, and may even reduce running time of conversion (depending on your home directory storage).

The temporary SQLite file is stored in cache directory then deleted after conversion (unless you pass --no-cleanup flag).

SQLite mode is automatically enabled for writing these formats if auto_sqlite config parameter is true (which is the default). This also applies to when you pass --sort flag for any format. You may use --no-sqlite to override this and switch to indirect mode.

Currently you can not disable alternates in SQLite mode (--no-alts is ignored).

Sorting

There are two things than can activate sorting entries:

In the case of passing --sort, you can also pass:

Cache directory

Cache directory is used for storing temporary files which are either moved or deleted after conversion. You can pass --no-cleanup flag in order to keep them.

The path for cache directory:

User plugins

If you want to add your own plugin without adding it to source code directory, or you want to use a plugin that has been removed from repository, you can place it in this directory:

Using PyGlossary as a Python library

There are a few examples in doc/lib-examples directory.

Here is a basic script that converts any supported glossary format to Tabfile:

import sys
from pyglossary import Glossary

# Glossary.init() should be called only once, so make sure you put it
# in the right place
Glossary.init()

glos = Glossary()
glos.convert(
    inputFilename=sys.argv[1],
    outputFilename=f"{sys.argv[1]}.txt",
    # although it can detect format for *.txt, you can still pass outputFormat
    outputFormat="Tabfile",
    # you can pass readOptions or writeOptions as a dict
    # writeOptions={"encoding": "utf-8"},
)

And if you choose to use glossary_v2:

import sys
from pyglossary.glossary_v2 import ConvertArgs, Glossary

# Glossary.init() should be called only once, so make sure you put it
# in the right place
Glossary.init()

glos = Glossary()
glos.convert(ConvertArgs(
    inputFilename=sys.argv[1],
    outputFilename=f"{sys.argv[1]}.txt",
    # although it can detect format for *.txt, you can still pass outputFormat
    outputFormat="Tabfile",
    # you can pass readOptions or writeOptions as a dict
    # writeOptions={"encoding": "utf-8"},
))

You may look at docstring of Glossary.convert for full list of keyword arguments.

If you need to add entries inside your Python program (rather than converting one glossary into another), then you use write instead of convert, here is an example:

from pyglossary import Glossary

Glossary.init()

glos = Glossary()
mydict = {
    "a": "test1",
    "b": "test2",
    "c": "test3",
}
for word, defi in mydict.items():
    glos.addEntryObj(glos.newEntry(
        word,
        defi,
        defiFormat="m",  # "m" for plain text, "h" for HTML
    ))

glos.setInfo("title", "My Test StarDict")
glos.setInfo("author", "John Doe")
glos.write("test.ifo", format="Stardict")

Note: addEntryObj is renamed to addEntry in pyglossary.glossary_v2.

Note: Switching to glossary_v2 is optional and recommended.

And if you need to read a glossary from file into a Glossary object in RAM (without immediately converting it), you can use glos.read(filename, format=inputFormat). Be wary of RAM usage in this case.

If you want to include images, css, js or other files in a glossary that you are creating, you need to add them as Data Entries, for example:

with open(os.path.join(imageDir, "a.jpeg")) as fp:
    glos.addEntry(glos.newDataEntry("img/a.jpeg", fp.read()))

The first argument to newDataEntry must be the relative path (that generally html codes of your definitions points to).

Internal glossary structure

A glossary contains a number of entries.

Each entry contains:

In PyGlossary, headword and alternates together are accessible as a single Python list entry.l_word

entry.defi is the definition as a Python Unicode str. Also entry.b_defi is definition in UTF-8 byte array.

entry.defiFormat is definition format. If definition is plaintext (not rich text), the value is m. And if it's in HTML (contains any html tag), then defiFormat is h. The value x is also allowed for XFXF, but XDXF is not widely supported in dictionary applications.

There is another type of entry which is called Data Entry, and generally contains an image, audio, css, or any other file that was included in input glossary. For data entries:

Entry filters

Entry filters are internal objects that modify words/definition of entries, or remove entries (in some special cases).

Like several filters in a pipe which connects a reader object to a writer object (with both of their classes defined in plugins and instantiated in Glossary class).

You can enable/disable some of these filters using config parameters / command like flags, which are documented in doc/config.rst.

The full list of entry filters is also documented in doc/entry-filters.md.