Translation(s): English - Italiano


FreeDict - free (multi/bi)lingual dictionaries

This wiki page documents the work flow and the usage of FreeDict dictionary databases in Debian. Users should directly skip to the "using FreeDict databases" section.

About FreeDict

The FreeDict project aims at providing free (multi|bi)lingual dictionary (databases) and this team aims at packaging the latest versions to include at both in Ubuntu and Debian Stable/Unstable.

The preferred editable form of the data is in TEI/XML a file format under active maintenance by the Text Encoding Initiative.

Repository

The source can be obtained by checking out:

git clone https://alioth.debian.org/git/pkg-freedict/freedict.git

If you have an alioth account, check out:

git clone ssh://<username>@alioth.debian.org/git/pkg-freedict/pkg-freedict.git

Using FreeDict dictionaries

A list of dictionaries can be obtained e.g. through

aptitude search dict-freedict

You can install all dictionaries using

apt-get install dict-freedict-all

(if anyone wants that ;-)).

In addition to the dictionary databases you need a program to view them. You have two options:

Build Process

Explanation Of Files Under debian/

debian/freedict.xml

The database of databases with information about the size, author, name and download destination can be found at http://www.freedict.org/en/db-as-xml.html. This data is used to construct a freedict.orig.tar.gz (the original source) which is then imported.

For performance issues, the freedict-database.xml (with all the dictionary information in it) is cached, one should run

debian/fetchdictdata.py -x

to get the latest version.

get orig.tar.gz distribution

In order to fetch the latest FreeDict source, one executes

debian/fetchdictdata.py -f

The usage is explained in the first lines of the mentioned file. After this, the orig.tar.gz-file can be imported with git-import-orig from the git-buildpackage utilities.

debian/iso-639-3_20130123.tab

From time to time, one should also update the debian/iso.*-file with the language codes, used to translate the short dictionary names like afr-deu into long names for package descriptions. They can be found at http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/download.asp.

debian/control

debian/control is auto-generated.<br /> Modifications for the source package should be done in debian/control.HEAD, everything else is then generated with

debian/fetchdictdata.py -dc

debian/copyright

debian/copyright is also semi-auto-generated. The command

debian/fetchdictdata.py -dc

generates the cpyright (and control) file. The generated file MUST be checkd afterwards.

The generation consists of the following steps:

The Actual Build Process

There is essentially only a loop going through all directories and executing <tt>make lang-lang.dict.dz</tt>.

One special exception is hung-eng and eng-hun, where the database is extracted from a special file before the above explained run.

Contact And Help Wanted!

Our mailing list can be joined by sending a mail to pkg-freedict-discuss-subscribe@lists.alioth.debian.org or by visiting the subscription page. The posting address is pkg-freedict-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org. The archive can be found at http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-freedict-discuss/.

We have also an IRC channel, just join us on irc.debian.org in the #debian-freedict channel!

We always need help, be it sporadic or permanent help, it is always welcome.

Currently, the team consists of:

* Sebastian Humenda as packager * Sébastien Villemond as package uploader/co-maintainer

Please see also our to do section.

To Do / Roadmap (?)

Have a look at the current bugs:

[http://packages.qa.debian.org/f/freedict.html]

Further things to be done: