Converting Mobi Dictionaries to other formats

[ChristopherTD]

Is there a way to convert Mobi Dictionaries to another format and have the links and lookup options preserved?

I tried converting to ePub in Calibre, but the links were broken and the "Lookup a word" option at the start of the dictionary didn't work either?

Is there a way to do this?

regards
Christo

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ChristopherTD

Is there a way to convert Mobi Dictionaries to another format and have the links and lookup options preserved?

I tried converting to ePub in Calibre, but the links were broken and the "Lookup a word" option at the start of the dictionary didn't work either?

Is there a way to do this?

regards
Christo

Unpack the mobi dictionary (mobiunpack.py). Look at the HTML-like file. Work out how to convert into the your desired source format. Convert it. Compile into your destination format.

I don't think there are any current tools form converting Mobipocket dictionaries into other formats.

[ChristopherTD]

OK - I will have a peek at the files and see if I can make sense of it. Dictionaries do seem to be handled differently from a conventional book (obviously). I just hoped the steps were already known!

[osnova]

Unless I am mistaken mobiunpack.py does not preserve all of the original tags and structure of the dictionary and loses lots of information.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by osnova

Unless I am mistaken mobiunpack.py does not preserve all of the original tags and structure of the dictionary and loses lots of information.

That's a surprise. It certainly extracts all the pseudo-html content. Perhaps there is info in the EXTH header fields that are important.

It should be fairly straightforward to tweak mobiunpack to also dump out all the EXTH fields in some simple text format - why not give it a go?

[naisren]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

That's a surprise. It certainly extracts all the pseudo-html content. Perhaps there is info in the EXTH header fields that are important.

It should be fairly straightforward to tweak mobiunpack to also dump out all the EXTH fields in some simple text format - why not give it a go?

As I know, mobi dictionary has mobi own tags, such as

<idx:entry>..</idx:entry>
<idx:orth>Label of entry in Index</idx:orth>
<idx:key name="xx">..</idx:key>

Obviously, we could not find the tags in unpacked html file.

So I could not generate it as what it was after unpack the dic.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ChristopherTD

Is there a way to convert Mobi Dictionaries to another format and have the links and lookup options preserved?

I tried converting to ePub in Calibre, but the links were broken and the "Lookup a word" option at the start of the dictionary didn't work either?

What is it in the ePub reader that you were expecting would do the lookup? This is a function of the reader software, not the dictionary itself.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by naisren

As I know, mobi dictionary has mobi own tags, such as

<idx:entry>..</idx:entry>
<idx:orth>Label of entry in Index</idx:orth>
<idx:key name="xx">..</idx:key>

Obviously, we could not find the tags in unpacked html file.

So I could not generate it as what it was after unpack the dic.

Oh, I'd forgotten that the dictionary had weird tags. If you look at the mobiunpack script, you'll find sections commented out that will output the contents of the mobipocket file completely raw, and with various stages of conversion. Probably the stage just after adding anchors and updating links would work best for you. Just remove the # tags appropriately to enable to extra output files.

[naisren]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Oh, I'd forgotten that the dictionary had weird tags. If you look at the mobiunpack script, you'll find sections commented out that will output the contents of the mobipocket file completely raw, and with various stages of conversion. Probably the stage just after adding anchors and updating links would work best for you. Just remove the # tags appropriately to enable to extra output files.

I removed the #tag and tried again, got the same result. Thanks for your attention.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by naisren

I removed the #tag and tried again, got the same result. Thanks for your attention.

Hmm.. I've just checked it myself, and I was wrong. It seems that all the tags get compiled into the usual sort of Mobipocket coding.

I suspect that it might be possible to process the HTML to convert it back into the tagged format, because it is very regularly coded. But it would be quite a lot of effort.

Sorry for misleading you.

[KevinH]

Hi,

I looked at a Mobi dictionary I had by running strings and found it had a number of additional sections not usually found in a normal mobi book. These section types names were:

INDX, IDXT, ORDT, SPL1, SPL2, SPL3, SPL4, SPL5, SPL6

If I run "strings" on a dictionary that is a .mobi file, I find a sequences of INDX followed by selected words that span the alphabet ending with a IDXT. This looks like the first index table and that redirects you by comparison to the next layer of INDX tables which are much longer and seem to be all of the words in the dictionary in one of the segments covered in the first INDX table.

These must be generated by the missing code you noticed.

You could possibly modify mobiunpack to find and identify and dump these extra sections and use this information to put back the original code. Unfortunately, I have no idea which bytes in the header point to the number of each of these section types and their starting offset. So it would take some exploring to reverse all of this out.

The missing code related pieces are in the dictionary .mobi, but without info on how to find them and use them they are not very useful.

[naisren]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Hmm.. I've just checked it myself, and I was wrong. It seems that all the tags get compiled into the usual sort of Mobipocket coding.

I suspect that it might be possible to process the HTML to convert it back into the tagged format, because it is very regularly coded. But it would be quite a lot of effort.

Sorry for misleading you.

You are so humble and responsible and I respec you very much.
I enjoyed your every word and is feeling warm, without you (and others) , we could not get close to the secret of mobi book.

[naisren]

Mobi book on PC or PPC(WM) have some features, which Kindle doesn't has. Although Mobipocket has a back page bug, I found no other ereader replaces it completely in coming future.

With Mobi commercial dictinary, I just want to learn how to make it or some tips.
From dic-unpacked html, I observe that it use database and javascript. Using database, it could fine the search function and make the full search look very attactive.

[susan_cassidy]

The Mobipocket info on dictionaries might be helpful: http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...e=indexing.htm.

For unpacking a .mobi to html, you might want to try the MobiPerl program mobi2html, in raw mode.