Quote:
Originally Posted by NiLuJe
@Alanon: I am mildly intrigued  . Which source did you use for the SOED, because, AFAIK, none of the digital offerings available are in a sane format (i.e., I'm only aware of the awful Windows CD-ROM versions). |
Hmm, to be honest, I can't remember exactly. I converted about a dozen or so dictionaries more than two years ago. In the meantime I've forgotten almost everything about the process. In fact, I'm considering doing a fresh conversion of a better version of the OED, but it once again looks like a daunting task. Lots of things to re-learn.
I use a free bit of kit called GoldenDict for my dictionaries, which accepts nearly every format known to man. The versatility means that there's a terrific community of modders/rippers/compilers, and I've amassed quite a hoard of dictionaries. If I had to guess, I'd say the source was a .dsl (a semi-proprietary format of the ABBYY Lingvo dictionary software) of the 6th edition of the SOED. I've always presumed that this version came from a rip of the CD-ROM data. I'm still using that dsl in GoldenDict on my desktop and Android. Comparing the results of identical searches in Kobo and GoldenDict gives identical results, so it would make sense.
I do remember having to double convert some dictionaries, once with some ancient tool that converted what I had to a format that Penelope (was it even called that back then?) of that time could read, and once with Penelope itself to get it to work with Kobo. Perhaps that's what I did with the SOED? Regardless, it converted remarkably well. The file even retained style rules, layout and line breaks, which not all of my conversions did.
Drop me a line if you'd like to tinker with it.