New custom English dictionaries

[stewacide]

Originally Posted by ShellShock

Yes, the OED is great, but is not public domain, and is not even commercially available as an epub, and certainly not in Kobo dictionary format.

The OED's that ship with OSX are so nicely formatted, I wish I could figure out a way to decompile-them, but I can only find tools to go the other way (from stardict etc. to Apple's Dictionary 2.0 format)

[lollazzo]

Is it possible to use prc dictonary?

[Ladyrixx]

Has anyone tried just removing/renaming the English dictionary? Mine pops up at odd times and I can't make it go away. Getting rid of the file seems like a great way to make it go away.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Ladyrixx

Has anyone tried just removing/renaming the English dictionary? Mine pops up at odd times and I can't make it go away. Getting rid of the file seems like a great way to make it go away.

I do not think that this will help. Instead of showing a dictionary entry the pop up box will tell you that there is no English dictionary installed.

[Frankr]

Wow, this is a great improvement!

[casaraku]

You mean only real book owners and those with Wikipedia have access to the lastest OED etc.... i can buy all kinds of ebooks but not e-dictionaries... i guess the ones used on kobo are for young readers...i will not read above Stephen King and 50 Shades of Yellow.....

[auspex]

Originally Posted by Loceka

Still, I wonder how you managed to find out that the .html files in the archive were actually gzip files because gzip (on Linux) as well as 7zip (on Windows) are unable to open the ".html" files from the official Kobo dictionaries.

Sure (wb.html was extracted from the default kobo English dictionary):

# file /tmp/wb.html
/tmp/wb.html: gzip compressed data, from Unix, last modified: Thu May 26 10:47:26 2011, max compression

gzip/gunzip are very badly behaved - unix/linux programs are supposed to look at the contents, not care about the extension. gunzip -S html will actually work, though.

[auspex]

@Shellshock: Do the entries in any individual word file need to be in alphabetical order? It doesn't look like it, but I don't see any mention in your HowTo.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by Loceka

Still, I wonder how you managed to find out that the .html files in the archive were actually gzip files because gzip (on Linux) as well as 7zip (on Windows) are unable to open the ".html" files from the official Kobo dictionaries.
Have you found a way to open the official files ? Or are you aware of any way to do it ?

It is a little late, but I did not see the question earlier. Not all kobo dictionaries consist of gzipped html files. Some of them have a different (to me unknown) format.

[tshering]

Originally Posted by auspex

Do the entries in any individual word file need to be in alphabetical order? It doesn't look like it, but I don't see any mention in your HowTo.

Marisa seems not to need pre-ordered input files.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by tshering

It is a little late, but I did not see the question earlier. Not all kobo dictionaries consist of gzipped html files. Some of them have a different (to me unknown) format.

"file" on linux should still be able to tell you what it is.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by tshering

Marisa seems not to need pre-ordered input files.

Cool - then I ought to be able to merge dictionaries!

[tshering]

Originally Posted by auspex

"file" on linux should still be able to tell you what it is.

I think the other format is some kind of private encryption. Those file don't seem to have a common header (as far as I remember). Therefore, linux should not know what they are.
(But of course linux recognizes the gzipped files.)

[tshering]

Originally Posted by auspex

Cool - then I ought to be able to merge dictionaries!

Yes, it is pretty easy. On point to take care of is that entries with the same keyword should follow directly on each other. Otherwise, only one of the entries will get displayed.

[flyingtoad]

Originally Posted by Loceka

Thanks a lot for sharing this information with us ShellShock !

Still, I wonder how you managed to find out that the .html files in the archive were actually gzip files because gzip (on Linux) as well as 7zip (on Windows) are unable to open the ".html" files from the official Kobo dictionaries.
Have you found a way to open the official files ? Or are you aware of any way to do it ?

By the way, thanks to another contribution on this forum I wrote a script that allows converting a dictionary in mobi format to the kobo dictionary format :
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=477

Well if I would happen to have the Oxford English Dictionnary [without DRM], and in Mobi format, would it be possible to put it in the Kobo using your method please ?