StarDict, developed by Hu Zheng (胡正), is a free

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

released under the GPL-3.0-or-later license for accessing StarDict dictionary files (a ''dictionary shell''). It is the successor of StarDic, developed by Ma Su'an (馬蘇安), continuing its version numbers. According to StarDict's earlier homepage on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

, the project has been removed from SourceForge due to

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...

reports. It moved to

Google Code Google Developers (previously Google Code) , application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources. The site contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs—including discussion groups and blogs for developers usin ...

and then back to SourceForge, while development is now seemingly continued on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, cont ...

Supported platforms

StarDict runs under

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

, Maemo and Solaris. Dictionaries of the user's choice are installed separately. Dictionary files can be created by converting

dict DICT is a dictionary network protocol created by the DICT Development Group in 1997, described by RFC 2229. Its goal is to surpass the Webster protocol to allow clients to access a variety of dictionaries via a uniform interface. In section 3 ...

files.The program to do this conversion is installed to /usr/lib/stardict-tools/dictd2dic by the stardict-tools package. Several programs compatible with the StarDict dictionary format are available for different platforms. For the iPhone,

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a musi ...

and

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, ...

, applications available in the

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

include GuruDic, TouchDict, weDict, Dictionary Universal, Alpus and others, as well as the free iStarDict, which is available for the

Cydia Cydia is a graphical user interface of APT (Advanced Package Tool) for iOS. It enables a user to find and install software not authorized by Apple on jailbroken iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices. It also refers to digital distribution ...

Store.

Dictionaries available

One can find

here Here is an adverb that means "in, on, or at this place". It may also refer to: Software * Here Technologies, a mapping company * Here WeGo (formerly Here Maps), a mobile app and map website by Here Television * Here TV (formerly "here!"), a ...

the partial list of FreeDict dictionaries which can be converted to the StarDict format. These include, in particular, some older versions of Webster's dictionary and many dictionaries for various languages.

Features

While StarDict is in ''scan mode'', results are displayed in a

tooltip The tooltip, also known as infotip or hint, is a common graphical user interface (GUI) element in which, when hovering over a screen element or component, a text box displays information about that element, such as a description of a button's f ...

, allowing easy dictionary lookup. When combined with Freedict, StarDict will quickly provide rough translations of foreign language websites. On September 25, 2006, an online version of Stardict began operation. This online version includes access to all the major dictionaries of StarDict, as well as Wikipedia in Chinese. Previous versions of StarDict were very similar to the PowerWord dictionary program, which is developed by a Chinese company, KingSoft. Since version 2.4.2, however, StarDict has diverged from the design of PowerWord by increasing its search capabilities and adding lexicons in a variety of languages. This was assisted by the collaboration of many developers with the author. Evgeniy A. Dushistov produced the command line version of StarDict called

sdcv sdcv ( StarDict under Console Version) is the command line version of StarDict developed by Evgeniy A. Dushistov and Hu Zheng. It employs all the dictionary files that belong to StarDict. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public ...

References

External links

{{commons category
Stardict project Github pageSourceforge pageGoogle Code archived page

RPM resource stardict-dictionary

How to install StarDict on Linux maemo os2008
(in Russian) DICT clients Free dictionary software Free software programmed in C++ Dictionary software that uses GTK Machine translation Translation dictionaries Dictionary formats Language software for Linux Language software for Windows

Supported platforms

Dictionaries available

Features

See also

References

External links