OS X Dictionaries
Various dictionaries compatible with the Dictionary.app in Mac OS X, found on various websites, using the wayback machine, and crying.
Organization
Each dictionary is organized based on its "base language" - the language it is meant to be read in. Thus, a full Chinese dictionary will be in the Chinese folder, along with Chinese-English, Chinese-Spanish, and Chinese-French dictionaries.
Dictionaries should be labeled using the ISO standard. Most should be labeled using their respective ISO 639-1
two-character codes where possible. If the language does does not have an 639-1
code, use its ISO 639-2
code instead.
Please report any dictionaries breaking the standards.
Installation
Installing dictionaries is relatively painless.
< 10.8.1 Install
Note: I do not recommend this installation method. Consider using the pre-10.8.0 method below instead.
Open Dictionary.app. Click File
, then Open Dictionaries Folder
. Simply drag-'n-drop your xxx.dictionary
file into the folder, restart Dictionary.app, activate the dictionary in Dictionary's Preferences, and you should be good to go.
Note that this will only install the dictionary for the current user. If you wish to install for all users, follow the pre-10.8.0 instructions below.
< 10.8.0 / Full System / Problem Install
Open a Finder window. Navigate to /Library/Dictionaries/
(if your Library folder is hidden, simply press ⌘⇧G
on your keyboard, and navigate using the Go-To window. Then put your xxx.dictionary
file inside, restart the Dictionary.app, and activate the dictionary in Dictionary's Preferences. The file should then show up in the tab bar.
Editing Labels
You can edit labels by simply right-clicking on the tab, and clicking "Edit Label".
Reporting Errors and Broken Dictionaries
Please use GitHub Issues to report any problems. Give descriptive labels, and be nice!
Contributing Dictionaries
There are two ways to contribute. Just got one dictionary to add? Email it to me.
Otherwise:
- Fork this repo
- Add any dictionaries, keeping to the organizational conventions
- Commit your changes.
git commit -am 'Added some feature'
- Push to the branch
git push origin my-new-feature
- Create a new Pull Request (you should be prompted to do so.)
Creating Dictionaries
Apple has a nice outline of how to create dictionaries on their website.
License & Notes
All dictionaries in this repo are under the Apache Licence, Version 2.0.
Big Thanks to calasqm for listing many of the dictionaries, and The Internet Archive's wayback machine for allowing me to access many files that had disappeared from the web.