iPad + dictionaries from Apple Dictionary =?

At the terrible request of the company ABBYY, the content and title of the article changed.

All iPad owners probably know about interesting functionality - a contextual dictionary in iBooks programs (Apple's excellent “reader”) and Pages.


')
But there is virtually no benefit from it (I'm sure that for many iPad users), because The iPad has a limited set of dictionaries in its arsenal (English explanatory, English thesaurus and three Japanese). It is impossible to manage and expand this functionality - for third-party developers this is a restricted area.

In the article I will tell you how to fasten DSL dictionaries for iPad (with the support of word forms - morphology). That there were such delicious dumplings:







I will not post any ready-made dictionaries here, just talk about the process ...

Background ...

In Mac OS X 10.5, Apple has opened the dictionaries specification for the Apple Dictionary and has enabled developers to make their own dictionaries and users to add them to the program.

Two or three years ago, I made a DSLConverter program that translated dictionaries from DSL format to Apple Dictionary format. This program correctly retained the formatting of articles and added support for word forms (morphology) for several European languages ​​(including Russian and English) right inside the dictionary.

Some users immediately converted many DSL dictionaries (intended for ABBYY Lingvo) using this program. And now on every third (joking) Russian Mac you can find these dictionaries integrated into the Apple Dictionary.

What I am leading to ... the iPad actually uses the same dictionary format as the Apple Dictionary. Need only a little work "file".

In iPad programs work with dictionaries selectively. There is no dictionary manager in the system, as in Mac OS X. For iBooks, for example, the primary dictionary is the New Oxford American Dictionary. This is what we will use. Let's pretend New Oxford American Dictionary - we substitute any necessary dictionary from Apple Dictionary.

In steps:

1. We take any necessary dictionary (English-Russian, German-Russian, etc.) in the format of Apple Dictionary.
2. Rename it to "New Oxford American Dictionary.dictionary".
3. Open the information file Info.plist inside it.
4. Replace the content after the first opening <dict> tag before the <key> IDXDictionaryIndexes </ key> key with:
   
   

   < key > CFBundleDevelopmentRegion </ key >
< string > English </ string >
< key > CFBundleDisplayName </ key >
< string > New Oxford American Dictionary </ string >
< key > CFBundleIdentifier </ key >
< string > com.apple.dictionary.NOAD </ string >
< key > CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion </ key >
< string > 6.0 </ string >
< key > CFBundleName </ key >
< string > Dictionary </ string >
< key > CFBundleShortVersionString </ key >
< string > 2.1 </ string >
< key > DCSBuildToolVersion </ key >
< integer > 2 </ integer >
< key > DCSDictionaryCSS </ key >
< string > DefaultStyle.css </ string >
< key > DCSDictionaryCopyright </ key >
< string > New Oxford American Dictionary 2nd edition © 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc. </ string >
< key > DCSDictionaryFrontMatterReferenceID </ key >
< string > fbm_index </ string >
< key > DCSDictionaryManufacturerName </ key >
< string > Oxford </ string >

* This source code was highlighted with Source Code Highlighter .

   
   
   
5. Everything, our dictionary is ready.
6. Copy the ready dictionary to the folder on iPad / Library / Dictionaries and enjoy. As I wrote earlier, access to this folder can be obtained only after the jailbreak.

Happy reading in a foreign language!

Update:
Inside iBooks and Pages, there is a DefaultDictionaries.plist file. For example, ... / Pages.app/XX.lproj/DefaultDictionaries.plist. There, for each program, you can prescribe which dictionaries are used in the program, priorities and the default dictionary. That is, as another option, you can put the necessary dictionaries (without modifications) in / Library / Dictionaries and register them in DefaultDictionaries.plist.

PS Reprinting hint in any form on the site and the forum iPhones.ru is morally forbidden.