dict.cc Dictionary Plugin

Here I offer you a plugin that enhances Mac OS X Leopard’s (10.5) or Mac OS X Snow Leopard's (10.6) Dictionary.App to provide the complete German-English vocabulary from the fabulous dict.cc dictionary for offline use. It works great in Dictionary.App and other core Mac OS X services like Spotlight or Dictionary-Widget.

(Spring zur deutschen Beschreibung)

Installation:

Download the appropriate installation package from the dict.cc servers (see below).

Note that the most recent version requires Mac OS X 10.6 while an older version of the dictionary runs fine in Mac OS X 10.5. You may try to download the newer version at check whether it works for you.

After the installation you need to activate your new dictionary in the preferences of Dictionary.App (Command+",").

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any feature requests or bug reports. I will update my script and the installation procedure from time to time.

Donation and support

Do you like it? Writing, testing and maintaining this packages take quite some time. Consider donating a hot cup of coffee or a book if you use them frequently. Thanks!

Download:

Note: The Deutsch Italiensch (German Italian) dictionary is unsupported. I just checked if my script is able to build packages from the dict.cc databases besides Englisch German and it does. I do not support this package and I will not offer packages for other languages. The sources are attached. Feel free to build you own packages… :)

Uninstall:

I do not yet provide a tool for uninstalling this plugin. However, you can remove it on your own:

The dictionary is located in /Library/Dictionaries/. Deleting the dictionary from this folder will uninstall it. If you installed the dictionary only for one users that it should be located in /Users/USER/Library/Dictionaries/.

Acknowledgments:

I want to thanks Paul Hemetsberger and all users of dict.cc for this fabulous online dictionary. I hope that this offline version will not lessen the participation in his project.

Additionally I would like to thank Wolfgang Reszel who wrote a similar tool to import the BeoLingus vocabulary into Dictionary.App. I heavily borrowed from him for the renewed version of my tool, namely the installation package and the XHTML/CSS rendering.

License:

My import tool is licensed under the GPL and you may download, modify and share it. You can download it below (Python-Script, Mac OS X Developer Tools required, no dictionary data included).

This does not apply for the actual dictionary data itself, which is licensed separately.

Frequently asked questions

Why are versions prior to Mac OS X 10.6 not upgraded any more?

I'am not able to test and appropriately support systems that I don't use myself.

Alternatives?

• Try your luck. One most systems the new version should run fine.
• Download the Mac OS X 10.5 version (see above). It still features over 500.000 translations.
• Grab the source code and the OS X developer tools and build the dictionary on your own.

Will you offer packages for other languages?

No. I can't support packages that I do not use frequently by myself. Feel free to grab the source and build the packages on your own.

History

• 2011-05-28: OS X 10.6 version with 1.029.390 entries. UTF-8 support. (details)
• 2008-05-27: Besides a recent snapshot of dict.cc’s database I incorporated a number of smaller and bigger changes. Updating is advised, although the space requirements went up to 300MB. (Details).

Bugs:

The links to the online version of the entry, to dict.cc, and to an update-check currently only work in Dictionary.App. They're still displayed in the Widget and this may lead to confusion...

Links:

• My first blog post about the dict.cc plugin
• http://dict.cc/ Website
• Wolfgang Reszels Dictionary Plugin für BeoLingus
• Documentation of the Apple Dictionary Development Kit

Keywords:

• deutsch englisch offline
• deutsch englisch osx
• apple dictionary plugin
• mac dictionary plugins