Converting Mueller English-Russian Dictionary into DICT format

This document is created by Andrew Comech. The latest version lives at http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~comech/tools/dict-mueller.html
Comments and corrections are appreciated.


This page is essentially obsolete: there is a precompiled package mueller7-dict available for Debian distribution (seventh edition of the Mueller dictionary in DICT format), as well as versions for other distributions, so that you no longer have to install Mueller dictionary from the scratch.

Quick start

You can download 24th edition of English-Russian Mueller dictionary converted into DICT format from here:

Do not forget to unzip the index file, mueller24.index, or else dictdconfig refuses to work with it. Installation (under Debian GNU/Linux) goes like this:

cp mueller24.dict.dz /usr/share/dictd/mueller24.dict.dz
cp mueller24.index /usr/share/dictd/mueller24.index
dictdconfig -w && (killall dictd; dictd)


Details

Dictionary Server Protocol (DICT) is a TCP transaction based query/response protocol that allows a client to access dictionary definitions from a set of natural language dictionary databases. (A very simple and convenient command-line interface to the dictionary databases installed on your computer or somewere down the net.) The source and binaries for the server (dictd) and client (dict) are available from the dictd archive located at ftp://ftp.cs.unc.edu/pub/users/faith/dict/
dictd and dict could also exist in the form of packages for a particular platform.

The Mueller English-Russian dictionary, Mueller7GPL.koi (7th edition, which carries GPL copyleft), or Mueller24.koi (24th edition, which is newer and contains fewer mistakes), are available from http://www.chat.ru/~mueller_dic/. You will need the archive Mueller7GPL.tgz or Mueller24.tgz

The shell script to-dict available from http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~comech/tools/to-dict is intended for converting dictionaries Mueller7GPL.koi and Mueller24.koi into the DICT format, which consists of a pair of files (database and the index):

To read the instructions on conversion and installation:
./to-dict --help
You may copy and paste the chunks of these instructions into the command line.

######################################################################
USAGE: 
 -version: show version
 -h, --help, or no parameters: show this help

(*) To make DICT database from Mueller7GPL.koi available from
http://www.chat.ru/~mueller_dic/Mueller7GPL.tgz

# Remove transcription:
./to-dict --no-trans Mueller7GPL.koi mueller7.notr
# Convert  into  (a file with %h, %d-headers):
./to-dict --src-data mueller7.notr mueller7.data && rm -i mueller7.notr
# Convert  into DICT-format (files .dict.dz and .index):
./to-dict --data-dict mueller7.data mueller7 && rm -i mueller7.data
# Expand index file (to be able to access lines like "A, a" by "A" and "a"):
./to-dict --expand-index mueller7.index mueller7.index.exp
# Install a new dictionary with expanded index (RUN AS ROOT).
# The location of files may depend on your distribution!!!
cp mueller7.dict.dz /usr/share/dictd/mueller7.dict.dz
cp mueller7.index.exp /usr/share/dictd/mueller7.index
dictdconfig -w && (killall dictd; dictd)

(*) To make DICT database from Mueller24.koi available from 
http://www.chat.ru/~mueller_dic/Mueller24.tgz (this one is preferred)

# Convert  into  (a file with %h, %d):
./to-dict --src-data Mueller24.koi mueller24.data
# Convert  into DICT-format (files .dict.dz and .index):
./to-dict --data-dict mueller24.data mueller24 && rm -i mueller24.data
# Install a new dictionary with expanded index (RUN AS ROOT).
# The location of files may depend on your distribution!!!
cp mueller24.dict.dz /usr/share/dictd/mueller24.dict.dz
cp mueller24.index /usr/share/dictd/mueller24.index
dictdconfig -w && (killall dictd; dictd)

(*) To re-convert  into  (a file with %h, %d-headers):

./to-dict --dict-data  

 *************************************************************
    !!WARNING!!    !!WARNING!!    !!WARNING!!    !!WARNING!!   

 Temporary files created by this script occupy a lot of drive space!
 15 MB for Mueller7GPL.koi (have to strip off transcription first)
 12 MB for Mueller24.koi
 *************************************************************


Andrew Comech
Mathematics Department
SUNY at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY 11794