In the Dictionary app on your Mac, type a word or phrase in the search field in the upper-right corner of the Dictionary window. Note: If you add another Dictionary source, wait for it to download completely before searching for a word or phrase. This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles. There is generally a dictionary.app on the Mac-OS. But there isn't any dictionary development kit on the X-Code. Now i use the X-Code (Mavericks and Yosemite). So I downloaded the the auxiliary tools. Dictionary is an application developed by Apple Inc. As a part of macOS.The application provides definitions and synonyms from various dictionaries, Wikipedia articles and a glossary of Apple-related terms. Dictionary was introduced in OS X 10.4 with the New Oxford American Dictionary and Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus (as well as the Wikipedia and Apple sections).
Over the last couple of months I’ve been chipping away at creating an add-on dictionary for the Dictionary application on Mac. I wanted to create a dictionary for CFWheels.
Information on how to create such dictionaries was not all that easy to find. So I thought I’d share what I found in case it helps some else.
Apple’s Dictionary Services Programming Tutorial
First up, have a look at this tutorial on Dictionary Services Programming over at developer.apple.com. It provides all the information one needs to get started. You can also download a PDF of this tutorial.
Template Files for Dictionary
One thing that the tutorial assumes is that you have the template files for dictionary development are. First challenge was to figure out where they were. I found that they are installed with XCode at: /Developer/Examples/Dictionary Development Kit. If you don’t have XCode installed, then you can download the this zip file that contains the Dictionary Development Kit.
The Make Command
Before you customize anything in these files, simply run ‘make’ command in directory where you unzip these files. It should create a dictionary called “My Dictionary”. If you move this dictionary to /Library/Dictionaries or ~/Library/Dictionaries, it will start showing up i the Dictionary app.
There are a couple of other things that the make command can do:
Best Dictionary For Mac
- make clean : cleans older builds
- make install : installs the created dictionary to ~/Library/Dictionaries folder
- make : creates the dictionary
Change the XML and Info.plist
Now add the stuff you want in the XML that will be used to create the dictionary. You will have to generate the XML with the appropriate structure and content. Also modify the plist file as required. Run “make” to create your dictionary.
A Big Gotcha – Cached Dictionaries
On thing that really had me flummoxed was that despite making a new dictionary, the Dictionary app was not reliably showing all the changes I expected.
This took a while to figure. There is a bunch of caching that comes into play if you are creating new builds of the dictionary. Cached versions show up and throw you off the track.
So I had to write this shell script to clean Dictionary app cache. Make sure that you
- make the script executable before running it, and
- quit the Dictionary app before you run
I found that I had run this each time I made a change to the XML file.
A downside to doing this is that it resets all Dictionary preferences. So when you start the Dictionary app after running this script, you have go to Preferences and turn on the dictionary you are working on. A bit painful, but not such a biggie.
My Development Workflow
So as I was making changes to the XML file with data, I was running the following commands:
- ./clean.sh (cleans out all dictionary caches)
- make clean (cleans out older builds of the dictionary)
- make (makes the dictionary)
- make install (installs the dictionary)
Example Dictionary: CFWheels
If you want to see an example of the dictionary that I created, check out: https://github.com/indynagpal/CFWheels-Mac-Dictionary
Look at the XML and Info.plist files.
That’s it… go and have fun creating dictionaries now!
MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary for macOS
Do you use Windows 10? Please check out or Windows software instead.
Offline dictionary
Looking for an easy to use offline Chinese-English dictionary for macOS?Look no further!With the MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary for macOS you can quickly look up Chinese words using Chinese characters, Mandarin pinyin or the English definition.An internet connection is not required for using the dictionary, so you can use it anywhere, any time!
Features
- Comprehensive Chinese-English word dictionary
- Can be used offline, does not require an internet connection
- Look up Chinese words using Chinese characters, Mandarin pinyin or the English definition
- Mandarin Pinyin can be displayed with tone marks, numbers, colors or as Bopomofo
- Detailed information is shown for every character in Chinese words, including Mandarin Pinyin, Yale Cantonese / Jyuping and Radical / Strokes
Try it FREE
A free trial version of the MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary for macOS is available for download:
The trial version does not have a time limit but it's content is limited to HSK level 1-4 words (Elementary & Intermediate, approximately 1500 entries). The full version features approximately 115.000 entries.
Please follow the instructions below if you see the following error during installation: “Installer.pkg” can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software
- click 'Installer.pkg' with your right mouse button
- click 'Open'
- In the dialog that appears, click 'Open'
The error appears on macOS 10.15 Catalina due to new security policies.
Please follow the instructions below if you see the following error during installation: “Installer.pkg” can’t be opened because it was not downloaded from the Mac App Store.
- open 'System Preferences' from your 'Applications' folder
- click on the 'Security & Privacy' icon
- click the lock to make changes
- set 'Allow applications downloaded from' to 'Mac App Store and identified developers'
- now install the MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary for macOS
- after the installation you can change the security setting back to it's original state
Purchase
You can purchase the full version of the MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary for macOS in our webshop:
Please try the free trial version before purchasing this product to ensure compatibility with your system.
System requirements
Mac Dictionary Download
Supported operating systems:
- Apple macOS 11 Big Sur
- Apple macOS 10.15 Catalina
- Apple macOS 10.14 Mojave
- Apple macOS 10.13 High Sierra
Tips
Mouse over hover translation (as featured in MDBG Chinese Reader) is not supported by the MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary for macOS.It is possible to get popup translation in some programs such as Safari.To use the popup translations, install the full version of MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary for macOS and follow the instructions in the User Guide to set it up correctly.While using a program such as Safari, hover your mouse cursor over a Chinese word and press CMD-CTRL-D or use a three finger tap on the touchpad.A popup with the translation should appear.Sometimes OS X refuses to show translations for certain words / characters (due to limitations in OS X), it might help to select the word or character manually and press CMD-CTRL-D again.
Did you know that Chinese text input is bundled with macOS? This page explains how to enable it.
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