How to install new dictionaries

EuroOffice Dictionary can also be easily extended with further dictionaries, or the included dictionaries can be replaced with better ones. You can add dictionaries to the EuroOffice Dictionary Toolbar in two formats: EuroOffice Dictionary's native CSV text format or DICT server format.

EuroOffice Dictionary's native format is a simple csv text file. Each line of the file contains one translation. Each line is made up of words or expressions separated by semicolons (;). The first word in the line is a word in the first language (from which we are translating). The following words are possible translations. There can be any number of them and they will be listed in the dropdown box in the order they are given in the dictionary file. Such a file can be created with any text editor, but most spreadsheet editors (including OpenOffice.org Calc of course) also support the CSV format. They often provide the option of choosing the separator character. It has to be semicolon (;) for EuroOffice Dictionary to be able to use the file.

Dictionary files have to be UTF-8 encoded! They can include the Byte Order Mark (BOM) at the beginning, but are not required to.

In addition to these simple semicolon separated files EuroOffice Dictionary Professional also supports the widely used DICT server format. While DICT is not just a file format, but also a network protocol and a set of applications that support it, EuroOffice Dictionary Professional only goes so far as being able to import dictionary files that are packaged for a DICT server. You can find a number of such dictionaries on the Internet (such as the DICT web site and the FreeDict project), many of them for free.

To install a DICT format dictionary download it as a tar.gz archive (it should include an index file and a dz file).

To add a new dictionary:

1. Open the dictionary selection dropdown menu. At the bottom of the menu find the menu item "Add new dictionary...".

2. This menu item allows you to select a file with CSV (native format) or tar.gz (DICT format) extension. The file name has to be L1-L2.CSV or L1-L2.DICT where L1 is the two letter abbreviation of the first language (from which it translates) and L2 is the two letter abbreviation of the second language (to which it translates). The selected file will be copied to the folder the extension resides in and will be used as a dictionary file from there on. (No restart is necessary.)

3. When you try to install a dictionary file for a language-pair that already has a dictionary EuroOffice Dictionary will offer you to either replace the currently installed dictionary or keep it and add the new dictionary as an addendum. An addendum works as if it were merged into the original dictionary, but it can be removed at any time in the Dictionary Manager.