I recommend to use Tcl/TK 8.0.5

Since 08/04/99 this page was visited times.

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For a long time I suffered from the lack of a good English-Russian dictionary running with Linux. I wanted a dictionary that covered a decent amount of words, providing them with phonetic transcriptions, corresponding idioms and examples of usage. Management software providing convenient management of the dictionary and basic search capabilities (like search for a collocation at any position in a word entry) was also highly desirable. The number of accessible English-Russian dictionaries on the Internet is constantly growing (references to the other dictionaries). Nevertheless I haven't found a dictionary similar to the professional MultiLex2 of MediaLingua. On the other hand, I think, Linux doesn't need encrypted dictionaries (encrypting or compressing slow down work in my experiments). In my opinion, the compreseed dictionary bases and patented interfaces necessitated by modern copyright law inhibit progress.

The CD-disk "Library in the Pocket"(version >4) includes a plain-text Mueller Dictionary of 24-th edition. Unfortunately, this dictionary doesn't have phonetic transcription. I have adopted the dictionary into a new form, which is more suitable for use with Unix.

After an intensive search on the Russian Internet I found out that Sergey Starostin had implemented under DOS an electronic version of one of the most respectable English-Russian Dictionaries -- Mueller English-Russian Dictionary (7 edition) with phonetic transcription. Now this computer version is freely distributed and can be found at "starling.rinet.ru/download/dict.exe". I have transformed the dictionary into a new form, one more suitable for UNIX.

To use the Mueller English-Russian Dictionary under Linux I wrote interface scripts which actually can be used to manipulate any other dictionary prepared in a certain way. I call these scripts "MOVA", (Modernized Operable Versatile Ally).

Acknowledgments. I am very grateful to Dmitry Mishchenko, Vladimir Stavrinov, Vitaly Moskovkin, Stas Angler, Serge Gavrilov, Igor Gots, Dmitry Galkin, Vjacheslav Fyodorov, Valeriy Gorelov, Denis Serebro, Serge Winitzki, Eugene Byrganov, Pavel Kurnosoff, Andrew Comech, Mikhail Tentyukov, for suggestions and improvements. I am also indebted to Victor Wagner for answers to questions about using Tcl/TK.

With the best wishes, Eugene

7/29/99 Vitaly Moskovkin offers shell script using capabilities of groff and gawk.

12/04/99 Igor Gots tenders scripts dividing dictionary on little files (using first letter of dictionary article) and work with splitted dictionary. This method may accelerate work with limited RAM in computer (32 MB) when you will search for the first word of dictionary article.

6/16/2000 Vjacheslav Fyodorov offers PHP3 scripts. These scripts reflect transcription and make search in dictionary with various options - see screenshot

7/19/2000 Andrew Comech offers script to transfer MOVA to DICT format. Latest version of this script you would see on his www page. It has Mueller's Dictionary of 24 Edition in dict format also.

11/9/2000 Mikhail Tentyukov offers improved movaTK script, with search option in word window and solving some problem of Tcl/TK 8.3.1 connected with russification.

01/26/2001 Dmitry Yusupov offers consol C program. It makes special hash file and finds first word of entry. Latest version of the program you would see on his www page.

03/10/2001 Alex Yemelyanov offers packet for working with MySQL. Latest version of the program you would see on his www page.