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Configuring the properties of the file DictionaryForMIDs.properties

DictionaryForMIDs is customized via a set of properties in a file called DictionaryForMIDs.properties. Each of the properties must be provided unless otherwise noted.
The PropertiesEditor of DictionaryForMIMs-Creator is a GUI that makes it easier to create a DictionaryForMIDs.properties file. There, you will use Check-boxes, Combo-boxes, Lists, Sliders and so on, to create the properties file. When done, PropertiesEditor will save your options in a DictionaryForMIDs.properties file.
To launch the PropertiesEditor, go to the DictionaryGeneration tab and hit the Create button.

List of properties:

infoText

Text that is shown on top of the info-dialog. Please provide in this Text-area, information about the dictionary, like contact information for someone who can be contacted concerning the dictionary. That may be you (the person who set up this dictionary into DictionaryForMIDs) and/or the maintainer of the dictionary itself. So, include an email-address and/or homepage. Also provide a copyright notice for the dictionary.
 

dictionaryAbbreviation and
numberOfAvailableLanguages

dictionaryAbbreviation is a short abbreviation for identifying the origin of the dictionary. This is an abbreviation for the name of the organization or project where the dictionary comes from, e.g. freedict for the dictionaries from freedict.org. This should be preferably only a few characters long. JarCreator uses this property to form the application name.

numberOfAvailableLanguages defines how many languages are in the dictionary. For most dictionaries this will be 2. Here the Combo-box gives you 2 choices: 2 or 3 languages. For each language the languageX-zzzzzzzzzzz need to be defined as described below (X is a number starting from 1 to numberOfAvailableLanguages, zzzzzzzzzzz represents the relevant property name, e.g languageXDisplayText).
As an example, we selected "2" in the Combo-box, so all the properties we will be using are defined only for language1 and language2. Selecting "3" would also define these properties for language3.
 

languageXDisplayText

Text that is used on the user interface to identify the language. X needs to be replaced with the number of the column for the language. For example:
language1DisplayText: English
language2DisplayText: Portuguese
 

languageXFilePostfix and
dictionaryGenerationOmitParFromIndex

languageXFilePostfix is the text that is used in file names to identify the search-file and the index files for a language. This is typically a 3-letter text, such as Eng for English; as defined in the ISO 3-letter codes available here. As shown in the screen-shot, the Combo-box comes with some default values. If your choice is not included in the default values, then select CHOOSE MY OWN in order to manually enter a value.

dictionaryGenerationOmitParFromIndex: DictionaryGeneration excludes text within curly brackets from indexing ( the text within {{ and }} is not included in the index files, see here for more information). This behavior can be switched off by setting dictionaryGenerationOmitParFromIndex to false. When dictionaryGenerationOmitParFromIndex is set to false, then also the text within {{ and }} will be included in the index.
The property dictionaryGenerationOmitParFromIndex is optional. The default value is true. To switch true/false use the Check-box, (select or deselect).  

languageXIsSearchable

This is a boolean property with either the value true or false, that is to say selected or deselected in this context since we are using Check-boxes. Select the Check-box when it is allowed to search for translations for that language. Normally this property is selected for bi-directional translation dictionaries. For lookup dictionaries, e.g. for an acronym dictionary, where it is only possible to search from the acronym to the explanation, this property is set to false (deselected) for the explanation language/column. For an example see the elements dictionary from the download section.

Also for an unidirectional dictionary, which for example only translates from English to Portuguese (but not Portuguese to English), you have to set languageXIsSearchable to false (deselect the Check-box) for Portuguese.
This property is optional, the default value is true.
 

languageXGenerateIndex

This is a boolean property with either the value true or false, that is to say selected or deselected in this context since we are using Check-boxes. This tells DictionayGeneration whether to generate an index for this language.
This property is optional, the default value is true (selected).
Normally this property has the same value as languageXIsSearchable.
 

languageXHasSeparateDictionaryFile

This is a boolean property with either the value true or false, that is to say selected or deselected in this context since we are using Check-boxes. Select this Check-box when there is a separate dictionaryXXX.csv file for this language (for an explanation about the files, see section Files generated by the DictionaryGeneration tool). Normally all languages use the same dictionaryXXX.csv files, namely for those dictionaries where expression ABC translates to XYZ and this means that XYZ translates back to ABC. For dictionaries where ABC translates to XYZ, however XYZ translates to DEF, this property is set to true that is, the Check-box is deselected. For an example, see the German-French freedict dictionary from the download section.
For documentation, see here.
This property is optional, the default value is false (deselected).
 

dictionaryGenerationSeparatorCharacter,
indexFileSeparationCharacter,
searchListFileSeparationCharacter and
dictionaryFileSeparationCharacter

dictionaryGenerationSeparatorCharacter is the separation character for the input dictionary file that is read by DictionayGeneration.
indexFileSeparationCharacter, searchListFileSeparationCharacter, dictionaryFileSeparationCharacter are the separation character for the output csv files that are generated by DictionayGeneration.
The separation character for the above mentioned properties needs to be put in apostrophes when manually writing/editing the DictionaryForMIDs.properties file. Can be ',' or ';'. Can also be '\t' (backslash plus t) for a tab-character.
This property is optional, the default value is \t (tab-character). Here, in the PropertiesEditor, some default values are provided in Combo-boxes. Just choose between these values.
 

dictionaryGenerationLanguageXExpressionSplitString

This is used by DictionaryGeneration as follows: when for a language an expression actually contains several sub-expressions, this property is set to the string that separates these sub-expressions.
Example: the expression "to choose, to select, to pick" contains three sub-expressions: (1) "to choose", (2) "to select" and (3) "to pick". By setting dictionaryGenerationLanguageXExpressionSplitString to ,  for this language, DictionaryGeneration will extract these 3 expressions. This is done by writing the Split-string for a language, in the Text-Field that correspond to that language in the PropertiesEditor.
This property is optional, the default value is blank (nothing is entered in the Text-Field).
 

dictionaryGenerationInputCharEncoding

Character set encoding for the input dictionary file that is read by DictionaryGeneration.

Supported character set encodings are provided in the Combo-box.
As you can see them on the screen-shot, they are:
UTF-8
ISO-8859-1
US-ASCII

The default value is ISO-8859-1 but the first on the list is UTF-8. It works fine also.
 

indexCharEncoding,
searchListCharEncoding and
dictionaryCharEncoding

These 3 properties define the character set encoding that is used for the output search-list file/index files/dictionary files.

Supported character set encodings are:
UTF-8
ISO-8859-1
US-ASCII

Note: on very old mobile/PDA devices UTF-8 may not be supported. normally recent models do support it.  

languageXDictionaryUpdateClassName

This property defines for the DictionaryGeneration-tool a "DictionaryUpdate"-class that is used for a language. DictionaryUpdateClass changes the ways entries are stored when the tool converts an input dictionary file into the DictionaryforMIDs generated files. For details on the files created when a dictionary is generated, see Generating the files for DictionaryForMIDs.

For example: DictionaryUpdateEngDef removes unneeded words from the indexes such as "the", "a", and "at". These words are unneeded in the indexes and add unnecessary size to the files. When a user performs a search, these words will still be displayed in the definition, however.
All the available DictionaryUpdate classes' names are provided in the Combo-boxes.

The property languageXDictionaryUpdateClassName is optional. Use this property only if you really need it, otherwise set the selected choice in the Combo-boxes. to NONE
 

languageXNormationClassName

This is the name of a Java class that is used to 'normate' words. Whereas DictionaryUpdateClass changes dictionary files only when the dictionary is generated, NormationClass affects the words that the user enters when searching.

For example: NormationGer parses the nonNormatedWord for the German 'Umlauts' (ä, ö, ü) and returns the word with the Umlaut-paraphrasing (ae, oe, ue). So the user can search for "Mädchen" or "Maedchen" and the translation will be found in both cases.

These changes in the dictionary files are done in 2 steps.  First the DictionaryGeneration-tool calls the NormationClass to change the indexes to incorporate the phonetic changes (ä is changed to ae, for example).  Then when the user performs a search, the NormationClass is called again to make the phonetic changes to match the changes that were made earlier with the DictionaryGeneration-tool.

Via Normation-classes it is possible to provide language-specific search features and phonetic search. A lot of power lies in these Normation classes !!
Normation classes are available for several languages. For a list of available Normation classes see here.
If you intend to implement a new Normation class, see the documentation of NormationClasshere.
All the available Normation classes' names are provided in the Combo-boxes. but the property languageXNormationClassName is optional
 

searchListFileMaxSize,
indexFileMaxSizeand
dictionaryFileMaxSize

Defines the size in bytes of the biggest search-list file/index file/dictionary file, as generated by DictionaryGeneration. These properties are automatically determined and set by DictionaryGeneration, normally there is no longer a need to set these properties manually.
However these properties need to be manually defined when a dictionary is merged from two (or more) different source dictionaries and DictionaryGeneration is run once for each of these source dictionary (the values from the first run would be overwritten by the second run).  When these properties are already manually set when DictionaryGeneration is run, then no automatic generation for these properties is done. For the manual values you must ensure that no search-list file/index file/dictionary file is bigger than the property value, otherwise some translations are not found. There is no problem if the value of these properties is bigger than the actual maximum file size. For example if you set the dictionaryFileMaxSize to 50000 even if the biggest dictionary file is only 35000 bytes everything will work correctly. However DictionaryForMIDs will allocate 50000 bytes of heap memory, and keep in mind that specifically for older devices heap memory is scarce.

Use the Sliders to adjust the values for these properties. If you find it hard to enter a specific value with the sliders, choose no matter the value and go on to the property preview/edit window by hitting the Create the Properties File button. Once in the properties preview/edit window, before saving the values to the properties file, hit the Edit button below in order to be able to edit the properties. Finally, identify the *Max-size properties and manually modify the values provided by the sliders. Below is a screen-shot of the properties preview/edit window. Hit the Edit button and then modify the values in blue.

 

dictionaryGenerationMinNumberOfEntriesPerIndexFile and
dictionaryGenerationMinNumberOfEntriesPerDictionaryFile

These define for DictionaryGeneration the number of entries (= lines) per dictionary file and per index file.
These properties are optional, the default value for dictionaryGenerationMinNumberOfEntriesPerDictionaryFile is 200 and the one for dictionaryGenerationMinNumberOfEntriesPerIndexFile is 500.
As a general hint, you could try to set these values so that the size of a single directory file and the size of a single index file do not exceed 100 KB (size defined by properties searchListFileMaxSize, indexFileMaxSize and dictionaryFileMaxSize).
If you are setting up a dictionary for very old devices with very little heap memory, then set these values low enough so that the biggest file does not exceed 10 KB for example.
 

languageXIndexNumberOfSourceEntries

This property is automatically generated by DictionaryGeneration. The value contains the number of 'begin of expression'-index entries. This value gives the number of words/expressions that the dictionary contains for languageX. The values of languageXIndexNumberOfSourceEntries are shown in the Info-Dialog (will be implemented in a future version).
Note that when you merge a dictionary from two (or more) source dictionaries and DictionaryGeneration is run once for each of these source dictionaries, then you need to manually copy the entries for languageXIndexNumberOfSourceEntries into the final DictionaryForMIDs.properties file.
 

The property logLevel is set in the file DictionaryForMIDs.jad (not DictionaryForMIDs.properties). It Allows to switch on/off debugging information. A logLevel of 0 turns debugging output off, a logLevel of 3 turns all debugging output on; the levels 1 and 2 turn some debugging output on.  

With the languageXContentNN properties you can specify the content of your dictionary. For example you can specify that there is a pronunciation part, an explanation part, etc.

DictionaryForMIDs-Creator's PropertiesEditor window has a languageXContentNN Properties window called ContentProperties-Creator. It makes it possible to create contentNN properties and pass them to the PropertiesEditor which will enable you to save them along with the other properties. The PropertiesEditor window is already large enough, incorporating the languageXContentNN properties in it would render it's resolution larger than 1366X768. That is why it was decided to create a separate application and window called ContentProperties-Creator. To launch this window hit the button on the screen-shot below.
To see how to create languageXContentNN properties with the PropertiesEditor and the ContentProperties-Creator, see the page dedicated to that here.



The languageXContentNN properties are optional.
 

Here is a sample DictionaryForMIDs.properties file:

        infoText: IDP (English - German), version 1.1 19Feb99: http://www.ilovelanguages.com/IDP/IDPfiles.html
        dictionaryAbbreviation: IDP(Eng-Ger)
        numberOfAvailableLanguages: 2
        
        language1DisplayText: English
        language2DisplayText: German
        language1FilePostfix: Eng
        language2FilePostfix: Ger
        
        language1IsSearchable: true
        language2IsSearchable: true
        language1GenerateIndex: true
        language2GenerateIndex: true
        
        language1HasSeparateDictionaryFile: false
        language2HasSeparateDictionaryFile: false
        
        dictionaryGenerationSeparatorCharacter: '\t'
        indexFileSeparationCharacter: '\t'
        searchListFileSeparationCharacter: '\t'
        dictionaryFileSeparationCharacter: '\t'
        
        dictionaryGenerationOmitParFromIndex: true
        dictionaryGenerationInputCharEncoding: UTF-8
        indexCharEncoding: UTF-8
        searchListCharEncoding: UTF-8
        dictionaryCharEncoding: UTF-8
        
        language1DictionaryUpdateClassName: de.kugihan.dictionaryformids.dictgen.dictionaryupdate.DictionaryUpdate
        language2DictionaryUpdateClassName: de.kugihan.dictionaryformids.dictgen.dictionaryupdate.DictionaryUpdate
        language1NormationClassName: de.kugihan.dictionaryformids.translation.normation.Normation.NormationEng
        language2NormationClassName: de.kugihan.dictionaryformids.translation.normation.Normation.NormationGer

If you have any problem with setting up a new dictionary, just contact us and we will try to help you out!

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