StarDict - an excellent replacement for gjiten and rikaichan
Sorry gjiten & rikaichan
"Gjiten is [an excellent] Japanese language dictionary program for Gnome". It has served me well for several years, but yesterday I found a better tool - StarDict.
Gjiten and StarDict both use the EDICT (and other) dictionary files, as such the data retrieved is the same. What makes StarDict much better is the interface, presentation of results, and the integration with the Gnome desktop.
Once you have started StarDict a small icon in the system tray 
. If you see this icon then you are all set to use StarDict\'s "scan" feature. this is the feature that really sets this app apart from gjiten.
With scan enabled you can perform quick word lookups by simply highlighting text. This works very similar to rikaichan plugins for Firefox and Thunderbird. However, the great thing is you can perform lookups in any application.
To install StarDict on a Gentoo box all that is required is the following command:
emerge -av stardict-jmdict-en-ja stardict-jmdict-ja-en
This will install the StarDict application and two dictionary files (Japanese <--> English). If you need more dictionaries there are some more available here.
NOTE: I have not used StarDict on anything other than Gentoo, however doing "apt-cache search stardict" on an Ubuntu Dapper box did return some results. "apt-get install stardict" should get you going.
Regards, Bawdo
Wed 14 Feb 2007, 11:11
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