Converting .dat-files...

[fernglas]

I've got a commercial dictionary that was written for "Windows". But because I am a linux user I have to use it with "Wine". It works somehow, but I'm not satisfied.
I'd rather use it in "GoldenDict" like all my other dictionaries, because of GD's great features ("Forvo" support, transliteration and so on).

The programme is called "Word Explorer 2.0 Pro" and seems to be identical to those "КОНТЕКСТ" dictionaries from www.dics.ru .
The problem is that it consists of several ".dat"-files and I've got no idea how to get it to a format "GoldenDict" can read.

Maybe someone of you knows how to do it or where to find a tutorial or instructions to get me started.
Thank you...

[Tvangeste]

There is nothing much to be done here, since those DAT files are proprietary format, compressed and encrypted.

Naturally, you could use Win32 debugger and various hackish things, but that requires lots of time and efforts and probably not worth it.

[fernglas]

Thank you for the answer.

When I open those files with a hex-editor, there are parts that consist of garbled text, but there are also large blocks of readable text, seemingly the vocabulary. Doesn't that speak against encryption (and compression)? I'm no programmer, so I wouldn't know. http://postimage.org/image/irdsoatg/

It's a quiet rare language pairing and I think the only one availabe of its kind (Estonian-German and vice versa), so I would love to use it with GoldenDict.

[Tvangeste]

Thank you for the answer.

But there are also large blocks of readable text, seemingly the vocabulary.

Yeah, that's normal. Typically the index is more or less left as-is, to speed up words list loading and lookups, but the actual content of the dictionary card is compressed and (optionally) encrypted.

All in all, it is probably a better investment (of time) to find (or buy) some existing dictionaries in supported formats (stardict, bgl or lingvo dsl) rather than wasting a lot of time on closed proprietary format with no guarantee that it can be reverse engineered at all.

[Tvangeste]

It's a quiet rare language pairing and I think the only one availabe of its kind (Estonian-German and vice versa), so I would love to use it with GoldenDict.

Oh, I missed this part. Yeah, *such* dictionary would be hard to find indeed.