jitenbot

Jitenbot is a program for scraping Japanese dictionary websites and compiling the scraped data into compact dictionary file formats.

Supported Dictionaries

• Web Dictionaries
  • 国語辞典オンライン (jitenon-kokugo)
  • 四字熟語辞典オンライン (jitenon-yoji)
  • 故事・ことわざ・慣用句オンライン (jitenon-kotowaza)
• Monokakido
  • 新明解国語辞典 第八版 (smk8)
  • 大辞林 第四版 (daijirin2)
  • 三省堂国語辞典 第八版 (sankoku8)

Supported Output Formats

• Yomichan
• MDict (.MDX & .MDD)

Examples

Jitenon Kokugo (web | yomichan)

Jitenon Yoji (web | yomichan)

Jitenon Kotowaza (web | yomichan)

Shinmeikai 8e (print | yomichan)

Daijirin 4e (print | yomichan)

Sanseidō 8e (print | yomichan)

Various (GoldenDict)

Usage

usage: jitenbot [-h] [-p PAGE_DIR] [-m MEDIA_DIR] [-i MDICT_ICON]
                [--no-mdict-export] [--no-yomichan-export]
                [--validate-yomichan-terms]
                {jitenon-kokugo,jitenon-yoji,jitenon-kotowaza,smk8,daijirin2,sankoku8}

Convert Japanese dictionary files to new formats.

positional arguments:
  {jitenon-kokugo,jitenon-yoji,jitenon-kotowaza,smk8,daijirin2,sankoku8}
                        name of dictionary to convert

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p PAGE_DIR, --page-dir PAGE_DIR
                        path to directory containing XML page files
  -m MEDIA_DIR, --media-dir MEDIA_DIR
                        path to directory containing media folders (gaiji,
                        graphics, audio, etc.)
  -i MDICT_ICON, --mdict-icon MDICT_ICON
                        path to icon file to be used with MDict
  --no-mdict-export     skip export of dictionary data to MDict format
  --no-yomichan-export  skip export of dictionary data to Yomichan format
  --validate-yomichan-terms
                        validate JSON structure of exported Yomichan
                        dictionary terms

See README.md for details regarding media directory structures

Web Targets

Jitenbot will scrape the target website and save the pages to the user cache directory. As a courtesy to the website owners, jitenbot is configured to pause for 10 seconds between each page request. Consequently, a complete crawl of a target website may take several days.

HTTP request headers (user agent string, etc.) may be customized by editing the config.json file created in the user config directory.

Monokakido Targets

These digital dictionaries are available for purchase through the Monokakido Dictionaries app on MacOS/iOS. Under ideal circumstances, Jitenbot would be able to automatically fetch all the data it needs from this app's data directory¹ on your system. In its current state of development, Jitenbot unfortunately requires you to find and assemble the necessary data yourself. The files must be organized into a particular folder structure (defined below) and then passed to Jitenbot via the corresponding command line arguments.

Some of the folders in the app's data directory¹ contain encoded files that must be unencoded using golddranks' monokakido tool. These folders are indicated by a reference mark (※) in the notes below.

smk8 files

Since Yomichan does not support audio files from imported dictionaries, the audio/ directory may be omitted to save filesize space in the output ZIP file if desired.

.
├── media
│   ├── audio (※)
│   │   ├── 00001.aac
│   │   ├── 00002.aac
│   │   ├── 00003.aac
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   └── 82682.aac
│   ├── Audio.png
│   └── gaiji
│       ├── 1d110.svg
│       ├── 1d15d.svg
│       ├── 1d15e.svg
│       ├── ...
│       └── xbunnoa.svg
└── pages (※)
    ├── 0000000000.xml
    ├── 0000000001.xml
    ├── 0000000002.xml
    ├── ...
    └── 0000064581.xml

daijirin2 files

The graphics/ directory may be omitted to save space if desired.

.
├── media
│   ├── gaiji
│   │   ├── 1D10B.svg
│   │   ├── 1D110.svg
│   │   ├── 1D12A.svg
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   └── vectorOB.svg
│   └── graphics (※)
│       ├── 3djr_0002.png
│       ├── 3djr_0004.png
│       ├── 3djr_0005.png
│       ├── ...
│       └── 4djr_yahazu.png
└── pages (※)
    ├── 0000000001.xml
    ├── 0000000002.xml
    ├── 0000000003.xml
    ├── ...
    └── 0000182633.xml

sankoku8 files

.
├── media
│   ├── graphics
│   │   ├── 000chouchou.png
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   └── 888udatsu.png
│   ├── svg-accent
│   │   ├── アクセント.svg
│   │   └── 平板.svg
│   ├── svg-frac
│   │   ├── frac-1-2.svg
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   └── frac-a-b.svg
│   ├── svg-gaiji
│   │   ├── aiaigasa.svg
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   └── 異体字_西.svg
│   ├── svg-intonation
│   │   ├── 上昇下降.svg
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   └── 長.svg
│   ├── svg-logo
│   │   ├── denshi.svg
│   │   ├── ...
│   │   └── 重要語.svg
│   └── svg-special
│       └── 区切り線.svg
└── pages (※)
    ├── 0000000001.xml
    ├── ...
    └── 0000065457.xml

Attribution

Adobe-Japan1_sequences.txt is provided by The Adobe-Japan1-7 Character Collection.

The Yomichan term-bank schema definition dictionary-term-bank-v3-schema.json is provided by the Yomichan project.

Many thanks to epistularum for providing thoughtful feedback regarding the implementation of the MDict export functionality.

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1. /Library/Application Support/AppStoreContent/jp.monokakido.Dictionaries/Products/ ↩︎