This process uses an XSLT stylesheet and dictfmt -c5. The stylesheet needs to be applied to the TEI file. Any XSLT processor should do the work. Using Sablotron, the command to give would be

sabcmd xsl/tei2c5.xsl la1-la2.tei >la1-la2.c5

Using xsltproc from libxslt, you would say

xsltproc xsl/tei2c5.xsl la1-la2.tei >la1-la2.c5

Next, dictfmt has to be called to create the final dictd database files:

dictfmt -t --headword-separator %%% la1-la2 <la1-la2.c5

Second, using xmltei2xmldict.pl. This is a conversion utility developed by the FreeDict project itself. It converts the TEI file into dictd database format without producing intermediate files. Its disadvantage is that it depends on the FreeDict project for the conversion to be successful, because the dictd database format is still subject to changes and cannot be as well understood as dictfmt does, which comes from the dictd project itself. For the software dependencies, please read the README.

An example command line would be:

xmltei2xmldict.pl -f la1-la2.tei -t xsl/tei2txt.xsl

This is an important step, especially for a developer who does not have a Zaurus device available. Qt/Embedded (qte), QTopia (qpe) and zbedic can be compiled on for the x86 architecture and can run either under the Linux Console Framebuffer or in the Qt/Embedded Virtual X11 Framebuffer (qvfb).

Free versions of qte, qpe and qvfb are available from Trolltech.

You have to compile qte, qpe, libbedic and zbedic in that order. The build instructions of qpe also talk of building Qt2 (for qvfb) and Qt3 (for other tools), though for testing zbedic no tools from Qt3 are required and as far as my SuSE 9.0 system was concerned, the qt3-extensions package already included a working qvfb.

When compiling qte, make sure you follow the build instructions given in qpe (not qte), which will make sure that the right customization header file qconfig-qpe.h is used for qte compilation. I will abstain from further qte/qpe building advice, since the instructions coming with qpe/qte are already complicated enough.

To compile zbedic for the x86 architecture, you have to issue a command like ARCH=x86 make in the libbedic and zbedic source directories. Most likely you will also have to edit the Makefiles to point to your qpe source directory.

Since the qpe package manager cannot run from the qpe image directory because it uses absolute paths, you cannot install zbedic from the .ipk file and have to install its files manually into the qpe image directory. Also you have to register the .dic.dz file ending and mime type using a text editor.

To start qpe or zbedic (and possibly qvfb) after a successful build, you have to set up lots of environment variables correctly, which is explained in the qpe documentation as well. You can give the -qws switch to zbedic to run it without qpe.

The most important info to give here - since this is not mentioned anywhere in the qpe documentation - is the mapping of directories when you run qpe from an image directory. Just a mention of them will make you understand, though. They are ~/Applications, ~/Documents and ~/Settings. The .dic.dz files have to be put into ~/Documents for zbedic to see them.

Combining marks are not shown properly on the Zaurus and in the default qpe build. Most likely this is a limitation of the Qt/Embedded font format .qpf. Even though Qt/Embedded can support freetype and through it TrueType fonts, it is not available on the Zaurus. To avoid combining marks as far as possible, the text is normalized to Unicode Normalization Form C, where precomposed characters are preferred over combining sequences. Still some combining characters remain, which in turn are not shown properly, viz. sequences involving the combining tilde in fra-eng pronunciations.

This is a plain text file format in Windows-1252 encoding (this last fact is not documented in the Online Help of Dictionary.exe!). It looks like this:

[words]
word/translated-word
word2a;word2b/translated-word2a;translated-word2b
    .
    .

[phrases]
>category-name
phrase/translated-phrase
    .
    .
>category-name
phrase/translated-phrase
    .
    .
[notes]
<any-text>

There should not be spaces around the '/' character. In the [words] or [phrases] section, you may have ';' characters on either side of the '/' to indicate multiple translations of a word. eg.

ability/Faehigkeit;Begabung

The dictionaries built with this program have certain limits:

Max Word Size - 128 characters
Max Words per entry - 16
Max Entry Size - 1024

Max Words - 1,048,576 - Not entries
Max Word Data - 16Mb characters - Uncompressed (Compressed approx twice that amount)

Max Phrase Categories - 64
Data per Category - 64Kb characters - Uncompressed (Compressed approx twice that amount)

Notes - 64Kb characters - Uncompressed

There is no limit to the number of entries, as such. There is a limit to the number of total words in all entries (i.e. between each semicolon) and the space used for all entries.

Supplemental Entries - 64Kb - Words added or edited on a handheld are stored in a supplemental record. When the dictionary is saved by this program the words are re-indexed and the supplemental record is cleared.