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Welcome to the OSS-Dict wiki!
OSS-Dict is a simple and fast dictionnary reader for large dictionaries. OSS-Dict for Android is a successor to Aard2 Dictionary for Android. It comes with redesigned user interface, bookmarks, history and a better dictionary storage format which allow additional functions like picture download.
Here are some basic instructions for the app, addressing Aard2-Beginners, which just don't know about Aard2 and want to give it a try.
Please read also the README.org with more detailed explanations about the features of Aard2.
OSS-Dict is running on Android 5 and above. You can install it from Google Play or you can install it from here (Github). You need to allow installation of "Unknown sources" if you want to install OSS-Dict from github, e.g. see here: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-install-apps-outside-of-google-play/
To use OSS-Dict you need dictionaries, without a dictionary OSS-Dict is useless.
It supports different dictionary formats:
- slob: slob-files. Read here about slob. You can get dictionaries from https://github.com/itkach/slob/wiki/Dictionaries
- MDict: you get dictionaries from https://forum.freemdict.com/t/topic/23143
- StarDict/GoldenDict: you can get dictionaries from http://download.huzheng.org/
You can download dictionaries first, save them to your phone and install OSS-Dict after or vice versa. So as dictionaries can be very large files, best is to begin with downloading them first. (It is highly recommended to use a BitTorrent client. That way you also contribute to the project by letting other OSS-Dict/Aard users download from your computer. You can find the appropriate .torrent files or magnet links in the download section.) You can put the dictionaries on your phone in any directory you want, you can save them to your internal or, if available, external sd-card, there is no difference for OSS-Dict.
The history tab, the one with the circle-arrow around a clock, shows recently visited articles of all dictionaries.
The maximum amount of entries is limited to hundred, same as the Bookmarks.
If you want to delete any entry, long tap on it and you can use the Garbage-Icon to delete it. You also can check more entries or you tap the Checked-Icon beside the Garbage-Icon to check all and delete them.
"User Styles" is a feature for advanced users, who know about CSS. So this chapter is a bit more a technical description with less basic explanations.
In Aard 2 it is possible to use an own Stylesheet (CSS-file) to change the design of the dictionaries' contents.
You can use your own rules and save them to a css-file. You can choose this file now in the settings-tab of Aard 2 by hitting the "Plus"-Icon and choose them with the file-chooser of your system. Here is a screenshot:
You can see the "Plus"-Icon and the "Garbage"-Icon for the User Styles list. If the css-file is in the list, you can choose it in a dictionary through the menu button and the "Style..." submenu. You cannot make changes to the css-file after the import, if you want to change their content (the css-rules) you need to delete it through the "Garbage"-Icon and reload it with the "Plus"-Icon after you made the changes. So this could be a very slow thing to find the best rules but there is a way to get it faster:
Download aard2-web (it is a Java application) to your computer from:
https://github.com/itkach/aard2-web
and open a slob-file with this basic tool. Here you can use Firefox and all its css developer tools to find the right css for your dictionary. The css are the same for aard2-web and Aard 2 app on Android.
You will need to read the explanations on the README.org of Aard2 for Web, to get aard2-web running. It is explained there.