Microsoft Reader

Dictionary Authoring Kit

DAK1.0.exe
426 KB File
2 min @ 28.8 kbps
 
 

A Microsoft Reader dictionary is a specialized eBook publication that allows the Reader software user to look up the meanings of words. The Dictionary Authoring Kit includes the resources that dictionary vendors need to produce Reader-compatible dictionaries.

This release supports only mono-directional dictionaries (such as English-English or German-English). Although the Reader technology supports images, it is recommended that dictionary authors refrain from using images or use them very sparingly. The more images you use, the larger the size of the resulting dictionary file. Note that dictionary files are already relatively large.

The term "authoring format" refers to the format of the text file that you create. You then feed this text file to a standard .lit file generation tool to create the Microsoft Reader .lit file. The authoring format defined by this document is called EBDICT.

The goals of the Dictionary Authoring Kit are:

1. To make it easy for you to create dictionaries
2. To minimize the size of the resulting .lit file
3. To maximize the speed of looking up a word in the dictionary
4. To allow current and future versions of the Microsoft® Reader software to deal intelligently with dictionary contents.
5. To be compatible with existing standards for electronic books and for dictionary encoding.

Build Custom Microsoft Reader Dictionaries

The Dictionary Authoring Kit shows you how to create Microsoft Reader eBook dictionaries using the DTD, instructions, and sample files included in the kit.

There are three sample dictionary projects included with the DAK. Each of these projects is generic and shows different options for structuring your content.

For more information about the sample projects, see the the Dictionary Authoring Guide section of the DAK.chm file. For more information about building the sample projects, see the Verifying and Building Dictionaries section in the DAK.chm file.

Microsoft Windows® XP, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows NT® 4.0 with SP4, Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows 2000 Professional or Server

• Microsoft Reader 2.0
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher
• Microsoft Visual Studio® C++ 6.0

Installing the Dictionary Authoring Kit 1.0

To install the toolkit:

1. Download and unzip the DAK installation file to an appropriate directory.
2. Place dictprep.exe in any directory on your execution path.
3. Download Microsoft Reader, and place the Reader executable and its associated DLLs in any directory on your execution path.
4. Place dictgen.dll in the same directory as dictprep.exe.
5. Place ebdict.dtd, oeb101.dtd, and the documentation files in any convenient directory. Place oeb1.ent in the same directory as the .dtd files.

Getting Help

The Dictionary Authoring Kit is supported by Microsoft Product Support Services. For more information about getting help with the Dictionary Authoring Kit, see the Microsoft Product Support Web site .

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