StarDict

File Format
Name	StarDict
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Electronic Publishing formats StarDict
Extension(s)	.ifo, .dict, .idx, .syn
Released	2003

StarDict is a program for reading language dictionaries (AKA glossaries), written by Hu Zheng. It was intended as a successor to StarDic. Its dictionary format consists of an info file with extension ".ifo", a data file with the extension ".dict" (commonly compressed with Dzip to become ".dict.dz"), an index file with extension ".idx", and a synonyms file with the extension ".syn". This is not to be confused with the Dictd format, also uses a data file with a ".dict" or ".dict.dz" extension, but has nothing else besides an index file, for which it uses the extension ".index" instead of ".idx".

The latest StarDict version, as of 2020, is from 2015.

Identification

.ifo files begin with either StarDict's treedict ifo file or StarDict's dict ifo file. The others do not seem to have anything that could serve as a definite identifier.

StarDict's .dict files can be distinguished from Dictd's by that only the latter are completely plaintext files.

Software

• StarDict itself
• GoldenDict, meant as a successor
• sdcv
• Babiloo
• LightLang
• stardict2odict, converter to ODict
• KTranslator

Sample Files

• "Big dictionaries" on the StarDict website
• Index of dictionary files on the old SourceForge site

Links

• Homepage
• Original SourceForge page
  • Message currently at that address, placed there in 2011 after the project's page was taken down as a result of "copyright infringement reports", imploring the reader to switch to a different program
• Page on Michael Beijer's translation site
• Wikipedia:StarDict