Creating a Dictionary File (Windows CE 5.0)

Send Feedback

To create a dictionary file

1. Create a Unicode text file containing the header information of the dictionary file and the words to be added to the dictionary file. You can specify the header information of the dictionary file in the source text file by using !Name, !Description, !Copyright, !Version keywords as shown in the following example:

   

   The following list shows the elements necessary to create a source file:

   1. The title of the dictionary. The title does not need to be identical to the dictionary file name. The dictionary title contains a human-readable string that is used in the property dialog box of the Microsoft IME dictionary setting. The dictionary title can contain a maximum of 47 printable Unicode characters.

   2. A description of the dictionary. This contains a human-readable string that is displayed in the property dialog box of the Microsoft IME dictionary setting. The dictionary title can contain a maximum of 255 printable Unicode characters.

   3. The copyright information. The copyright string contains a human-readable string that is used in the property dialog box of the Microsoft IME dictionary setting. The dictionary title can contain a maximum of 127 printable Unicode characters.

   4. The version number of the dictionary. The version number must be a WORD value in decimal notation.

   5. Specific data elements consisting of character strings that will be included in the dictionary. These data elements must be specified in the following order.

      {reading}<tab>{display}<tab>{part of speech}[<tab>{cost}]
      

      The following table shows a description of each string.

      String	Description
      reading	Specifies the readable name of the element. This string can contain full-width characters in Hiragana and the Western alphabet, as well as numeric characters and symbols. The maximum length of the reading string is 63 Unicode characters.
      display	Specifies the displayable characters for the element. The maximum length of the display string is 63 Unicode characters.
      part of speech	Specifies the part-of-speech code for the data element. For a list of applicable part-of-speech names, see Japanese IME 3.1 Part-of-Speech Codes.
      cost	Specifies the conversion priority for the selected data element. If there are two words that share the same reading string and part-of-speech code, the conversion engine will choose the low-cost word as the primary candidate. The cost value must be specified with a half-width digit character with a value ranging from 0 to 255. The cost value can be omitted. If the value is omitted, the dictionary compiler assumes the cost is zero.

2. Open a command prompt and run Makedict.exe to convert the source file into a dictionary file by using the following syntax:

   MAKEDICT [-s system_dictionary] [-h] source_file_name dictionary_file_name
   

   The following table shows the parameters you can use.

   Command-line parameter	Description
   -s system_dictionary_file_name	Specify the existing system dictionary file. The dictionary compiler will check the duplicated entries.
   -h	Display help screen.
   source_file_name	Specify the file to be processed as the source file.
   dictionary_file_name	Specify the dictionary file name as output.

   The following example shows how to process Addon.txt to create the Addon.dic dictionary file to be used with Imjp31s.dic.

   Makedict –s imjp31s.dic addon.txt addon.dic
   

   If a word in the dictionary source file exists in the standard system dictionary, the word will not be added to the dictionary file. The dictionary checks the standard system dictionary first before it adds a data element to an add-on dictionary.

See Also

Japanese IME 3.1 Dictionary Compiler | Japanese IME 3.1 Part-of-Speech Codes

Send Feedback on this topic to the authors

Feedback FAQs

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.