الثلاثاء، 1 أكتوبر 2013

Fixing Arabic letters in SAKHR Dictionary (DIC32.exe) running on Linux using WINE (Windows Emulator)

NOT all Windows(TM) programs have good alternates on Linux.. So we use the emulation software called WINE to run these Windows programs on Linux.

One of these programs is DIC32, the BEST Arabic-English dictionary available!.. And sadly there is no good alternative to it on Linux.
When you download WINE and use it to run DIC32 on Linux, you'll probably be shocked to see that the Arabic letters aren't displayed well!.. It will look something like this pic:


And what good is an Arabic dictionary without proper Arabic letters?!

I use Lubuntu nowadays, and here you will find the solution I found to the problem, thanks to this forum member:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1231500

You can download the dictionary itself from here:
http://www.4shared.com/rar/SPv7hL-p/Dic32___5______.html

And of course install WINE from your usual repository. (I use WINE1.4 on Lubuntu 12.4)

Unzip the DIC32 archive, name it "Dictionary" and put it inside the ( .wine) folder like this.. (Note: it's a hidden folder by default)
/home/salama/.wine/drive_c/Dictionary

Download some Arabic fonts, then put them in these two folders:
/home/salama/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts
/usr/share/wine/fonts

(Note that "salama" is the name of my computer, so use yours!.. And you'll have to be a ROOT user to copy the fonts to the second mentioned folder, so open the folder as root)
The fonts are (Arial - Tahoma - Times New Roman - Trado.ttf )
(ttf means: True Type Font. Trado means: Traditional Arabic)

Now go to the dictionary folder (/home/salama/.wine/drive_c/Dictionary) and open a Terminal window.
Copy and paste this command line:
LC_ALL=ar_EG.utf8 wine dic32.exe
Which tells WINE to open the dictionary in an "Arabic Locale", and you will get this result:



(Note: you must have Arabic Language already on your Linux system. Use the command:
locale -a
to check for it)



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Fixing Arabic letters in SAKHR Dictionary (DIC32.exe) running on Linux using WINE (Windows Emulator)

Written By Salama

هناك تعليق واحد:

  1. Excellent script! The code comments are clear too. Thanks

    Can you make the "upgrade" optional? (I mean as a Y\N question during the installation) , as I already have the ArabicPack and Wine

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