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+# zdic-cli
+
+An alternative, offline, regex-supporting, command-line interface to [zdic (漢典)](zdic.net), featuring:
+
+- No internet connection required
+- Full text search with regex: a command for finding characters/phrases in body text of definitions.
+- Colorful text for highlighting entries
+
+
+![](screenshots/screen000.png)
+![](screenshots/screen001.png)
+![](screenshots/screen002.png)
+![](screenshots/screen003.png)
+![](screenshots/screen004.png)
+
+
+## Downloads
+
+Standalone version available for windows, mac and linux. Please refer to the Releases page.
+
+## Usage
+
+zdic-cli runs as a REPL loop, and there are 5 types of commands you can enter:
+
+```
+def 甲        display entry for 甲
+pre 甲        list words that starts with 甲
+has 甲 乙 ... list words that contains 甲 and 乙 ...
+txt 甲        list words whose full entry text contains 甲 (regex supported)
+sel n         display entry at previously returned list index n
+```
+
+`def` is probably the most common one for simply looking up characters/words. `pre` `has` `txt` will return an enumerated list listing all elligible entries, and `sel 0`/`sel 1`/`sel n` can be used to select from the list.
+
+
+## Development setup
+
+**This section is for compiling from source (and is somewhat complex), if you just would like to use the software, please check out the Releases page.**
+
+### Dependencies
+
+- node.js/npm
+- python2. Tested on 2.7. It has to be python 2 instead of 3 because much of the data-processing work were done way back in a time when 2 was the norm. Sorry folks, but if you're a python3 purist feel free to send a PR!
+- pkg (optional, to build standalone binaries for multiple platforms) `npm install -g pkg`
+
+### Downloading and compiling the dictionary files
+
+This repo does not contain the dictonary files themselves as they're too large. Instead, a shell script (`setup.sh`) is provided to automate the process:
+
+- Automatically download the original Kindle dictionary format (.PRC) from the internet. The download link hardcoded in `setup.sh` might fail in the future, in which case a google search for `汉典.prc` should yield alternative resources.
+- Automatically download a python library (kroo/mobi-python) for parsing mobi files. A rather old library and have some oddities, a find-and-replace script will be automatically run to patch some glitches in the source code :P
+- `python/to_txt.py` is run to extract a raw `txt` file from the kindle format `prc`.
+- `phthon/to_json.py` is run to generate a directory of `json` files from the `txt` to make lookup and formatting more efficient.
+
+Run the shell script with:
+
+```
+sh setup.sh
+```
+
+At this point you'll have `zdic.prc`, `zdic.txt` and directory `zdic_json/`. Only `zdic_json` is needed, so if everything went well with the script, you can freely delete the other two and gain some 700MB of free space :)
+
+### Compiling the binary
+
+At this point you can also run the software by simply doing:
+
+```
+node index.js
+```
+
+You can also package it into a binary using
+
+```
+pkg .
+```
+
+provided you have the node and pkg dependencies installed.
+
+Tip: to run the software by typing `zdic` anywhere, you can symlink it to `/user/bin`, e.g.
+
+```
+ln -s /user/bin/zdic path/to/zdic-cli/zdic-cli
+```
+
+
+
+
+