KanjiEater's GoldenDict Japanese Toolbelt

Check out the instruction video here: KanjiEater's Golden Toolbelt Guide

Table of Contents

• Changelog
• Download and Setup
• Installation of Tools
• Zen
• Images
• Anki
• Frequency
• Golden Assets
• FAQ
• Support

Changelog

1/2/2021 - Public Release 3/21/2021 - Minor updates and inclusion of styles 4/25/2021 - Major update.

Now supports latest beta build of GoldenDict. Please update to the latest version here. I am using the 6.4.3-GoldenDict.exe_windows-2019_20230402-xapian.zip version. Then extract that zip file (with winzip, winrar or a 7z extractor program) to your C:\Program Files\. This should result in C:\Program Files\GoldenDict and a bunch of files inside. Be sure to select yes to any files that conflict with C:\Program Files\GoldenDict, we want to update everything in it to the latest version.

Switched fonts. Please install 247820692\assets\fonts\yugothic.ttf.

The qt-style.css is now included alongside the theme.

The anki copy images now should work at their installed location without any extra work.

Fixing issues with the AutoPaste threading - this feature is still in beta.

Download and Setup

A compatible version of GoldenDict is required. Currently only Windows (x64) is officially supported, but there is a Mac & Linux versions of GoldenDict. The most compatible version is currently 1.5.0-RC2-372-gc3ff15f

Anki

Anki is used to keep the Tools up to date as well as enable additional Tool functionallity.

1. Have a 2.1 version of Anki (KanjiEater uses 2.1.22 but 2.1.35 has been tested, and future versions should be supported automatically)
2. Install the AnkiConnect Addon using code 2055492159
3. Install the KanjiEater's GoldenDict Japanese Toolbelt using code 247820692
4. You can move onto the GoldenDict setup

GoldenDict

1. Download Qt 5.12.3-based 64-bit build, 1.5.0-RC2-372-gc3ff15f from here
2. Install it by extracting the file 7z file to C:\Program Files\. So you should now have C:\Program Files\GoldenDict with a bunch of folders and files inside.
3. You can start the program with C:\Program Files\GoldenDict\GoldenDict.exe

Apply the GoldenDict Theme

These instructions will allow you to install darkmode which is the only currently supported theme for the Toolbelt. You can also additionally reference themes in GoldenDict here.

1. Start GoldenDict (this will create app folders on your computer automatically)
2. Go to your GoldenDict Anki add-on folder (%AppData%\Anki2\addons21\247820692)
3. Install the font, 247820692\assets\fonts\yugothic.ttf, by double clicking on it, then clicking install (This is the font that the GoldenDict theme will refer to - if you know CSS you can replace it in the css file of the next step)
4. Go back to the %AppData%\Anki2\addons21\247820692 folder
5. Copy the styles directory
6. Go to the GoldenDict app folder %AppData%\GoldenDict
7. Paste the styles directory to this folder
8. Go into %AppData%\GoldenDict\styles\darkmode, which will contain your css. You can modifiy the css file here to change the theme's style manually with this file
9. Copy %AppData%\GoldenDict\styles\darkmode, which will contain your css. You can modifiy the css file here to change the theme's style manually with this file
10. Open Preferences inside of GoldenDict (Hotkey: F4)
11. Select darkmode from the dropdown
12. Restart GoldenDict and you should see your theme applied (this is the only theme compatible with the Toolbelt currently)
13. Now that you've started it once, exit out of GoldenDict
14. You can now move on to installation of Tools!

PRO TIP: Pressing Alt and + will make your search bar bigger

Installation of Tools

1. Open GoldenDict
2. Go to Dictionaries (Hotkey: F3)
3. Sources will be open by default with Files opened
4. Go to Programs
5. Click Add... on the right
6. In the column labeled Enabled click the checkbox so that it is checked
7. In the column labeled Type change the Type from Audio or whatever the default was to Html
8. In the column labeled Name, give it the name of the Tool
   • Important golden-assets must be named golden-assets
9. Paste the command line options from one of the sections below and modify as necessary
10. Click Groups in the top row of tabs
11. Add the Tool you just added to Programs by finding it, clicking it in the Dictionaries available, then while it's selected, click the > button in the center
12. Arrange the Tool order as necessary (See KanjiEater's Recommended Order)

Zen

ゼン - Jisho.org

Description

Jisho's deconjugation & sentence parsing are top notch. It also has wikipedia entries loaded into it. This tool allows you to use the Jisho Zen Bar monolingually - no need to see English definitions if you don't want to (and you can still use JMDict inside GoldenDict if you do)!

Command Line

Required input

The word or phrase that will be searched on Jisho.org.

Acceptable Value

%GDWORD% , which GoldenDict knows to replace with whatever was searched in the search bar.

Optional timeout (Default 4s)

The amount of time to wait on Jisho.org before considering the search a failure. If Jisho is down or having performance issues this will allow the dictionaries below Zen to load after the timeout (rather than waiting forever).

Acceptable Value

An integer that represents milliseconds. (So 4000 would be 4 seconds)

Example

Requires input.

C:\Users\KanjiEater\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\addons21\247820692\anki-search-win.exe --input %GDWORD% --timeout 4000

Images

画像 - Google Images

Description

Command Line

Required input

The word or phrase that will be searched on Google Images.

Acceptable Value

%GDWORD% , which GoldenDict knows to replace with whatever was searched in the search bar.

Required lang

The amount of time to wait on Jisho.org before considering the search a failure. If Jisho is down or having performance issues this will allow the dictionaries below Zen to load after the timeout (rather than waiting forever).

Acceptable Value

A language code as specified by Google Images, like ja for Japanese images.

Optional images (Default 20 images)

The word or phrase that will be searched on Google Images.

Acceptable Value

The number of images to show. Maximum of 20.

Example

Requires input and lang.

C:\Users\KanjiEater\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\addons21\247820692\goldenimage-win.exe --input %GDWORD% --lang ja --images 20

Anki

暗記 - Anki

Description

Not Currently Released. Will be released in January 2021

Command Line

Required input

The word or phrase that will be searched on Google Images.

Acceptable Value

%GDWORD% , which GoldenDict knows to replace with whatever was searched in the search bar.

Required ankimedia

The path to your media folder.

At the beginning, put file:/// on windows (may differ on other OS waiting on others to confirm)

Then put your full path: C:/Users/KanjiEater/AppData/Roaming/Anki2/SomeProfile/collection.media/

There's a trailing slash at the end collection.media/ to indicate a folder

Finally surround it by quotes as seen in the Example value.

Example Value

--ankimedia 'file:///C:/Users/KanjiEater/AppData/Roaming/Anki2/SomeProfile/collection.media/'

Required fields (Defaults to 'dueDate')

Acceptable Value

Each field must be separated by a space.

Special Fields

Image

Image is the only field that can display images. Please rename your note's Snapshot or other field containing images to Image. It can contain multiple images, which will be shown, but no other field currently supports images being displayed.

Custom Note Type Fields

Can be anything that doesn't conflict with Card Fields.

Examples: Expression, Vocab, Image

Card Fields

Examples: modelName, deckName, dueDate

Here are some examples of the data that AnkiConnect returns:

   "fieldOrder": 0,

   "modelName": "Japanese",

   "ord": 0,

   "deckName": "Shingeki no Kyojin S3",

   "factor": 2500,

   "interval": 7,

   "note": 1598391871574,

   "type": 2,

   "queue": 2,

   "due": 1252,

   "dueDate": "2021-01-07",

   "reps": 18,

   "lapses": 2,

   "left": 1001

Example

--fields dueDate Image Vocab Expression deckName

Required search

The amount of time to wait on Jisho.org before considering the search a failure. If Jisho is down or having performance issues this will allow the dictionaries below Zen to load after the timeout (rather than waiting forever).

Acceptable Value

A valid search in the Anki's search. You should try out your search beforehand to make sure the unique syntax of Anki works in Anki itself before trying it through GoldenDict. Anki Manual: Searching

IMPORTANT!

Make sure to only use single quotes not double quotes inside the query.

Yes: deck:'someDeckName'

No: deck:"someDeckName"

Make sure to wrap the entire query in double quotes so it can be picked up as a single argument by the Tool as a command line argument. Single quotes don't work in Anki though! This program automatically convert your single quotes in your query to double quotes, which will work in Anki. This is as of Anki Version 2.1.25

Yes: --search "deck:'someDeckName'"

No: --search deck:'someDeckName'

--search Example

Important: %GDWORD% gets magically turned into whatever you search inside of GoldenDict's search bar.

This example searches only someDeckName for the search phrase inside of a Vocab field or Expression field in Anki.

--search "deck:'someDeckName' Vocab:*%GDWORD%* OR Expression:*%GDWORD%*"

Optional timeout (Default 4s)

The amount of time to wait on Anki's initial search. Full rendering time might still take longer than 4000ms, and not fail.

Acceptable Value

An integer that represents milliseconds. (So 4000 would be 4 seconds)

Optional ankiconnect (Defaults to AnkiConnect's default http://localhost:8765)

Acceptable Value

A full URI to the AnkiConnect server. This only needs to be changed if your AnkiConnect configuration has been modified.

http://localhost:8765 or any valid URI.

Optional max (Default 1000)

Acceptable Value

Any number. If there are more than this number, you won't know. This number cuts off the search early, which is useful if you search something fundamental like あ or a which might exist in every one of your cards. You can set it to 1000000 if you like, but it'd be slower to render on big searches. Normal searches (with less than 1000 results wouldn't be affected by this input parameter)

Example

Take a deep breath on this one. There's a lot that can go wrong here. Test your anki media path first (Can you copy the the C:/ path into Windows file browser and get to your media?). Test your anki search (Does anki return search results if your replace %GDWORD% with an actual word you want to search?)

Requires input, ankimedia, search, fields.

C:\Users\KanjiEater\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\addons21\247820692\anki-search-win.exe --input %GDWORD% --ankimedia 'file:///C:/Users/KanjiEater/AppData/Roaming/Anki2/KanjiEater/collection.media/' --search "deck:'!優先' Vocab:*%GDWORD%* OR Expression:*%GDWORD%*" --fields dueDate Image Vocab Expression deckName

Frequency

Contained in Anki - Netflix Frequency List

Description

Integrated Frequency Stars:

Coming January 2021

Everything > 89310 is 1 occurrence

Golden Assets

golden-assets - Word Highlighting & More

Description

Golden Assets is requirement to ensure all other Tools in the Toolbelt function properly. Behind the scenes it loads standard libraries (JQuery, etc.) to enable more functionality in the Tools.

For the user, it can do the following:

• Highlight the searched word in the search results

• Remove some English entries from dictionaries like Shin Meikai.

The thought behind removing English entries is that if you want English entries use a J-E dictionary like JMDict, this way you can keep your J-J separate from your J-E dictionaries.

Command Line

input

The word that will be highlighted.

Acceptable Value

%GDWORD% , which GoldenDict knows to replace with whatever was searched in the search bar.

Example

Requires input.

C:\Users\KanjiEater\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\addons21\247820692\goldenassets-win.exe --input %GDWORD%

FAQ

What Order Should I Put my Dictionaries in?

KanjiEater's Recommended Order

KanjiEater's Actual Setup

Numbered entries are hard preferences and bulleted items are optional

1. Zen (ゼン)
2. Images (画像)
3. Shinmeikai (新明解国語辞典　第五版)
4. Daijirin (三省堂　スーパー大辞林)
5. NHK Accent Dict or Anything that will play audio (ＮＨＫ　日本語発音アクセント辞典)

• Daijisen (大辞泉)
• Kanji Etymology (漢字源)
• RTK Style Keywords (漢英字典)

7. JMdict (JMdict)
8. Anki w/ Frequency (暗記)
9. Golden Assets (golden-assets)

Reasoning for the Order

There are a few things to take into consideration:

• Performance
• Usefulness
• Simplicity

Performance

In GoldenDict, the dictionaries load from top to bottom. If a dictionary is slow to loading (but not giving an error), it will block the lower dictionaries from showing potentially. Therefore always put faster Tools at the top and slower tools only on top of content that is worth waiting for.

For example, if your Anki collection is large (like KanjiEaters), you'll want the Anki Tool to be the last Dictionary in the Group.

Or alternatively if you are making the monolingual transition, and want to force yourself to wait slightly longer to view English definitions you could put your English Dictionaries below your Anki Tool (though I find that unnecessary).

Usefulness

Not all dictionaries are created equal.

Images are by far the most useful. Your brain is faster at processing images than text.

Shinmeikai tends to have very concise definitions with less jargon than others, which is why I recommend people use that as their first J-J dictionary.

Daijirin tends to have more precise definitions but at the cost of being more confusing comparitively. Therefore, I use it as a backup to Shinmeikai.

Anki Tool will be extermely useful to you if you have a sentence bank (like one from subs2srs or premade), as it shows the word in contexts that you have encountered from immersion.

Simplicity

I used to have more than 10 different actual J-J dictionaries in GoldenDict. I think this slowed down my monolingual transition due to the overwhelming amount of content that will load.

Instead, I recommend always referring to Images first for the reasons stated in Usefulness.

If Anki found a result you've learned, then check that, as it should jog your memory.

Otherwise, read Shinmeikai.

If you still don't understand you can explore your other dictionaries or do recursive look ups on words you didn't understand in Shinmeikai.

You can always refer to JMdict for translations of words with one-to-one correlations.

Support

If you find my tools useful please consider supporting via Patreon. I have spent countless hours to make these useful for not only myself but other's as well and am now offering them completely 100% free.

If you can't contribute monetarily please consider following on: