dictionary-format.txt

This is a quick write-up of the dictionary file format, v7.
v6 is troublesome as it relies on Java serialization and thus
I won't even attempt to document it.
This hasn't been checked for correctness and likely has some bugs.
Also, I really should have used some standard format for writing this...

===========================================

Some basic types:

[Short]
  2 bytes: big-endian, signed value (note: negative values generally not used here)

[Int]
  4 bytes: big-endian, signed value (note: negative values generally not used here)

[Long]
  8 bytes: big-endian, signed value (note: negative values generally not used here)


[String]
  [Short]: string length
  n bytes: string, modified UTF-8, n is value from previous element
           note: no zero termination

======================================================

[Dictionary]

[Int]: version, fixed value 7
[Long]: file creation time (in milliseconds since Jan. 1st 1970)
[String]: dictionary information (human-readable)

list_of([source])
list_of([pair_entry], block size 64, compressed)
list_of([text_entry])
list_of([html_entry], block size 64, compressed)
list_of([html_entry_data], block size 128, compressed)
list_of([index])

[String]: string "END OF DICTIONARY" (length value 17)


Note: block size and compression flags is only what
the dictionary generation currently uses and seems
a good compromise between performance and size for
wiktionary content. It is not a requirement
of the file format.

==============================

[varInt]

Much of the data inside the dictionary uses a varInt format
(variable length integer), always stored in big-endian,
which can take on of these forms:
1 byte: value in 0x0 - 0x7F range.
2 bytes: value in 0x80 - 0x3FFF range, offset by 0x8000
3 bytes: value in 0x4000 - 0x1FFFFF range, offset by 0xC00000
4 bytes: value in 0x200000 - 0xFFFFFFF range, offset by 0xE0000000
5 bytes: all other values, including negative, written as is with the value
0xF0 prepended in the first byte.

For decoding, the number of leading 1s in the first byte is the overall
length - 1.
Note that this scheme would allow storing an even larger range of values
in the 5-byte variant and can be extended to arbitrary length, however
that is not currently implemented.

===========================

All list_of entries describe a list of elements.
These elements can have variable size, thus an index (table-of-contents, TOC)
is needed.
To reduce the cost of this table and enable more efficient compression,
multiple entries can be stored in a block that gets one single index entry.
I.e. it is only possible to do random-access to the start of a block,
seeking to elements further inside the block must be done via reading.
Caching should be used to reduce the performance impact of this (so
that when entries 5, 4, 3 etc. of a block are read sequentially,
parsing and decompression is done only once).

These lists have the following base format:

[varInt]: number of entries in the list (must be >= 0) (<size>)
[varInt]: compression block size (in entries) (must be >= 1) (<blockSize>)
[varInt]: flags. Currently only bit 0 used, indicating compression is used

<toc size>=(<size>/<blockSize>)*4 + 4 bytes:
  (note division with rounding up if not divisible)
  table-of-contents.
  [Int] offset value for each block of entries.
  Followed by a final [Int] offset value to the end of the list data (<end offset>).
  Each offset is relative to the start of this block.
  Note that currently for simplicity Java int type is used
  to process these values, even though negative values make no sense.
  This limits the maximum amount of data to around 2GB.

<end offset>-<toc size> bytes:
  entry data

If compression is enabled, the data for each block is
deflate compressed.
Note that this is really raw deflate, not e.g. gzip,
so neither header nor footer.
There is also no decompressed size, so to decompress
the start of the next block must be used to find the end
of the compressed data and signal the end of input to the
inflater, and whatever data the inflater produces is the
decompressed input (note: this might be an implementation
detail, you might need the decompressed size to decompress
and parse the contained data, but it prevents things like
the inflater overreading and producing spurious errors).

==========================================================

[source]

[String]: name of source, e.g. "enwiktionary"
[Int]: number of entries from that source (I kind of wouldn't rely on that one
being useful/correct...)

========================================================

[pair entry]

[varInt]: source index (see list_of([source]))
[varInt]: number of pairs in this entry (<num_pairs>)
<num_pairs> times:
  [String]: in first language
  [String]: in second language (possibly empty)

=================================================

[text_entry]

[varInt]: source index (see list_of([source]))
[String]: text

===========================================

[html_entry]

[varInt]: source index (see list_of([source]))
[String]: title for HTML entry

====================================

[html_entry_data]

[varInt]: length of data in bytes (<len>)
<len> bytes: HTML page data, UTF-8 encoded

=====================================

[index]

Note: this structure is used for binary search.
It is thus critical that all entries are correctly
sorted.
The sorting is according to libicu, however as Java
and Android versions do not match special hacks
have been added, like ignoring "-" for the comparison
(unless that makes them equal, then they are
compared including the dash).

[String]: index short name
[String]: index long name
[String]: language ISO code (sort order depends on this)
[String]: ICU normalizer rules to apply for sorting/searching
1 byte: swap pair entries (if != 0, this index is for the second language entries in [pair_entry])
[Int]: number of main tokens (?)
list_of([index_entry], block size 32, compressed)
[varInt]: stop list size <stoplist_size>
<stoplist_size> times:
    [String]: stop list words
uniform_list_of([row])


with uniform_list_of:
[Int]: number of entries in list <num_entries>
[Int]: size of entry <entry_size>
<num_entries>*<entry_size> bytes: data


================================================

[index_entry]

[String]: token
[varInt]: start index into uniform_list_of([row])
[varInt]: number of rows covered
1 byte: <has_normalized>
if <has_normalized> != 0:
  [String]: normalized token
[varInt]: <num_html_entries>
<num_html_entries> times:
  [varInt]: index into list_of([html_entries])/list_of([html_entries_data])

=======================================

[row]

1 byte: highest 3 bits <type>, lowest 5 bits additional high bits for next value (bits 16 - 20)
[Short]: lowest 16 bit of index

<type> means:
1: index into list_of([pair_entry])
2: index into list_of([index_entry]) (mark as "main word header" entry)
3: index into list_of([text_entry])
4: index into list_of([index_entry]) (mark as "extra info/translation" entry)
5: index into list_of([html_entry])/list_of([html_entry_data])