While StarDict touts itself as "the best dictionary program for Linux and Windows," it has a serious challenger to the title called GoldenDict. On the face of it, GoldenDict looks like any other dictionary application. But dig deeper, and you'll discover a few rather neat features that make it not only a rather competent dictionary but also an excellent research tool. For starters, GoldenDict supports a wide range of dictionary formats, including StarDict dictionaries, Babylon .BGL files, Dict dictionary files as well as ABBYY Lingvo source files and audio archives. In addition to that, GoldenDict supports MediaWiki-based references, which include both Wikipedia and Wiktionary. But that's not all. Since GoldenDict is based on the WebKit toolkit it can parse and display data from virtually any Web site, so you can use GoldenDict to look up words in many popular online references, as long as they support URL-based queries. GoldenDict's other comfort creatures include Scan Popup and global hotkeys. When the Scan Popup feature is enabled, GoldenDict pops up a dictionary article for the currently selected word, and you can use this functionality in any application. Thanks to the global hotkeys, you can evoke GoldenDict's main window from any application using the specified key combination as well as translate the word in the Clipboard.

GoldenDict

Getting GoldenDict up and running on Linux is not particularly difficult. Download the latest tar.bz2 archive, unpack it, and run the goldendict-bin executable (or use the goldendic.sh script). The project's Web site also provides an excellent English-Russian dictionary, so if you are learning Russian or just need a good Russian dictionary, you might want to grab it as well. To install the dictionary (or any dictionary in one of the supported formats for that matter), choose Edit -> Dictionaries, switch to the Files section, and add the path to the directory containing dictionary files. Press OK, and GoldenDict processes and adds the dictionary. Besides the described feature set, GoldenDict sports two other rather nice touches. The main interface supports tabs, so you have several articles opened at the same time. And the Save article command lets you save the currently viewed article as an HTML file.

No matter whether you are on the market for a good dictionary application or you are looking for a research tool, you should take GoldenDict for a spin. Chances are it becomes an essential tool in your arsenal.