LDOCE5 Viewer X

July 5, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

LDOCE5 Viewer X is a desktop dictionary viewer for the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5th Edition.

LDOCE5 Viewer X is a cross-platform rewrite of the original ciscorn/ldoce5viewer for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

The original version was written in Python, but this version is implemented in C# and Avalonia.

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Supported Platforms

  • Windows x64 and arm64
  • Linux x64 and arm64
  • macOS x64 and arm64

For other systems and architectures, you can build it yourself.

Features

  • Implemented all features found in the original version, except for printing
  • Native desktop builds for Windows, Linux, and macOS by .NET AOT
  • Supports dark mode that adapts to the operating system
  • Stable audio playback by miniaudio
  • Customizable appearance such as fonts and sizes

Getting Started

  1. Download the package for your operating system from the release artifacts:

    • Windows: extract LDOCE5ViewerX-win-*.7z, then run LDOCE5ViewerX.exe.
    • Linux: make LDOCE5ViewerX-linux-*.AppImage executable, then run it.
    • macOS: extract LDOCE5ViewerX-osx-*.7z, then move LDOCE5 Viewer X.app to /Applications or another folder.

  2. On macOS, remove quarantine attributes from the extracted app before the first launch:

    xattr -cr /Applications/LDOCE5\ Viewer\ X.app

  3. Prepare the ldoce5.data folder from your purchased Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5th Edition DVD.

  4. Start LDOCE5 Viewer X. If no usable index exists, the Create Index dialog opens automatically. You can also open it later from Viewer > Recreate Index....

  5. In the Create Index dialog, click Browse... and select the ldoce5.data folder itself, not its parent folder. Then click Start Indexing and wait.

  6. After indexing finishes, search for a word to confirm that entries display. Press F1 to open the built-in help window and view the keyboard shortcuts.

Requirements

Development

Install these on every development machine:

Publishing

Development Build

Run commands from the repository root.

dotnet run --project LDOCE5ViewerX
dotnet build LDOCE5ViewerX

To build and run during development from an IDE, open LDOCE5ViewerX.slnx and use the LDOCE5ViewerX project as the startup project.

The recommended IDEs are Visual Studio or JetBrains Rider.

Packaging

Packaging uses PowerShell 7 scripts through just. GitHub Actions calls these same recipes.

just publish-win-x64
just publish-win-arm64
just publish-linux-x64
just publish-linux-arm64
just publish-osx-x64
just publish-osx-arm64

Development Notes

It has been rewritten primarily using Codex GPT-5.5. I have manually provided instructions, verified functionality, and adjusted the code carefully.

License

LDOCE5 Viewer X is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later, matching the original LDOCE5 Viewer license. See LICENSE.

This project is a C# / Avalonia rewrite of the original LDOCE5 Viewer by Taku Fukada. Copyright and attribution notices are listed in NOTICE.txt.

Libraries

Runtime application libraries: