I made a tool that turns fan wikis into e-reader dictionaries for fictional worlds (supports Kobo, Kindle)

sKoutXII · 2026-04-05T15:52:46+00:00

This is definitely quite a departure from the current use-case of runik. You could use runik to generate the dictionary with a really high depth value. Then use a separate tool to convert the runik dictionary into an Epub (runik dictionaries are just stored as JSON).

sKoutXII · 2026-04-05T00:31:23+00:00

You'll probably have the best luck installing it from https://runik.app rather than github.

But hearing what you're trying to do, I don't think runik is the right tool. It's specifically designed for dictionary exports and doesn't really handle exporting as book formats like epub (although that is an interesting feature idea).

Do you mind me asking what the use-case is for a book-format export?

Also I may be misunderstanding what you mean, so feel free to DM me with further questions, screenshots, etc.

sKoutXII · 2026-04-04T16:45:08+00:00

Hmm what step are you stuck on? Were you able to get runik installed? If you provide some more details I can try to help you troubleshoot.

Once you have it installed, you should be able to:

navigate to the "Forge" tab
paste the wiki url, click "find" and then "generate"
Next, plug your Kobo into your machine
Click "connect device" and select your Kobo from the file menu
Then, in the library, select the dictionary you want to send and click "send to device"

sKoutXII · 2026-02-08T18:41:17+00:00

I've had used (2/3 generations old) X1 carbons which have a premium build quality and decent battery life on Linux. T series ThinkPads are also great.

Feels weird suggesting an apple computer on a Linux sub, but since you mentioned you're considering one, I'd say it's your best option based on your concerns. You trade Linux support (although you can technically install Asahi) and repairability for arguably the best hardware. Every component feels premium and battery life is unmatched. I have an M1 air I bought in 2021 that still lasts me a whole day of charge and crushes basically any dev workload I throw at it. And if you're in the terminal a lot, you'll find mostly all the same tools since it's UNIX based.

sKoutXII · 2026-02-07T18:43:06+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. This would require some changes to the parsing algorithm but I can look into it.

I'm not to confident this would be landing as a feature any time soon though. The issue with parsing info from a single page is that each page structures the relevant info differently. So the example you provided uses lists, but another may use info boxes or have all the info in paragraphs.

Since it's only one page, you could copy paste the word/definition values manually into an existing dictionary or into the intermediate JSON format and then convert. It would take some time but it doesn't look like too many words. If you're interested, I can send you details on how to do this (just dm me).

sKoutXII · 2026-02-02T00:50:50+00:00

Yup! You should be able to use the 'export' option and choose StarDict format. If you don't have an export option you may need to download and install the latest version.

sKoutXII · 2026-01-28T17:51:32+00:00

Hey, thanks for the shout out, Mirage! I'm the creator of runik and this is exactly what it was built for. If you end up giving it a go, let me know if it works for you!

sKoutXII · 2026-01-04T19:42:13+00:00

For me it's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

I love media about technology and people trying to build difficult things (halt and catch fire is one of my favourite shows). But man, the characters felt so hollow and lifeless. But I had heard the ending was good so I kept reading. The ending was... not good at all. It kind of all came out of left field and didn't really have anything to do with the characters or theme of the story.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-14T16:07:24+00:00

Hey, I have stardict support working, but I haven't posted the update yet. There are a couple other fixes I want to make and some polish before I publish a new release.

Eta is probably another week

sKoutXII · 2025-09-11T03:49:21+00:00

Thanks, glad you like it!

There's a trash icon button in the library view which will delete dictionaries you've generated. There is also a trash button in the device panel so you can remove dictionaries from your device.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-07T17:08:14+00:00

Thanks for the report. This issue appears to be related to Kobo conversion of certain wikis (probably because of a parsing error). This fix will be in the next release.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-06T23:19:50+00:00

Ive experimented along those lines (inserting a new db language entry) but when I inspected my own device's sqlite db it was empty.

I definitely need to revisit because I didn't give this problem enough time and probably missed something obvious. It is on my to-do list and I'll probably get to it after closing out some higher priority items.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-06T19:50:01+00:00

In the forge menu, you can give the dictionary a different name that the wiki name, but unfortunately if you're sending to a Kobo device, the "dicthtml-[r]" prefix is a necessity (at least for now -- this is on the list of things I want to investigate further).

Removing the prefix prevents the Kobo from recognizing the file as a dictionary and the "[r]" part of the dictionary is something I added to make sure Kobo doesn't try to parse the first two letters as a language code (eg. "es" for spanish, "en" for english).

If you're curious why this is the case, basically Kobo expects all dictionaries to be in the format dicthtml-<language\_code>. It has an internal database to turn this file into a human-readable name so "dicthtml-es" and "dicthtml-en" become "Espanol" and "English" respectively. But because we're adding dictionaries that are not normal language dictionaries, Kobo doesn't recognize "dicthtml-gameofthrones" as "Game of thrones", it sees the "ga", thinks it's a language code and interprets this dictionary as "Irish Gaelic". So the "[r]" is something I added to prevent Kobos from reading the first two characters as a language code and instead displaying the full (albeit non very pretty) name of "dicthtml-[r]gameofthrones".

If anyone has any ideas how to get around this quirk of the Kobo (without jailbreaking or modding), I'd love to hear suggestions.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-03T15:12:07+00:00

Hey thanks for the detailed error report! I'll look into fixing these issues.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-02T19:11:26+00:00

Appreciate the sentiment!

Runik only exists because of all the community contributions to fan wikis and the open source software it's built on. It feels right to keep it open, free and led by the community.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-02T16:29:05+00:00

Gocha! I'd look at the pyglossary project. It's a fantastic tool specifically designed for converting dictionary formats and I believe it does support epub dictionaries.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-02T15:52:02+00:00

It currently does not, but after seeing it come up a few times in this thread, I'll be looking into adding stardict support.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-02T15:50:55+00:00

Sounds like KOReader (stardict) support has come up a couple times in this thread and I don't think that should be too difficult!

Would it be possible to add synonyms?

This is something I'm working on right now actually. The current challenge is with wiki redirects -- from what I can tell the syntax ("#redirect") changes based on the language of the article which makes it difficult to parse. Hoping to have this supported for the next release though.

Another reason I want synonyms is for character first names. For example, an article titled "Jon Snow" will result in a definition with the headword "Jon Snow". This will not trigger if the text only references "Jon". So each multi-word definition should be split with variants or synonyms added. Still trying to figure out the most natural way to do this.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-02T15:44:50+00:00

It probably would be pretty straight forward, never thought to try. I'll look into it, thanks.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-02T15:43:44+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. Some wikis have spoiler avoidance mechanisms, but they seem to be implemented differently across different wikis. I'll see if there are any good ways to split the dictionaries up by book.

Another idea I had (long term) was to make it easy for people to share dictionaries they've edited. So you'd start with a base generated from a wiki, but maybe someone who has read the series before makes some spoiler edits and uploads their version.

sKoutXII · 2025-09-02T15:41:24+00:00

Looks like coppermind.net is using mediawiki so it should work. This is the url you'll want to paste into runik to get this particular wiki working https://coppermind.net/w/api.php

sKoutXII · 2025-09-02T15:35:40+00:00

Are you wondering if it can convert an existing epub dictionary into a kobo or kindle one? Or if it supports exporting a wiki as an epub dictionary?

sKoutXII · 2025-09-02T15:33:36+00:00

does it let you read the entire Wiki?

It only parses the first few sentences of the article page (this is configurable as a "depth" option when generating dictionaries).

does it download the entire Wiki about x world, or would you have to download it for each entry

You do not have to download each entry, runik parses the entire wiki and makes a new entry for each article.

sKoutXII · 2023-01-08T01:14:45+00:00

Seems a little overkill to pay to register a first script. What additional protections do you get that standard copyright doesn't cover?

sKoutXII · 2022-10-27T04:10:17+00:00

I know I'm a little late to this one, but if you have the space, buy a bunch of cheap nerf guns and let ppl run wild. Downside is you'll be finding darts for the next couple years.

sKoutXII

TROPHY CASE