Reader Book Lite

A streamlined ebook reader plugin for SiYuan Notes, forked from SiReader.

Supports PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and TXT formats with annotations, bookmarks, dictionary, translation, TTS, and reading themes.

Features

• All SiReader features — unobstructed (no license/activation gates)
• English-only UI (no Chinese strings)
• Default translation target: Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) — switchable per session
• Community-maintained fork

Installation

1. Download the latest release from Releases
2. In SiYuan, go to Settings → Plugins → Import plugin and select the downloaded .zip
3. Enable the plugin

Usage

Open any supported ebook file (PDF, EPUB, MOBI, TXT) from SiYuan's file tree. The reader toolbar provides:

• Highlight/underline/outline text annotations
• Dictionary lookup (long-press or select text)
• Translation — default target is Vietnamese, changeable in the translate panel
• Bookmarks and navigation via table of contents
• TTS read-aloud
• Reading themes (day/night/sepia)

Changes from SiReader

Change	Detail
License gating	Removed — all features free
Activation/upgrade prompts	Removed
Membership settings section	Hidden (binding preserved)
UI language	English-only (~637 string replacements)
Default translation	Vietnamese (vi) instead of Chinese (zh-CN)
Plugin name/version	reader-book-lite v1.0.0

Offline Dictionaries

Reader Book Lite supports StarDict offline dictionaries. You can download and import your own dictionaries to look up words without internet access.

Compatible Dictionary Sources

These sources provide StarDict .ifo/.idx/.dict.dz files that work with the plugin:

Source	Languages	Notes
tudien	English ↔ Vietnamese	Modern dictionaries, HTML definitions
OVDP stardict-dict	Vietnamese ↔ English, Vietnamese ↔ Chinese, English ↔ Chinese	Plain-text format, large word counts
StarDict archive	Many language pairs	classic StarDict collection
FreeDict	Many language pairs	Open-source dictionary collection
Book Reader Dict	Wiktionary-based, many languages	XML format (convert to StarDict)

For Vietnamese users, the recommended dictionaries are:

• tudien-en-vi (EN→VI, 235K words) — best quality
• stardict_en_vi (EN→VI, 387K words) — larger word count
• stardict_vi_en (VI→EN, 42K words) — reverse lookup

How to Import

1. Download a StarDict dictionary. It should contain 3 files with the same base name:

   • your-dict.ifo — metadata (required)
   • your-dict.idx — word index (required)
   • your-dict.dict.dz — compressed definition data (required)

   Some dictionaries ship as .dict (uncompressed). The plugin does not accept .dict files directly. If your dictionary has only .dict, you need to convert it first (see Troubleshooting below).

2. Open SiYuan → Reader Book Lite reader → select any text → click the Dictionary button → click the settings gear in the dictionary panel, or go to Plugin settings → Reader Book Lite → Dictionary.

3. Click Add Dictionary.

4. In the file picker, select all 3 files at once (hold Ctrl or Shift and click each file). You must select .ifo, .idx, and .dict.dz simultaneously.

5. The dictionary is now imported and ready to use immediately — no restart needed. It will appear in the dictionary tab bar when you next look up a word.

Dictionary Order

Dictionaries are queried in the order they appear in the list. The first dictionary that returns a result wins. You can reorder them by clicking Sort in the dictionary settings panel.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Cause	Fix
"No complete dictionary group found"	You didn't select all 3 files, or the filenames don't match	Select .ifo, .idx, and .dict.dz at the same time — all must share the same base name
"Subfield ID should be RA"	The .dict.dz is plain gzip, not proper DictZip format	Use a dictionary that ships with .dict.dz (not .dict), or convert using the script below
"File not found"	File path in config is incorrect	Use the Add Dictionary UI to import — do not place files manually
Dictionary not showing in lookup	Dict is disabled or no results found	Check that the dictionary is enabled (toggle switch) and the word exists in that dictionary

Converting .dict to .dict.dz (Advanced)

If your dictionary ships as .dict (uncompressed), you need to encode it as a proper DictZip file (not plain gzip). Use this Node.js script:

const fs = require('fs');
const zlib = require('zlib');

function makeDictZip(inputPath, outputPath) {
    const raw = fs.readFileSync(inputPath);
    const CHLEN = 8192;
    const chunks = [];
    for (let offset = 0; offset < raw.length; offset += CHLEN) {
        const chunk = raw.subarray(offset, Math.min(offset + CHLEN, raw.length));
        chunks.push(zlib.deflateRawSync(chunk, { level: 9 }));
    }
    const subfieldDataLen = 6 + 2 * chunks.length;
    const xlen = 4 + subfieldDataLen;
    const extra = Buffer.alloc(xlen);
    let off = 0;
    extra[off++] = 0x52; extra[off++] = 0x41; // "RA"
    extra.writeUInt16LE(subfieldDataLen, off); off += 2;
    extra.writeUInt16LE(1, off); off += 2;     // version
    extra.writeUInt16LE(CHLEN, off); off += 2; // chunk length
    extra.writeUInt16LE(chunks.length, off); off += 2; // chunk count
    for (const c of chunks) extra.writeUInt16LE(c.length, off); off += 2;

    const name = outputPath.split(/[\\/]/).pop().replace(/\.dz$/, '') || 'dict';
    const fname = Buffer.from(name, 'utf-8');
    const header = Buffer.alloc(12 + xlen + fname.length + 1);
    off = 0;
    header[off++] = 0x1F; header[off++] = 0x8B; header[off++] = 0x08;
    header[off++] = 0x0C; // FEXTRA | FNAME
    off += 4; // mtime = 0
    header[off++] = 0; header[off++] = 0; // xfl, os
    header.writeUInt16LE(xlen, off); off += 2;
    extra.copy(header, off); off += extra.length;
    fname.copy(header, off); off += fname.length;
    header[off] = 0;
    fs.writeFileSync(outputPath, Buffer.concat([header, ...chunks]));
}

makeDictZip('input.dict', 'output.dict.dz');

Run: node convert.js

Credits

Original plugin: SiReader by mika-si.