EJQuick

A fast local dictionary search tool for the EIJIRO / WAEIJI English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries, with a desktop GUI, a fzf-style incremental TUI, and a scriptable CLI.

• Linux / Windows / macOS TUI and CLI, single static binary, pure Go (no CGo)
• Linux desktop GUI, Qt 6 Widgets with native incremental search and IME input
• Converts the purchased dictionary TXT into SQLite once, then searches it read-only
• Prefix search on a B-tree index, substring search on FTS5 trigram
• Incremental search that updates on every keystroke

EJQuick ships no dictionary data. Bring your own legally purchased EIJIRO / WAEIJI TXT files.

Install

Download a binary for your platform from GitHub Releases, or build from source:

make build                    # current platform, into tmp/
make build VERSION=v0.1.0     # optionally stamp a local build

Or with plain go build:

VERSION=$(git describe --tags --always --dirty)
go build -ldflags "-X github.com/simosako/ejquick/internal/buildinfo.Version=$VERSION" ./cmd/ejquick
go build -ldflags "-X github.com/simosako/ejquick/internal/buildinfo.Version=$VERSION" ./cmd/ejquick-build

Quick start

1. Build a dictionary database from a purchased TXT file (CP932 encoded):

ejquick-build --type eiwa EIJIRO144-10.TXT
ejquick-build --type waei WAEIJI-144-10.TXT

By default, databases are written as eiwa.sqlite3 or waei.sqlite3 in the platform data directory under ejquick/; missing directories are created automatically. Use --output <path> to choose another location. Progress and the successful output path go to stderr; the database is built in a temporary file, validated read-only, and only then published atomically. --force replaces an existing database; --compact additionally runs VACUUM for a smaller file.

2. Search:

ejquick          # start the TUI

Type to search. Up/Down (or Ctrl-P/Ctrl-N) move the selection, PageUp/PageDown scroll long entries, Tab switches between the English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries, Ctrl-C quits.

Desktop GUI

The Linux GUI is currently built separately from the portable TUI and CLI:

make build-gui QT_PREFIX=/path/to/qt
tmp/ejquick-gui

build-gui places ejquick-gui and its required sibling ejquick-build in tmp/ with the same product version. Release GUI builds use Qt 6.11.2, MIQT v0.14.0, and Go 1.27.1. The desktop must provide a font with CJK glyphs; EJQuick uses the system font and font fallback without bundling or overriding fonts.

Create the relocatable Linux GUI archive with:

make package-gui-linux \
  QT_PREFIX=/path/to/qt \
  QT_PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/path/to/qt/lib/pkgconfig \
  FCITX5_PLUGIN=/path/to/qt-compatible/libfcitx5platforminputcontextplugin.so

The target writes tmp/dist/ejquick-gui_<version>_linux_amd64.tar.zst and bundles Qt libraries, Wayland/XCB platform plugins, Compose/IBus/Fcitx5 input context plugins, desktop metadata, and runtime license notices. Fcitx5 is built separately from Qt, so FCITX5_PLUGIN must point to a plugin built for the exact Qt version used for packaging when it is not under Qt's plugin directory. Host glibc, display-server, graphics, font, DBus, and input-method daemon libraries are intentionally not bundled.

The self-contained Linux archive is designed to run bin/ejquick-gui directly. Its optional install-desktop.sh and uninstall-desktop.sh scripts only add or remove the per-user desktop menu entry. If the extracted directory is moved, run install-desktop.sh again from the new location.

CLI search

ejquick english
ejquick --dictionary waei 経済
ejquick --format jsonl --limit 20 care

Options:

-d, --dictionary <eiwa|waei>    dictionary to search
-c, --config <path>             config file path
    --limit <1..500>            result limit for this process
    --format <plain|jsonl>      output format (CLI search only)
    --debug                     enable debug logging to the log file
-h, --help                      show help
-v, --version                   show version

Exit codes follow the grep convention: 0 results found, 1 no results, 2 error.

Configuration

Optional TOML file (created by you, not by EJQuick):

Linux:   ~/.config/ejquick/config.toml
macOS:   ~/Library/Application Support/ejquick/config.toml
Windows: %AppData%\ejquick\config.toml

[eiwa]
database = "~/.local/share/ejquick/eiwa.sqlite3"

[waei]
database = "~/.local/share/ejquick/waei.sqlite3"

[search]
default_dictionary = "eiwa"
max_results = 50

Databases omitted from the config default to the platform data directory under ejquick/. max_results must be 1..500.

Logging

Errors are appended to a log file (best effort; a broken log never stops the app):

Linux:   ~/.local/state/ejquick/ejquick.log
macOS:   ~/Library/Application Support/ejquick/ejquick.log
Windows: %AppData%\ejquick\ejquick.log

Run with --debug to also log every search (dictionary, request ID, query, result count, elapsed time). The builder writes its fixed-line progress to stderr only and does not use the log file.

Development

Run the standard checks and artificial-data benchmarks with:

make test
make test-race
make test-desktop
make vet
make tidy-check
make bench
make release-check

make release-check requires GoReleaser v2.18.0 or later. It runs a local snapshot and does not publish anything.

See bench/README.md for reproducible real-data measurements. The helper only reads the purchased TXT path supplied to it; all generated SQLite databases and reports stay under the ignored tmp/ directory and are never added to the repository.

Releasing

EJQuick uses one Semantic Versioning product version for all executables and frontends. Database schema_version, normalization_version, and fts_version values are compatibility versions managed independently from the product version.

The release Git tag is the source of truth. After the release commit has been reviewed, run the project-local mise task and enter the desired version when prompted:

mise run release
# Enter a version such as v0.1.0 when prompted.

The task checks that the working tree is clean and that the tag does not already exist, then runs the equivalent commands:

git tag -a v0.1.0 -m "EJQuick v0.1.0"
git push origin v0.1.0

Pushing a v* tag runs the complete CI workflow. If CI succeeds, GoReleaser builds Linux, Windows, and macOS archives for amd64 and arm64, stamps the same tag into both executables, and publishes the archives and checksums.txt to GitHub Releases. Ordinary branch pushes do not run CI; pull requests and manual workflow dispatches still do.

License

MIT. See LICENSE. Third-party notices: THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.

EJQuick's MIT license covers only this project's code and documentation. The dictionary TXT data you convert, and the SQLite databases you build from it, remain governed by the terms of your dictionary purchase and must not be redistributed.