新华字典 as CSV download available?

Question

Here I can download the CC-CEDICT database, which backs the MDBG project's web site, as an CSV file. Personally, I am a fan of the great work of the MDBG project.

Now, I am evaluating dictionaries for a project which creates statistics for 普通话 texts like counting frequencies of words, characters, radicals, etc. The MDBG database maps characters to the 214 Kangxi radicals similar to the Kangxi dictionary, while the 新华字典 defines only 189 radicals. So, as input for the tool I'd prefer a database with specific 新华字典 contents or else the algorithm will count hits for radicals that don't exist in the 新华字典.

Does anybody know whether there is a legal resource available for download for the 新华字典 and/or the 现代汉语大词典, similar to the CC-CEDICT database?

Any hint would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

First, there is no legal source to download both of them.
More specific, they're content of copyright. The Commercial Press has made great effort to ban online version to protect its interest. So you can hardly find the website which is providing PDF or other format.

However, there's another way, but you'd pay a little money(~$2). Visit the greatest online market in China, Taobao(Taobao.com), search for the sellers who provide the electronic version book finding service. You can ask them on Ali Wangwang.

As far as I know, there are no latest version(6) available and most of downloadable are in PDF format. Some claim they're, but actually not. You may try this, it contains a mdb database which is 100MB, it's easy to convert it into CSV. I haven't tested whether it is the content of 现代汉语词典, because I'm using Linux OS.
For 新华字典, there are too many apps named as the name. You can search for some android app, unpack apk installer, often you should find a large file in it, and often it's in SQLite 3 format.

All the methods I mentioned above are not tested, you'd better carefully try them.
I also tried to find such files but I gave up because it's hard to deal with, both in legal and technology.
I finally selected an alternative, HanDian. They provided a series of contents and tools for free. Part of them can be found here. Though it's chm format, but to organize the content just a matter of extract and regexp, no any OCR or any other things involved.