EPWING（Japanese: イーピーウィング）is the standard format for electronic dictionaries mainly used for Japanese.^[1] A subset of EPWING V1 is standardized as JIS X 4081 (Retrieval data structure for Japanese electronic publication).^[2]

History

At 1986, Fujitsu, Iwanami Shoten, Sony and Dai Nippon Printing work together to publish a new edition of CD-ROM version of Kōjien. They made a specification called "WING".

At 1988, after CD-ROM is standardized as ISO 9660, the WING specification is renamed to EPWING (Electroic Publishing WING).

File structure

The basic structure of EPWING is as following:

.
└── Catalogs
    └── <Dictionary Name>
        ├── DATA
        │   └── HONMON
        └── GAIJI
            ├── GA16FULL
            └── GA16HALF

The HONMON under DATA contains the index of pictures, audio data and texts. External character data are placed under GAIJI. The file name of external character data may be different between dictionaries.

Softwares

Softwares that are able to read EPWING

• Yomitan A browser extension
• ebviewer

References