Lute alternatives - jzohrab/lute GitHub Wiki
This documentation is deprecated/obsolete. Lute v2 has been replaced by Lute v3, a full Python rewrite. Please see the Lute v3 manual which includes notes on installation. If you have Lute v2, you can easily migrate to v3. Thank you!
Sensible question, so here's my take:
If you just want to use something, I'd recommend Lingq! It's a paid solution, they deal with the software and the headaches, you just pay for it and use it.
If you want to run your own thing on your machine, the options I can see are:
- The original LWT project is, as far as I can tell, still massively popular. Even if the code is old, and it might have bugs or be slow, it has the advantage of being tried-and-tested, and you might find people who can help you with issues.
- Hugo Fara's LWT fork has taken the original project and refined the code, but has kept the same features and overall design/architecture.
- FLTR, a Java project by the same author of LWT.
There are a few key features that Lute has that aren't in LWT:
- support for "parent terms". In Lute, I can say that a given term (e.g. "yo hablo" (I speak) for Spanish) has a parent term ("hablar", the infinitive form "to speak"). The information in the parent term is made available for child term lookups.
- images: in Lute, you can attach images to terms. This is helpful and fun.
Secondary reasons:
- it feels faster and lighter than LWT, and it has just enough features to be useful. The UI's a bit leaner, if that matters to you.
More geeky reasons, yet still important to me:
I believe that Lute is a useful contribution to the language-learning-software landscape. It implements the core features of LWT in a fraction of the size of the LWT codebase, using modern PHP tools, and with automated tests for stability. This might not mean much to regular peeps who just want to learn languages. :-) At least, at the moment ... But if you are into software, like the idea of LWT, and want to contribute to an open-source project, I believe that Lute is a compelling place to start.
I am currently using Lute to read texts in Spanish, and it works great. It should work very well for other left-to-right languages like French, German, English, Italian, etc, and can handle Japanese and classical Chinese.
See When not to use Lute.