[Sugar-devel] Dictionary everywhere ?

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 13:27, Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 02:10, Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>> I was wondering about having a global "dictionary" key in sugar, just
>>> like the view source key. When you select a word (or words), and press
>>> that key, a window should pop up, showing the meaning of that word (or
>>> those words). There can be a control panel entry to choose what
>>> dictionary to use (eg: someone might want to have a English-Spanish
>>> dictionary instead of a English-English one, etc).
>>> I did a bit of hacking last weekend to come up with a rough mockup for
>>> the feature.
>>> There's a screencast at
>>> http://people.sugarlabs.org/sayamindu/global_dictionary.ogv
>>> (it works with all activities, and not just with Browse - and the
>>> window pops up when I press the key)
>>> Does it make sense for Sugar ? If it does, I think I can beat it into
>>> shape over the next few weekends.
>>
>> Looks really great, congrats!
>>
>
> Thank you very much :)
>
>> I'm adding it to the topics of the next design meeting, which may be
>> next weekend.
>>
>
> Sounds good. I am looking forward to some ideas about the UI.
>
>> Btw, which external dependencies brings? How would it work in
>> multilingual environments?
>>
>
> Right now I am using python-dictdlib[1] to get the definitions from a
> dictd formatted database[2]. It may probably make sense to turn the
> definition and dictionary management part into a desktop independent
> dbus based library, and have a sugar control panel extension and a
> globalkey/deviceicon extension to leverage that.
> Alternatively, we can also consider using a web-based approach, where
> we query dict.org (this means that we won't have to ship the large
> dictionary dumps) - but I don't want to rely on a internet connection
> being present for this feature to be usable.
>
> As for multilingual environments, I propose to have a control panel
> extension which would let the user choose which dictionary to use. I
> think would be similar to the speech module:
> http://interdimensionmedia.com/scratch/settings-10.jpg

Wouldn't be a bit uncomfortable for bilingual people or those learning
a new language? Or are you suggesting that in the control panel you
would set the languages you will use and then in the alert you would
choose the current one?

Regards,

Tomeu

> Thanks,
> Sayamindu
>
>
>
> [1] http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/python-dictdlib
> [2] http://www.dict.org/w/databases/start
> --
> Sayamindu Dasgupta
> [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
>