[Sugar-devel] Dictionary everywhere ?

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 7:38 AM, Benjamin M. Schwartz
<bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
>> 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).
>
> I think it's a great idea, very much in the spirit of the the Sugar UI design.
>
> I see a strong parallel to the proposed Text to Speech function, which
> would allow a user to highlight any text and then ask Sugar to pronounce
> it, or type text into a field provided by a frame device.  In fact, I
> think that the Dictionary should also be a frame device, and the popup
> window should be a "notification" palette connected to that device.
>

Sounds like a good idea. I think we can discuss this during the next
design meeting.

> The question of key bindings is very interesting.  In both cases, the
> functionality is useful to many users, but not all, so assigning a
> permanent binding seems excessive.  However, clicking through the frame
> greatly increases the effort needed to use the feature.  As a compromise,
> perhaps we can assign keyboard shortcuts of the form <Frame key>+<letter>
> to frame devices.  This formula seems clarifying to the user, while also
> avoiding the hotly contested Ctrl- and Alt- shortcut spaces.
>

At the moment, the implementation has been done in the lines of view
source, but I think that having a frame object also would increase the
"discoverability" of the feature as well.

Thanks,
Sayamindu

-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]