Two simultaneous instances

[Racachaquero]

I'm trying to open two instances of GoldenDict because I use more than one dictionary all the time, constantly, and specially the scan popup for different languages/dictionaries.

How could do this?

By the way, I use Ubuntu GNU/Linux and I already trying opening two instances but I couldn't so far.

Thanks.

[Abs62]

GD don't allow multiple instances.

[Racachaquero]

Yes, that's the problem I'm trying to solve/workaround.

Any help would be appreciated!

[francesinha]

Digging this up...

Hi! Any chance this has changed? I'd like to use two different versions of Goldendict, version 1.5.0-RC-264-g53d1bdd (14 March 2014) for about 70 DSL files, as I like that version of wildcard search best; and then for the rest of my dictionaries, the latest version of Goldendict. Is there any way to make the configuration folder point elsewhere, to have two different "config" files and two different "index" folders?

Thanks


ETA: could the portable mode maybe help me? Like, if I used one version of GD as an "installed" program, and the other version as a portable program, maybe? And is there any doc about the portable mode online, or do I need to reinstall a recent version again to access the help?

EDIT 2: yes, in theory, using one of the Goldendicts in portable mode could work, except:
1) I'd need to duplicate the folder of dictionaries I wanna hit with the older Goldendict: I tried creating hard links, but it didn't work. It's lucky that folder's size is on the smaller side...
2) I can't run both Goldendicts at the same time. I tried renaming the EXEs as 2014_03 and 2018_06, but no luck so far.
***
I'm gonna look into running one of the instances sandboxed... Haven't used sandboxing in years, wish me luck! I'll report back, hopefully with good news...

[francesinha]

Okay, well, problem solved for me at least!

I'll document the whole thing here in case it can be useful to someone:

I moved all my dictionaries, including the DSL ones, from D:\path\Goldendict\ to D:\path\Goldendict\GoldenDict-1.5.0-RC2-311-g15062f7_(QT_486)\content.

I copied my usual big "config" file over the small one that resided in the "portable" folder, to keep all my groups, website URLs, etc.

I opened GD 2018 and let it index my dictionaries, which took 36 minutes for 499 dictionaries/3,41 GB (resulting indexes: 398 files, 2,3 GB).

I changed all the preferences I needed to while GD 2018 was running not sandboxed.

I closed GD 2018.

I edited GD 2014's "config" file to provide it with a path that pointed to an empty directory, so it wouldn't try to reindex everything when I opened it.

I opened GD 2014, and edited the path so it would only go look at and index my DSL files. That took 25 minutes for 67 dictionaries/177 MB (resulting indexes: 67 files, 1,9 GB).

I changed the theme to Lingvo Blue so I could distinguish easily between both GDs.

I kept GD 2014 open, and I used Sandboxie to run GD 2018 sandboxed.

=> both Goldendicts can be run at the same time, and look at the same DSL folder, with no problem, it seems. And there was no disk space wasted by duplicating dictionary folders (the indexes are another issue, though...). Now I have access to the best of both worlds! Plus, using two instances of the program is just faster than it was to constantly switch groups between my offline DSLs and my online dictionaries! I'm a happy camper.

[francesinha]

I'm not used to sandboxing, so I ran into a few issues, and discovered the following:

1) When you're running Goldendict not sandboxed in order to change your config, and then run it sandboxed again, if the settings don't update according to what you just did, you need to do a right-click on the name of the sandbox and choose "Delete contents" before you try to run Goldendict sandboxed again. Otherwise, Sandboxie will keep the old "config" file from when you first ran the program sandboxed.

2) It might be simpler to use the purely offline Goldendict inside the sandbox, and run the Goldendict that goes online outside the sandbox: otherwise, when you click a link, Sandboxie will duplicate your browser profile to open a new, sandboxed instance of your browser...

Now that I've fixed those two things, it all works perfectly.