A lot of feature requests and several bugs

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Hello, first of all thank you very much for this outstanding dictionary application.

Now, let's talk about features and bugs I wish to be added and fixed in the future GoldenDict releases:

Features:

1. Popup window should contain a button "Show in the main window". When clicking it, the main window should appear with the same article.
2. Popup window should contain a button "Stop selection scanning"/"Disable Scan Popup". I think this option is self explanatory.
3. Make "Close to tray" shortcut user configurable. Ctrl + F4 is a very difficult keys combination to reach/press.
4. Introduce a user configurable auto-translation/search while typing time interval, e.g. by default after 500ms the entered word should be automatically translated. It's very tiresome to press "Enter" every time you enter a word.
5. Article and list of articles font face should be separately user configurable (who knows, maybe I like Impact )
6. Article search (Ctrl + F) should have an option "Highlight all occurrences" (of the found word).
7. Add a global user configurable shortcut to restore the main window (after e.g. it was minimized or hidden to systray).
8. Improve history management:

• Old words should never be dismissed (or make it user configurable, like remember the last 1000 translated words).
• File -> History dialog then must show entries this way:
  History ([] are sub-menus).
  [2010]->[10]->[20]->List of words.
  ->[10]->[21]->List of words.
  ->[09]->[01]->List of words.
  Today's word 1.
  Today's word 2.
  Today's word 3.
  Today's word 4.

9. Add statistics. Quite often we forget the words which we rarely translate, so if you implement request number 8, then it is worth calculating and showing words translation stats in any form: e.g. a large window where words are sorted by number of translations.
10. Add an "X" button before/after the word look up edit field - in Unix you can paste a word from clipboard using middle mouse click. So, right now before pasting a new word you need to erase the previous one using keyboard which is very inconvenient.

Bugs:
1. Please, introduce a small delay (say, 300-500ms, probably user configurable) before showing a popup window for a certain key combination, not to interfere with global shortcuts. E.g. I've set my "Show popup window" shortcut to Meta Win (I use Linux). At the same time I have a global shortcut Win+R which shows KDE's "Run Command" window. Unfortunately right now if there's a new word in clipboard I cannot use any Win+<Button> shortcuts, GoldenDict intercepts Win Meta and prevents me from using my global keys combinations.
2. If an article doesn't have an associated wave(sound) resource, "Pronounce the word" button shouldn't be shown or it should be made inactive/gray.
3. Forvo live pronunciation doesn't work for me. I'm using Fedora 13 and GoldenDict 20100804 git415f35e (goldendict-0.9.0-14.20100804git415f35e.fc13.i686.rpm). For any word I always get "The referenced resource failed to download." error message. Needed to add "en" to the list of language codes.

Please, update this message/thread when you implement these features or fix the bugs.

Thank you!

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Forvo is now fixed, I don't know why.

Probably it's because I've added "en" to the list of language codes. At least there must be a hint that for English you need to add "en".

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

About bug 1.

There's no need to introduce any delay. GoldenDict should only show a popup after the key has been released and only if it was the only key that was released.

So, if one presses "Win" and releases it, then a popup should be shown. If one presses "Win" and then upon release we detect an extra key, then certainly a pop up should be suppressed.

Thank you.

[chulai]

Hi, I was about to post a feature requests list when I found this post. So, I'm going to reference the original post. Forget me if I compare GoldenDict to other dictionaries look up programs.


Features:
1) +1. This is similar to Lingoes and I think is a nice-to-have feature.
3) +1. I couldn't agree more. I see GoldenDict more as an utility than a program: always available at a shortcut key, you use it to understand something and you want to hide it right away until next call. I would suggest to use ESC (additionally to Ctrl + F4) to close the main window (which would be consistent with the scan popup) and make it user configurable.
4) +1. I faced the same usability issue, not a big deal, though.
5) I didn't see any option in Preferences window for this. I was thinking about the ability to create custom templates or modify existing ones. As far as I know this is not possible because I couldn't find the template files for "Default" and "Lingvo" in the program folder.
6) +1. Find functionality is already great as it is.
7) This already exists under Preferences > Hotkeys. I have to admit that the default shortcut was of little help so I changed it to Ctrl + 1 + 1 which I can performe it with just the left hand. I was glad to find that I can use the same shorcut to show and hide the main window, effectively overcoming the issue #3.
8) +1. Also, it might be useful to have an option in preferences to allow the main window to show the last entry of the scan popup in the word look up field.

More features:
11) Is there any way to provide an icon for custom web dictionaries (Preferences > Sources > Websites)? They all share the same globe icon. A picture is worth a thousand words.
12) I noticed that you can use Ctrl + click (or enter key) to open the look up search on a new tab (on the same way as any browser). It would be great if that can be user configurable. I've been using Opera browser for the last 10 years and the standard there is to use Shift.
13) Open the main window with a combination of keyboard and mouse, e.g. Ctrl + right click. As the Babylon translator. This would be nice to have because the scan/ocr is not 100% accurate and I found more useful to quickly open the main window and start typing the term I want to look up.
14) Option to easily omit a dictionary from the result window (same as option under Dictionaries > Sources). This is similar to Babylon translator.
15) Option to easily sort dictionaries from the result window. This is similar to Babylon translator.
14) Option to use small icons in toolbar of main window.


More bugs:
4) Sounds don't work for howjsay.com, dictionary.com or other online dictionaries. It's weird but both sites hide the trigger button/link as if they were intentionally blocking GoldenDict. It does work with Google En-En (Collins) online dictionary.
5) Acronym Finder web site is redirecting to open on a new window. I guess is using something like if (top.location != location) { top.location.href = document.location.href ; }. Is there any way to prevent custom websites from using those tricks?
6) The pin in popup setting is not remembered across restarts.
7) The same "spanish english.bgl" dictionary shows "adv." and "n." marks before the term translated in Babylon but doesn't in GoldenDict.


Finally, I want to thanks the developer and contributors of this great program. I think is the best of its type and, being open source, I see it has great potentials to be even better.

BTW, I'm using the GoldenDict 1.0.1 portable version.

[Gloggy]

3) +1. I couldn't agree more. I see GoldenDict more as an utility than a program: always available at a shortcut key, you use it to understand something and you want to hide it right away until next call. I would suggest to use ESC (additionally to Ctrl + F4) to close the main window (which would be consistent with the scan popup) and make it user configurable.

Thanks, Julian, for the change w.r.t. ESC binding. Just a quick question for you. Would it be possible to make ESC also work when tray icon is totally disabled (I prefer that way on Windows 7). Ideally, ESC would just minimize the main window in such cases.

[v_2e]

1. Popup window should contain a button "Show in the main window". When clicking it, the main window should appear with the same article.

This is a definitely must-have feature. I ask for it too.

5. Article and list of articles font face should be separately user configurable (who knows, maybe I like Impact )
6. Article search (Ctrl + F) should have an option "Highlight all occurrences" (of the found word).
7. Add a global user configurable shortcut to restore the main window (after e.g. it was minimized or hidden to systray).
8. Improve history management:
9. Add statistics. Quite often we forget the words which we rarely translate, so if you implement request number 8, then it is worth calculating and showing words translation stats in any form: e.g. a large window where words are sorted by number of translations.

These are not so critical, but are also very nice to have, to my mind.

[chulai]

I guess It can be done. I would give it a check after I finish with the spanish translation.

3) +1. I couldn't agree more. I see GoldenDict more as an utility than a program: always available at a shortcut key, you use it to understand something and you want to hide it right away until next call. I would suggest to use ESC (additionally to Ctrl + F4) to close the main window (which would be consistent with the scan popup) and make it user configurable.

Thanks, Julian, for the change w.r.t. ESC binding. Just a quick question for you. Would it be possible to make ESC also work when tray icon is totally disabled (I prefer that way on Windows 7). Ideally, ESC would just minimize the main window in such cases.

[chulai]

1. Popup window should contain a button "Show in the main window". When clicking it, the main window should appear with the same article.

This is a definitely must-have feature. I ask for it too.

I would like to see that also implemented.

5. Article and list of articles font face should be separately user configurable (who knows, maybe I like Impact )
6. Article search (Ctrl + F) should have an option "Highlight all occurrences" (of the found word).
7. Add a global user configurable shortcut to restore the main window (after e.g. it was minimized or hidden to systray).
8. Improve history management:
9. Add statistics. Quite often we forget the words which we rarely translate, so if you implement request number 8, then it is worth calculating and showing words translation stats in any form: e.g. a large window where words are sorted by number of translations.

These are not so critical, but are also very nice to have, to my mind.

5. This shouldn't be difficult to achieve, if it is not possible right now by using CSS stylesheets.
6. Right
7. There is an option for this already: Edit > Preferences > Hotkeys > "Use the following hotkey to show or hide the main window".

[chulai]

I just implemented this feature. Good suggestion.

3) +1. I couldn't agree more. I see GoldenDict more as an utility than a program: always available at a shortcut key, you use it to understand something and you want to hide it right away until next call. I would suggest to use ESC (additionally to Ctrl + F4) to close the main window (which would be consistent with the scan popup) and make it user configurable.

Thanks, Julian, for the change w.r.t. ESC binding. Just a quick question for you. Would it be possible to make ESC also work when tray icon is totally disabled (I prefer that way on Windows 7). Ideally, ESC would just minimize the main window in such cases.

[Gloggy]

I just implemented this feature. Good suggestion.

Thanks!!! It works great.