Skip to main content

KDE's kdict, dict.org and Firefox

I haven't used the KDE desktop since the release of KDE4, instead relying on IceWM. and while I may go back to it, I miss one of the desktop applets, kdict. Using it to check a definition, spelling, synonyms, etc. was very handy.

Since I use Fierfox as my primary browser, it made sense to consider using a bookmarklet. Bookmarklets are small pieces of javascript code that can be treated as a bookmark. When clicking the bookmark, the code will be executed. I modified a bookmarklet for Dictionary.com to use the dict.org dictionary like kdict did.

To make one for yourself, right-click on the Firefox Bookmarks toolbar, then select "New Bookmark", then fill in the following information. The javascript is all on one line.

Name: Dict.org
Location: javascript:void(q=prompt('Dict.org%20Search:',getSelection()));if(q)%20void(location.href='http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query='%20+%20escape(q))

The Database=* value mimics that used by kdict and checks the word with all the available dictionaries at dict.org.

To avoid replacing the current tab, right-click on the bookmarklet to open it in another tab. If someone knows javascript well enough to make it open that way automatically, I'd appreciate it. Ideally, one should just highlight the word and send it to dict.org, but I don't know how to do that yet.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

DOS4GW.EXE Version 2.01a and Alternative DOS Extenders

DOS4GW.EXE The Tenberry DOS extender DOS4GW.EXE was used by many early DOS games. I still enjoy playing many of these games and DOS4GW.EXE is usable with DOSBox , so they can be played on Linux. However, the version of DOS4GW.EXE that was included with the game was whatever was current at the time. The most recent version that includes many bugfixes that possibly affected the games when used with DOSBox have been fixed in the latest version, 2.01a. It's not free at US$49, but you can downloaded it here . Simply substitute it for whatever version of DOS4GW.EXE your game provided and enjoy the bug-fixed goodness. Tenberry also makes a "high-performance" "pro" version of DOS4GW.EXE, but it costs $300. I think that they could sell quite a few of these to hobby users (since, you know, DOS is dead) for US$5. Open Souce to the Rescue There are better performing, free and Open Source alternatives available and worth a look. DPMI Explained Let's unders...

Unpack those .EXE game files from GOG.com (Plus other un-packers)

I just came upon innoextract today. I have many of the wonderful games from GOG.com, some of which have native Linux Clients. Before now, I've had to use PlayOnLinux or Crossover to install these for use with WINE, then add the Linux client. InnoSetup as a way to create an installer to install the games on Windows.  Daniel Scharrer has created innoextract to allow the unpacking of those archives on a non-Windows platform. The website provides information on using innoextract , but this information from the page is very useful: GOG.com Installers GOG.com installers with a 2.x.x version number on the download page or in the filename use InnoSetup 5.5.0 and cannot be extracted by innoextract 1.2 and older. Older installers use InnoSetup 5.2.3 and usually have no version in the filename. Some GOG.com multi-part installers with version 2.1.x or higher use RAR archives (renamed to .bin) to store the game data. These files are not part of the InnoSetup installer and require...

Lighttpd and Simple Virtual Hosts Configuration.

I manage some websites for car clubs I belong to. They had been paying for web hosting and had some volunteers who knew not quite enough about maintaining and administrating the sites. Having some prior experience with similar small club sites, I volunteered to host them and admin them. With the first site, the pages were a train wreck of PHP and making even a small change on the existing pages caused the site to crash. Way back around the turn of the last century, I had a few Linux user’s groups that wanted a website, so I worked with Cynthia Manuel of Flamingo Internet Navigators to make a template for a web site that would be easy to maintain and easy to add static content. She developed templates that relied on Server Side Includes (SSI) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to make administration and content additions simple and easy, so I ported all the content over to that template and hosted the site myself. Later, another car club needed the same assistance and I ported it ov...