Andi’s GreenLabs.

People who wants to learn and speak foreign language fluently might need dictionary. But carry it everywhere is not just being annoyed (even in small one) and extends our list-that-must-be carry on, it also has limited words and its translatins. Because the more words to be translated and its translations to be added, the more papers must be filled, and the more burden you have taken.

For that problem, the electronic dictionary makes good solution. Once you install it in your laptop (or even in your sweety IPhone), you can translate many words and find another meaning (depends on how many dictionary you have installed) from another different dictionaries.

I’m talking about StarDict (I used it once). Now, because I’m using KDE 4.04 (on openSUSE 10.3), so QStarDict is my choice. It’s not just looks better in its system tray but it has “Speak word” feature’s already worked (it uses “festival –tts” that it’s already installed) than StarDict has (using WyabdcRealPeopleTTS and OtdRealPeopleTTS that my machine hasn’t got them both yet). It really suits its desktop envirenment, KDE 4.0.

The Features

QStardict window is simply devided in 3 sections, the Search Box (in the top-right), Translation Box (bellow the Search Box), and Word list Box that consists of the prediction of the word given in the Search Box, located in the left side of the window. It’s written using Qt 4.4.0 , so the image, its rendering will be integrated well with KDE 4.0.4, including its appearance in System Tray. That’s another reason why I choose this software than others.

So, what kind of features that will make it to be the-one of your computer should has?

1. Instant Search

Say, you want to know what QStarDict can tell about Linux. So, the first letter you should fill in the Search Box is “L”..
You can see (when you type “L”) it tells us (in Translation Box) what the “L” is about.

Then when you type “i” (now it’s “Li”), it’s translated again what the meaning of “Li” is.

So, this feature tells us the translation of the word given (in the Search Box), and they’re translated each time the letters are typed in, without pressing the Enter key. Of course how much translation we will see depends on the databases in its dictionaries.

And when the dictionaries don’t have its translation, it will tell “the word X is not found”.

Of course, when the word “Linux” appears in that Search Box, it’ll tell what it is about.

Don’t you know, It really helps us when we do not familiar about a word, and try to put them (sequentially) to find out.

If you find this feature is not enable by default, try go to Menu Settings, then Configure QStarDict, choose Global Settings tab, then mark the Instant search option. Press OK to proceed.

2. Lots of Dictionaries

Because it’s built from StarDict (but written in Qt4), so we can have many dictionaries listed here.

3. Scan Selection and Speak Word

it looks like this..

When you grab any word in every places in your desktop, QStarDict will try to translate it. And when you need to know how it’s pronounced, just hit Speak Word button..

4. Well Personalized!

We can make some customisation about how it is appeared in our desktop, the font type, its size and its color. Customize them until this software suits your personality.

And it has good user experience in System Tray, it looks green when this Scan Selection feature is enabled, otherwise it looks gray.

I will continue this topic in next post, how to install it in to your machine, which is the feature that it should have had, etc.

Ok, see you then..