Download
You can download GEMDict version 0.3 below (68k and ColdFire):
Source files without binaries:
New Features
General
The language of the program may be changed on the fly via the new 'Options->Language/Sprache/Langue' menu item. No restart needed.
French version (but no French documentation yet). When saving to a file that already exists, the user is now warned and given the choice of cancelling the operation.
A contextual menu opens on a right mouse button click inside the definitions window or an editable field. It provides interaction with the clipboard and access to the extended characters box, among others. As a consequence, to display the BubbleGEM tooltip above editable fields the Shift key must now be held down.
A counter at the right of the header (top right, below the toolbar) is updated during scrolling with the number and name of the dictionary whose currently displayed definition is from. This is particularly useful when scrolling through long pages of definitions.
Removed the seldom used 'Strategies' popup from the main toolbar and moved it as a sub-menu of the contextual menu and renamed it to the less technical 'Match Mode'. The corresponding desktop menu items have been renamed accordingly.
Removed the 'Quit' toolbar icon. Clicking the main window CLOSE widget with the Shift key held down will quit GEMDict (as Control+Q still does).
Added a 'Clipboard' toolbar icon for easy access to looking up the contents of the clipboard.
Selection
In the Definition Window
Text may be selected with the left mouse button, either by dragging the mouse, a double-click to select a word, a Shift+double-click to select a line or a click+Shift-click to set the extent of a selection. Up to 256 concurrent selections are possible if the Control key is held down during any selection operation.
If the saving option is called when one or more portion of text is selected, only the selected text will be saved (several selections will be saved as a succession of paragraphs).
'Vertical selections' are also possible: if the Shift and Control keys are held down during a drag operation, partial lines may be selected. These will also be saved as different paragraphs and the same 256 limit applies as above.
The selected text may be looked up, copied to the clipboard or saved. When there are multiple areas of text selected and the user opens the contextual menu, the behaviour of the action chosen in the menu will depend on where the click occurred: over one of the selected areas, the action will be relevant only to the selected area; outside of any selected area, the action will always be relevant to all selected areas. This allows, for example, selecting several portions of the text for saving into a specific file, and sending only one of the selections to the clipboard without the need to make another selection.
In Editable Fields
Text selection with mouse in all editable fields.
Cut/Copy/Paste implemented in all editable fields, either via keyboard/mouse or the contextual menu (see below). If no part of the string is selected, actions apply to the complete string; else, only to the selected part (e.g. Control+C will copy either the complete string to the clipboard or the selected part).
Search Toolbar
The Control+F key combination or the selection of the 'Search' toolbar icon will open a search toolbar at the bottom of the window. This allows searching within the currently displayed definitions. Re-selecting the top toolbar icon of re-typing Control+F closes the search toolbar. Searching starts as soon as a character has been typed.
When a match is found, the user can navigate to the next, previous, first or last occurrence either via the keyboard (Enter/Shift-Enter or Control+G/Control-Shift+G = Next/Previous) or the toolbar icons.
The search may be either case sensitive or not.
All occurrences (up to 256, which should cover most cases) may be highlighted at the same time.
Any highlighted match is considered as selected text and the same operations as for mouse-selected text is applicable to it (see above).
Previous search strings are displayed in a popup, exactly like for the query field of the main toolbar (see below). It also opens with Alt+Undo. Only strings confirmed with Enter/Return are saved in this menu. Contrary to the query field popup, this popup is cleared at each new launch of the program.
The search toolbar may be positioned at the bottom (default) or the top of the window. This position is saved in the configuration file, but not the fact that the toolbar was on.
Drag & Drop
Text files may be dropped from the desktop either on GEMDict's icon/program filename or its main window. GEMDict will try to get definitions of the contents of the file.
Selected text may be dropped from a Drag & Drop-aware application on GEMDict's window (tested with qed and TosWin2). GEMDict will try to get definitions for the dropped text. Text selected in a GEMDict window may be dropped on a window of a D&D-aware desktop (tested with Thing. a file will be created with the content of the data dropped) or the clipboard (SCRAP.TXT will be updated with the selected text) or a Drag&Drop-aware application (tested with qed and TosWin2).
GEMDict understands the VA_START message (it won't be executed a second time if it is already running and another application sends this message).
History
Removed the 'History/Previous Queries' hierarchical menu and replaced it with a popup menu that opens right below the search field (which can also be opened with Alternate+Undo). This is simpler and more traditionnal.
Also removed the 'History' configuration option. Setting the 'History size' to the lowest value will acheive mostly the same goal without the complications in the code.
Removed the 'History/Clear Previous Queries' menu item. This was confusing with the 'History/Clear History' item and there is no point in specifically deleting the list of previous queries anyway.
Added two options in the 'History' menu: 'First' and 'Last' to allow fast navigation to the first and last definitions received. Double-clicking the 'Previous and 'Next' toolbar icons does the same.
Navigation in the history is now possible even when GEMDict is disconnected from the DICT server.
The previous queries popup is now sorted with the latest entry at the top.
Corrections
Calling the 'Help' menu items from TeraDesk works now.
Reworked the horribly slow redraws of window dialogs. Much faster now and much less flicker.
The GPL license file was not closed after the 'About GEMClip...' window was closed.
Resizing of the popus never used the character cell width of the system font in use but always felt back to the hardcoded 8 pixels value.
No proper check was done that there was something to be saved when Control+S was pressed.
An empty string of previous queries in the config file was not properly handled (garbage instead of empty string).
Extended characters were always added at the end of the string in the toolbar editable field rather than at the position of the cursor.
Known Issues
Too many display glitches with text selection and the search toolbar.
Installation
None to speak of, apart from the "gemdict*.hyp" and "gemdict*.ref" files that must go into the GUIDES folder.
