History Pane

[Tvangeste]

I'm currently working on improving GoldenDict's History functionality and fix some of the bugs around this feature. If you use this feature then now is the time to report any problems/bugs that you've encountered.

Here's what I have so far. The history pane should be just like any other pane, completely independent of the search pane, so that users could show or hide the history independently from the search pane and from the UI modes (classic or the new ones). The main UI so far:


And the settings, note the new option to specify the history size (0-9999 entires):


P.S. And here's the list of already known bugs around History. Let me know if you have additional bugs to report.

#162: Make History sidebar independent from the Search Pane
#159: Send to main window" button from Pop-Up window does nothing when History is shown.
#158: Preserve History mode after restart
#157: History with new UI: New words are not added when History is shown
#156: History with new UI: Extra Groups widget in History is shown
#155: History with new UI: Arrow keys navigation in History doesn't work
#154: History with new UI: DEL key does not delete the current history entry

[mmmmmm]

very good

[Tvangeste]

Ok, the History rewrite is done and committed into the official repository. Hurray!

The new History Pane features proper mouse and keyboard navigation,
multiple selection and ability to remove the selected entries,
plus a dynamic context menu. Additionaly, the History's size is now
configurable in Preferences (up to 9999, the default size is 500).

Use Ctrl+H to show/hide the History Pane.

History Pane's titlebar can be styled via #historyPaneTitleBar, e.g.:

Code: Select all

/* Colored header for the History Pane */
#historyPaneTitleBar {
  background: lightsteelblue;
  margin: 2px;
}

Closes #162: Make History sidebar independent from the Search Pane
Closes #159: "Send to main window" button from Pop-Up window does nothing when History is shown
Closes #158: Preserve History mode after restart
Closes #157: History with new UI: New words are not added when History is shown
Closes #156: History with new UI: Extra Groups widget in History is shown
Closes #155: History with new UI: Arrow keys navigation in History doesn't work
Closes #154: History with new UI: DEL key does not delete the current history entry

Download: GoldenDict-1.0.1-487-g3ed7772: http://rghost.ru/43095495
(exctract over the EARLY ACCESS build, replacing the files).

Please give it a try and report any bugs/issues you've found.

[vjjustin]

Wonderful!!! I am so happy to see the great additions that are being done to GD lately. History is one of my most used feature. I will test and report any issues/feature requests etc. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Tvangeste]

History is one of my most used feature.

Then you'll probably find the following small addition I've just implemented also to be pretty useful. Now you'll be able to copy the selected history items into clipboard. Just select whatever rows you need, Ctrl+C (on Windows) or via Context Menu, and voilà

This feature will appear in the next build.

I will test and report any issues/feature requests etc.

Yes, this is the most important activity at the moment. We need as much testing as possible.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You're always welcome

[vjjustin]

Okay, some small issues/suggestions.

1) If I delete an in-between word from the history pane (say 10th in the list) and then I press up or down arrow keys, the first word in the list is selected (not the 11th word). So I have to scroll all the way from the top to where I was before. With 100s of words in history this is tedious.
2) When I right click on the article area, the first menu is to add 'word' to history. This is not needed as the looked up word is already in the history (When I select a word in the article and right click then it useful but not without any word selected).
3) It will be great if I can right click on the article and copy the entire article (just like the copy feature in the history pane you mentioned). I lookup words and then copy the word+definitions to anki for further learning. (I know about the save article but it is too much work).
4) When I browse through the words already looked up using the back/forward buttons, the search box do not gets updated. (I looked up 'better' and then 'best'. Now if I press back button, the article show the definition for 'better' but the search box still show 'best').

[vjjustin]

One more, it will be better if you could just ignore the case (save all entries in, say, small letters irrespective of the cases they were looked up). Since most of the time we look-up words by copying from various articles, the words come in all types of cases and my history looks really ugly with small, capital and mixed cases thrown in everywhere.

[Abs62]

2) When I right click on the article area, the first menu is to add 'word' to history. This is not needed as the looked up word is already in the history

This choice can move this word to the first position in history.

[Tvangeste]

1) If I delete an in-between word from the history pane (say 10th in the list) and then I press up or down arrow keys, the first word in the list is selected (not the 11th word). So I have to scroll all the way from the top to where I was before. With 100s of words in history this is tedious.

Indeed, thanks for catching it. Just fixed this in the master branch. The fix will appear in the next build.

2) When I right click on the article area, the first menu is to add 'word' to history. This is not needed as the looked up word is already in the history (When I select a word in the article and right click then it useful but not without any word selected).

Yeah. On the other hand, comparing the word against the whole History *every* time a user opens a context menu could be time consuming introduce delays in the UI. Hm... Also, even when the word is already in the history, adding it again actually *does* something meaningful. It brings that word to the top. Some folks might find this useful. Need to think about what to do here.

3) It will be great if I can right click on the article and copy the entire article (just like the copy feature in the history pane you mentioned). I lookup words and then copy the word+definitions to anki for further learning. (I know about the save article but it is too much work).
4) When I browse through the words already looked up using the back/forward buttons, the search box do not gets updated. (I looked up 'better' and then 'best'. Now if I press back button, the article show the definition for 'better' but the search box still show 'best').

These two are interesting suggestions worth considering. For the #3, do you copy the whole thing, even when a word is found in multiple dictionaries? I assumed that Ctrl+A to Select All and then Ctrl+C should work in such a case, but it seems they do not, will take a look once I'm done with history.

Would you mind filing these 2 as issues in GoldenDict issue tracker so that they are not forgotten? Here's the link:
https://github.com/goldendict/goldendict/issues

[Tvangeste]

One more, it will be better if you could just ignore the case (save all entries in, say, small letters irrespective of the cases they were looked up). Since most of the time we look-up words by copying from various articles, the words come in all types of cases and my history looks really ugly with small, capital and mixed cases thrown in everywhere.

Hmmmm, tempting I would probably add case-insensitive comparison, but would add the word to the history as-is. So that if you looked up "Hello", then "Hello" would be added, and when later on you look up "hello", the entry that's already there in the history, "Hello" would stay there, and "hello" would not be added.

I'm uneasy to forcefully down-case all the words.

@Abs62, what do you think?