Stanza Desktop Mac: Control-Command-D for dictionary not working?
Sun, 03/29/2009 - 15:02 — presto10
Mac OS 10.5 has a built-in dictionary that can be invoked in practically any program using the Control-Command-D shortcut while hovering the pointer above the word to be looked up. This does however not work in Stanza Desktop – when hitting the key combination nothing happens.
Why is this disabled in Stanza? Supporting Mac OS 10.5's built-in dictionaries is essential for me personally.
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That command only works in
That command only works in native Apple applications, like Safari, Mail, or Terminal. The command does not work in any third-party application that I know of, including Adobe Reader, Word, Camino, Firefox, and other book-reading programs, like Calibre and Adobe Digital Editions.
In Stanza, to look a word up in the dictionary, hold down the ctrl key, then click the mouse button, then select "Look up in dictionary" from the menu that appears.
Nothing should prevent Stanza from supporting it
Have to correct you on this one: there is nothing preventing Control-Command-D from working in third-party applications! It just depends on the application developer if they support it or not (by building the application using Apple's Cocoa framework). I'm basically just asking Stanza to consider rendering the text with Cocoa, so that Control-Command-D will be supported!
(The reason for Firefox et al not supporting this is exactly that they were not developed using Apple's Cocoa, but with some proprietary user-interface technology. Which also reduces the "Mac feel" of the user interface.)
Thanks for providing the
Thanks for providing the technical explanation for why we (and many others) do not support this. Stanza doesn't use the Cocoa APIs, though we do hope to be able to in the future when the Cocoa APIs become an officially part of SWT.
To look up a word in Stanza, you can right-click (option-click) on the word, and select "Look up in dictionary".