Eloquent Software

mikeash · Last edited by mikeash on Thu Oct 27, 2005 1:57 pm; edited 2 times in total

For the more adventurous types out there, I've put together a little guide on how to convince LiveDictionary to load itself into other applications besides Safari. First, the disclaimer: this is totally unsupported, it may not work well, and it could break things. That said, the worst that should happen is that it will fail to recognize some words.

Now that I've scared everybody off, here's how to do it:

1) Open Library (in your home folder if you installed for yourself, the system Library if it was for everybody), then InputManagers, then open LiveDictInputManager.inputManager.
2) Control-click on LiveDictInputManagerLoader.bundle, select "Show Package Contents".
3) In the window that appears, open Contents, then open Info.plist.

If you don't have the developer tools installed, you can open it with TextEdit. Look near the bottom of the file for something like this:

Guest · Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 4:39 am Post subject: LiveDictionary loadable Apps

Here's my list of Applications that succesfully load LiveDictionary:

And this is the corresponding Info.plist part:

Guest · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 5:47 am Post subject: Getting it to work with OmniWeb 5

Is there any chance that LiveDictionary might be made to work with OmniWeb 5? I tried the plist trick, adding "com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5" but this causes OmniWeb to crash on launch. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
--Mathew

mikeash · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 12:45 pm Post subject:

OmniWeb support isn't likely to happen, at least not soon.

The hardest part about supporting other applications is the code to scrape the text out of them. For things like Mail, iChat, Fire, etc., it's straightforward because they all use the standard Cocoa classes to display text.

Safari was a lot trickier, because WebView is a whole other beast. It took a couple of weeks to get text scraping from WebView to work, and a couple of months to make it work reliably. Other browsers use different ways to display the stuff on the screen, which is why LiveDictionary doesn't work in any browsers other than Safari.

OmniWeb uses a customized version of WebKit, which I assume is why it outright crashes, rather than simply failing to work. It should be possible to get a copy of their customized version and make LiveDictionary's scraper work with it, but it would be a lot of work and it's not a high priority.

sohailm01 · Guest

Mike,

Looks like Omniweb 5 isn't crashing anymore and it's loading the LiveDictionary menu, but the popup's not working any more. Is there any chance we can get you to work on supporting this browser. It would be really killer...

Mac New User · Guest

Dear All

I've try add LD to support Firem TextEdit and some other applicattion. Is there anyway we can add LD to support MS Office 2004?

Thank you very much in advance.

mikeash · Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 9:56 pm Post subject:

OmniWeb support is interesting, and I'll consider it, but don't hold your breath. Just getting Safari to work was a great deal of pain, and I don't look forward to doing it again for another browser.

Microsoft Word is probably never going to happen, sorry to say. If there is a public method for getting text out of Word in the way that LiveDictionary needs (exact location of the mouse cursor in the text, mainly) then I'd love to hear it.

Safari support was possible because WebCore is open source, and I was able to examine a lot of its inner workings. Without an open source core or a public API, there isn't much hope.

flO · Guest

Has anybode the ID of the browser camino? com.mozilla.camino doesn't work...

Guest · Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 7:26 pm Post subject: Re: Camino

JoLan · Guest

you can get a slightly outdated (?) version of omni's WebCore here

bubba · Guest

Before I go editting files, I would just like to know if people have tried this in 10.4 with the 1.1.5 update and what works, what doesn't.

Thanks again to the authors of this app. It really is one of the most usefull things I have installed on my computer.

bubba · Guest

It works so far in textedit and mail. 10.4 + 1.1.5 update.

mikeash · Posted: Wed May 11, 2005 12:08 pm Post subject:

I have had success using it in Fire, and I've heard it's effective and useful in iChat.

Guest · Guest

And what is about Acrobat from Adobe ?

Often informational text files are published as Acrobat PDFs.

Thank You
Wolfgang

Robert Whittier · Guest

Wolfgang,

Safari can now open and view PDFs. Unfortunately, LiveDictionary does not yet recognize the PDF view. Mike says http://forums.eloquentsw.com/viewtopic.php?t=65 he will work on that for a future release. See his final comment in the linked topic.