Dictionary Applet/4

In order to let others know how’s the status of GNOME Dictionary Breaking is progressing (and in order to force myself working on it regularly ;-)), I’m sending the

Containing the status of the review-slash-breaking-slash-rewrite process of the GNOME Dictionary application and applet. Okay, it won’t be weekly, and I could simply use my blog instead of email; nevertheless, having someone to report to makes room for public discussion, and since I’m breaking (mostly) working stuff better be sure that some discussion actually happens at all.

So, what have you been doing so far?

First of all, I tried to salvage the ugly mess that was implementing the dictionary protocol (gnome-utils/gdictsrc/dict.[ch]). For the lack of better (or non 12-years-old-sister safe) words, I won’t use the ones I came up while auditing the said code. Suffice is to say that the code couldn’t be salvaged without a massive rewrite process anyway, so I scrapped out the implementation, and created a new, GObject-based one. You can see a preliminary version of the API usage on my weblog. How’s the rewrite going? I’ve pretty much implemented all the needed client commands for a RFC2229-compliant client, testing it both on dict.org and on my local dictionary server. The MATCH command is still missing, but I evaluate that will be a matter of 15 minutes worth of coding, in the new infrastructure. About the new infrastructure: I’m pretty proud of GdictContext; for example, now the client will advertise itself (using a predefined string or a custom one), and all the commands get queued; thus, you can set up a batch of commands (e.g. connect-lookup databases-lookup strategies-disconnect) without having to actually *wait* inside the callback for a command to complete its run. This will allow lazy data loading, and close one of my pet peeves about the current GNOME Dictionary, that is the absence of a CLI output; I’d like to write into a terminal:

$ gnome-dictionary --lookup "GNOME" --no-window

and have my definition of “GNOME” with no fuss (yes, I know that there already is “dict”, but what’s the point of having a dictionary client in GNOME if I also have to install dict?).

Another point of the new infrastructure is that lives all inside a shared library; which means that we can now have the much needed separation between the back-end code and the UI and the application/applet. Also, this means we can provide language bindings for it, allowing other applications to interface to dictionary servers (and I specifically thinking about the Deskbar Applet, here, even though I think there already is a dictionary protocol implementation in Python, using one based only on platform stuff would shorten the dependency chain).

What are you planning to do next?

First of all, finishing the client implementation (also, authentication could be added, if I can come up with a UI for it); adding a way to get some data like server’s capabilities, caching of the databases and strategies lists, etc. Also, I’ll do some code polishing and consolidation. This shouldn’t take long – probably no more than a week.

The UI is what comes next. The GdictEntry will be the first to be checked; I’d like to use the SexyIconEntry by Christian Hammond as a base for this widget, in order to have something more appealing (for the applet, mostly)- but first I’ve got to check how that behaves with GtkEntryCompletion.

The next widget to be targeted will be GdictSpeller; I’m still dubious about the form of this widget, or if it’s useful at all.

Finally, GdictDefbox. The main widget is pretty much right as it is, so I’ll just update it in order to use the new GdictContext; I’ll move the “find” dialog into a bottom pane a la Firefox, and I think that will be the most relevant change, UI-wise.

This would complete the road-map for the GNOME Dictionary Library (libgdict): the application and the applet would simply fall into place, once this has been sorted out.

When do we see the code?

This is the worst part of all. Since I’m basically rewriting everything, up until I can actually provide a working version of GNOME Dictionary I’d like not to taint the CVS repository; but I also understand the need for looking at the code, and comment on it – so, as soon as I’m able to create a full text client using libgdict, I’ll upload a tarball of it on my web space. If it passes a review from the maintainer, I’ll begin by creating a branch of gnome-utils HEAD with the new code, and keep working on it.

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