path: root/doc/README.dict

Dictionary look-up hack for w3m

1. INTRODUCTION

If you have a dictionary look-up command (such as 'webster'), you can
look up words in a document using w3m. This dictionary-lookup code
was contributed by `Rubikitch' (rubikitch@ruby-lang.org), and
further modified by Tushar Samant (scribble at pobox.com).

2. INSTALLATION

To make use of the dictionary look-up, you currently must change a
compile option by hand. After running configure, edit config.h
and change

#undef USE_DICT

to

#define USE_DICT

and recompile w3m (i.e. type "make install").
Note that w3m/0.3+cvs-1.373 or later, USE_DICT is defined by default.

Then find or install a CGI program which takes a word as a query
string and prints a response.

Some ways to do this would be:

  * If you have the 'webster' command, put something like this
    in a script called 'w3mdict':

      #!/bin/sh

      echo Content-type: text/plain
      echo
      webster $QUERY_STRING

    Then install w3mdict as a local CGI (see the local CGI section
    of the w3m manual), and set your dictionary options from the
    options page of w3m (usually invoked with "o").

  * If you want this function to look a word up on Google instead,
    write a local CGI script like this:

      #!/bin/sh

      google_q='http://google.com/search?btnG=Google&q'

      cat <<_END_
      Content-type: text/plain
      W3m-control: GOTO $google_q=$QUERY_STRING
      W3m-control: DELETE_PREVBUF

      _END_

    and set its path as your dictionary-lookup URL option.

3. USAGE

You can use the following two commands:

ESC w    Input a word and look it up using w3mdict command.

ESC W    look up the current word in the buffer.

To change these keys, edit ~/.w3m/keymap and edit lines for the
functions DICT_WORD and DICT_WORD_AT respectively.