The dictionary plasmoid (part of Plasma Addons) is being ported to Plasma 5 for the 5.1 release and is being worked on right now by Marco Martin. This is great opportunity to consider any design improvements, or redesigns, that we think might improve the visuals of this plasmoid.

This is how the dictionary plasmoid currently looks:


If you have any ideas for visual improvements post them here. I'll work with you to select and combine the best improvements into a single cohesive design. Note that we don't have to change anything if we decide it looks just fine as is.

Have fun!

I don’t use the stock Dictionary plasmoid anymore, because I need to check several languages and specific meanings (e.g. legal).

If that can be implemented in an elegant way, that would be great! If that’s not a use case for it, I completely understand as well.

hook wrote:I don’t use the stock Dictionary plasmoid anymore, because I need to check several languages and specific meanings (e.g. legal).
If that can be implemented in an elegant way, that would be great! If that’s not a use case for it, I completely understand as well.

I think almost all plasmoids need a better definition of the use case. On the other hand a dictionary is a dictionary. But how's about (customizable) links to other sources like Wikipedia, a translator (leo.org), or the like?
PS: The current plasmoid scales the header (area with icon), i.e. the text edit is not top aligned. And as a workspace panel it clutters the screen with the last search. After looking for a word it should collapse to just the input line.

Heiko Tietze wrote:I think almost all plasmoids need a better definition of the use case. On the other hand a dictionary is a dictionary. But how's about (customizable) links to other sources like Wikipedia, a translator (leo.org), or the like?

It would be very helpful if the user could select different dictionaries and do so easily, yes.

Maybe it would make sense to add write it in a way where people could write, share and download additional online dictionary/translator sources themselves, istead of having to fork the plasmoid.

If I could chose which dictionaries I want to use in a similar manner as I can select comics in the Comic plasmoid, that’d be super! I imagine the dictionary icon can be recycled to produce a list of enabled dictionaries (i.e. dataengines already downloaded via GHNS), one want to use for this search term.

Heiko Tietze wrote:And as a workspace panel it clutters the screen with the last search. After looking for a word it should collapse to just the input line.

As far as I know, Plasmoids cannot expand or collapse, but always keep their user-defined size. Not sure if they can have a popup like in the panel also from the desktop.

colomar wrote:As far as I know, Plasmoids cannot expand or collapse, but always keep their user-defined size.

I can resize at least manually. Maybe we talk about different things...

Heiko Tietze wrote:I can resize at least manually. Maybe we talk about different things...

That's what I mean by "user-defined": You can resize it, but it stays that size instead of being able to automatically expand when a word is entered and then collapsed again when the field is cleared.

Heiko Tietze wrote:I can resize at least manually.

Hmm, well maybe we can do a touch better than that visually when it's resized like that.

My own veiw is this plasmoid in relatively decent shape visually. It's simple straight-forward and to-the-point. I offer this for a very minor stylistic freshening:

alake wrote:Hmm, well maybe we can do a touch better than that visually when it's resized like that.
My own veiw is this plasmoid in relatively decent shape visually. It's simple straight-forward and to-the-point. I offer this for a very minor stylistic freshening:

like it. maybe the text output could be in a list and when you save space, the search could be in the search field.

When a setting icon is needed (in other plasmoids) it is easy possible. at the search if put a drop down for last search entries.

andreas_k wrote:

Really good idea making the word entry field be the title and making it an editable combo box with of the last x words andreas_k. I likes.

For a simple plasmoid like this one, maybe we we can do without the settings and that other icon on top to keep nice and clean like it is now.

Anyway great suggestions andreas_k!

alake wrote:For a simple plasmoid like this one, maybe we we can do without the settings and that other icon on top to keep nice and clean like it is now.

The settings and the play icon was only for example to other plasmoid. the play icon was for reading the output.

thanks

andreas_k wrote:the play icon was for reading the output.

Ah what a neat idea!

alake wrote:For a simple plasmoid like this one, maybe we we can do without the settings and that other icon on top to keep nice and clean like it is now.

All Plasmoids have settings (the minimum being the configuration of the shortcut) and they are always at the same place (in the toolbar that appears on hover), so we don't have to consider settings in the design of any Plasmoid.

colomar wrote:All Plasmoids have settings (the minimum being the configuration of the shortcut) and they are always at the same place (in the toolbar that appears on hover), so we don't have to consider settings in the design of any Plasmoid.

Ah that's right (slaps forehead), thanks for the reminder Thomas.

In fact, if we were to push this a little further, if a plasmoid has additional settings, the correct place to expose all such settings should be in the normal plasmoid settings (or a sys settings kcm) right? I'm thinking plasmoid HIG here and wondering if such guidance could head off non-standard settings dialogs for plasmoids. (Sorry it might be a little off-topic from the dictionary plasmoid discussion.)

alake wrote:In fact, if we were to push this a little further, if a plasmoid has additional settings, the correct place to expose all such settings should be in the normal plasmoid settings (or a sys settings kcm) right?

Since there are various plasmoids available and can be extended arbitrarily, I wouldn't use the syse KCM as a place for configuration.