GoldenDict 1.5.0



Almost Redundant Software!



Welcome to another edition of "Almost Redundant Software!" Today we're looking at an application that performs web searches* on different online dictionaries, including (but limited to) Wikipedia. GoldenDict**

*Search is not guaranteed to work
**Wikipedia doesn't respond. Urban Dictionary does but displays a truncated version of the home page.

It is safe to assume that most readers would abandon this article after examining the above notes. For those who haven't, I have nothing else to say than to relate my experience with GoldenDict.

The first sign that I got about the lack of professionalism is that GoldenDict did not create a shortcut on the desktop. The installer didn't even ask about it. That may not be much, but come on, desktop shortcuts have been a common thing since 1995.

GoldenDict

Next up, the interface. To summarize (as we should), there are three areas. The top left text box is where you will hopefully input the search terms. The box under it should display a list of results and the box on the right should display the selected result.
In practice, however, it is difficult to see this concept in action. Mostly because GoldenDict seems to avoid working when it comes to accessing the web.

The only instance when I could get some functionality out of this is when I added my music folder as a local source. Indeed I can now search for specific tracks using GoldenDict! But why would I?

GoldenDict seems to also be able to transliterate from Russian (Cyrillic) German (wow...) and Japanese (phonetic Hiragana & Katakana). That sounds nice, except I could not test this claim in any way.

One function I did manage to experience was the Scan Popup. This is an annoying pop-up window that shows up whenever you copy some text. It is essentially a search result based on the copied word or phrase. Needless to say that it doesn't show anything. As a plus, it often crashed the program when I tried to dismiss it.

Features

  • Pre-loaded web sources (they don't work)
  • Can use local folder as sources (couldn't figure out what exactly qualifies as a source)
  • Result pop-up (great if you hate your own guts)

Final Thoughts

GoldenDict seems to be a forgotten project. At least we have Wikipedia to prove us that. The error that I got trying to connect to it is also reported in the featured 2-star review on SourceForge. And who knows how old that is. If you really want multiple online sources for your web searches, add them from the upper right search bar of your browser. It is by now an almost universal feature.



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Click stars to rate this APP!

Users Rating:  
  5.0/5     1
Editor Rating:  
  1.0/5
Downloads: 852
Updated At: 2024-03-19
Publisher: ikm
Operating System: Linux, Mac, Windows
License Type: Free