Pali and Chinese lookup by pasting?

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The Pali and Chinese lookup is really helpful here. Would it be possible to allow use of the engine with pasted text? Or perhaps something similar already exists? Sometimes I see a fragment or a quotation on the web somewhere, and it would be nice to check it without searching for the same phrase here, or installing more software…

Here’s a nice site for Thai…
http://www.thai2english.com/

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It’s a good idea, actually, I have had the same thought. Sometimes i’m looking at something in the commentaries, or in a Chinese text that we don’t have on SC. It should be possible to have a simple paste bin, so you can throw in a random bit of text and use the Pali or Chinese lookup with it. @Blake, what do you think?

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Thanks. I know there are various bits of software, including browser plugins, that do this, but I’m presuming that the SC dictionary will eventually be the best :slight_smile: and so it will be better to use that.

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This is definitely doable. Maybe a button on the sidebar which brings up a pastebin type overlay - it shouldn’t be too difficult and it’s a feature I’ve wanted too.

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I was thinking something in the footer, actually, it’s not specific to text pages.

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Hmmm, a javascript hack on a text page is a lot easier. But lets consider options which involve the server.

One possibility would be having a page with text entry fields where you can enter stuff, and then submit, and it takes you to a page like:
/pi/custom
/lzh/custom

Which would be rendered as a normal text view except with anything you like as the text. I’d have to modify nginx and cloudflare to punch through the caches.

Another possibility would be have a measure of persistence, so you get a url like:
/pi/custom_d41d8cd98f00

Which you could even share with someone else like for discussion purposes.

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well, perhaps just do the easiest way first, and see if it is used.

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Well I’m going to either do one or the other… fact is once something works it’s pretty unlikely it’ll ever get replaced.

Basically it’s a choice between a client side modification and some server side modification. It’s not significantly more work either way. A good question is if there is value to having a hard URL.

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I think there should be a URL for the widget, yes. You should be able to share it or go to it from anywhere. But I don’t think having a dedicated URL for each usage is really necessary.

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We discussed this idea of being able to paste Pali or Chinese into a text box to access the awesome word-by-word lookup engine some time ago. Is there any thought of implementing this? It would be useful when studying documents that include Pali or Chinese texts.

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It actually fits in with the idea of 'universal elements". Basically, the platform we are building on is “web components”, and the idea is that they are units of functionality that can be ported and run anywhere on the web. The reality is, of course, a bit more complicated than that. But I have added this idea to our more general proposal for making some of our functionality into “universal components”.

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