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Vim-dictionary

Definition of English word printed in a pop-up window.

What does it do?

Looks up English word under cursor in the dictionary. Uses dict, a DICT protocol client.

About

Vim-dictionary plugin was created out of the need to quickly look up definition of specific English words while reading a book or technical documentation.

It uses WordNet dictionary by default, however this option is configurable.

Current implementation has been tested on various Linux distributions and MacOS.

Installation

Prerequisites:

• dict binary:
  • Fedora: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/dictd
  • Ubuntu: https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man1/dict.1.html
  • Arch: https://archlinux.org/packages/?name=dictd
• Internet connection (steps are available for offline dictionary setup)

Installation relies on vim-plug system:

• vim-plug

Steps:

• Add following line to your .vimrc configuration file:

Plug 'ajvn/vim-dictionary'

• Open Vim and execute:

:PlugInstall " Installs plugins defined in the .vimrc
or
:PlugUpdate  " Installs and/or updates plugins defined in .vimrc

Offline dictionary

It is possible to setup offline dictionary, depending on your platform this might be more or less straightforward. Focus in these examples is on WordNet dictionary, but you are free to use any other you might like better.

Support relies on dictd package which provides local (or publicly exposed self-hosted server if that's something you'd like to host) dict server.

• Use WordDefinitionOfflineDictionary function to use offline dictionary running on your machine.

Debian/Ubuntu

• Install dictd package:

$ sudo apt install dictd

• Install WordNet dictionary:

$ sudo apt install dict-wn

• Check if dictd.service is running:

$ systemctl status dictd.service

• (Optional) Test if dict works properly:

$ dict dictionary
1 definition found

From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:

  dictionary
      n 1: a reference book containing an alphabetical list of words
           with information about them [syn: {dictionary}, {lexicon}]

• (Optional) Disable internet connection and try searching for word definition in Vim.

Fedora

Fedora doesn't provide dictionaries that can be used by dict via package manager. This means you'll have to download dictionaries you want, package them in format dict understands and configure dictd to serve database and index.

Approach taken in this example uses .deb package downloaded on Debian/Ubuntu box, extracted via dpkg-deb and copied on Fedora box.

If you decide to package dictionaries yourself, take a look into options that dictfmt and dictzip provide.

• (Debian/Ubuntu box) Download dict-wn package:

$ apt update && apt download dict-wn

• (Debian/Ubuntu box) Extract .deb package (package version you download may be different):

$ mkdir -p /tmp/dict && dpkg-deb -R dict-wn_1%3a3.0-36_all.deb /tmp/dict

• (Debian/Ubuntu box) Copy extracted files to Fedora box, namely:
  • /tmp/dict/usr/share/dictd/wn.dict.dz
  • /tmp/dict/usr/share/dictd/wn.index
• (Fedora box) Install dictd package:

$ sudo dnf install dictd-server

• (Fedora box) Create directory in which you wish to save dictionary files:

$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/dict

• (Fedora box) Copy files and change ownership to dictd user/group:

$ sudo cp <source>/wn.* /usr/lib/dict
$ sudo chown -R dictd:dictd /usr/lib/dict

• (Fedora box) Make sure files are readable:

$ sudo chmod 0644 /usr/lib/dict/wn.*

• (Fedora box) Set SELinux file context map definition for all of the dictionary files you might have:

$ cd /usr/lib/dict
$ sudo semanage fcontext -a -t dictd_etc_t 'wn.dict.dz' && \
      sudo restorecon -v 'wn.dict.dz'
$ sudo semanage fcontext -a -t dictd_etc_t 'wn.index' && \
      sudo restorecon -v 'wn.index'
$ cd -

• (Fedora box) Adjust dictd configuration to point to dictionary files:

$ sudoedit /etc/dictd.conf
global {
   listen_to 127.0.0.1
}

database wnoffline {
   data "/usr/lib/dict/wn.dict.dz"
   index "/usr/lib/dict/wn.index"
}

• (Fedora box) Start dictd service and check if it's running properly:

$ sudo systemctl start dictd.service
$ systemctl status dictd.service

• (Fedora box) (Optional) Enable service at startup:

$ sudo systemctl enable dictd.service

• (Fedora box) (Optional) Test if dict works properly:

$ dict -h localhost dictionary
1 definition found

From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wnoffline]:

  dictionary
      n 1: a reference book containing an alphabetical list of words
           with information about them [syn: {dictionary}, {lexicon}]

• (Optional) Disable internet connection and try searching for word definition in Vim.

Usage

There are two functions, one that looks up words in dictionaries hosted on the internet, and other which supports offline dictionaries, running on a local instance of dictd server.

• WordDefinition - this function uses public dict.org instance (depending on the platform and configuration).
• WordDefinitionOfflineDictionary - this function uses local dictd instance.

WordNet dictionary is used by default when using online approach, but this is configurable by using b:word_dictionary variable.

Example:

$ $EDITOR ~/.vim/ftplugin/text.vim
set colorcolumn=80
let b:word_dictionary="gcide"
nmap <leader>wd :WordDefinition<CR><ESC>

With offline approach, plugin will use whichever dictionary or dictionaries user setup on their dictd instance.

No mappings are set by default, if you'd like to use some, here is additional example:

" Enables plugin when working in text or markdown files:
$ $EDITOR .vimrc
let mapleader=';'
augroup word_definition
:   autocmd!
:   autocmd FileType markdown,text
        \ nmap <leader>wd :WordDefinition<CR>
augroup END

Use <;-wd> in Vim normal mode to get definition pop-up.

Alternatively, use ~/.vim/ftplugin approach.

Reference & Credit

Knowledge base which somewhat helped in dealing with beast such as VimScript, plus some general mentions:

• Authors of following plugins:
  • vim-plug
  • vim-go
• Author of the following book on topic of VimScript
  • Learn VimScript The Hard Way
• ASCII Font
  • ansishadow
• Debian/Ubuntu package maintainers
• Authors of DICT protocol, dict and dictd programs
• Authors of WordNet lexical database