Pop Up Dictionary not working

Project · Nov 22, 2005

The title of the thread is pretty explanatory. The feature has never worked for me since getting my iBook 2 months ago. I even tried configuring the hotkey to just command and d, and this wouldnt even work.

Any ideas? Its a feature I would love to use.

Peter Griffin · Nov 23, 2005

Project said:
The title of the thread is pretty explanatory. The feature has never worked for me since getting my iBook 2 months ago. I even tried configuring the hotkey to just command and d, and this wouldnt even work.

Any ideas? Its a feature I would love to use.

Are you referring to the dictionary feature in Safari? Because if so I just right click. I didn't know there was a hotkey for dictionary.

Benjamin · Nov 23, 2005

You probably need to activate the Popup menu via the dictionary preferences. So open dictionary.app and get preferences and set the contextual menu for dictionary panel. Also dictionary is not limited to safari but is able to be accessed from any cocoa application. And I am not aware of any hotkey for this action, but there probably is one associated with it.

mad jew · Nov 23, 2005

So putting your cursor over a word and holding COMMAND-CONTROL-D does nothing?

russed · Nov 23, 2005

mad jew said:
So putting your cursor over a word and holding COMMAND-CONTROL-D does nothing?

wow, thats really cool, i hadnt realised that was a feature of tiger! i like it!

Lacero · Nov 23, 2005

This feature works in Safari and not Firefox. What app are you using?

Project · Nov 23, 2005

Peter Griffin said:
Are you referring to the dictionary feature in Safari? Because if so I just right click. I didn't know there was a hotkey for dictionary.

I mean the system wide popup feature. Right clicking is decent, but clumsy, having to highlight, rightclick and select search in dictionary. With the ctrl, cmd and d, its real simple. Plus you are supposed to be able to move your cursor over a number of words while the popup changes definitions automatically. But it doesnt work for me!

You probably need to activate the Popup menu via the dictionary preferences. So open dictionary.app and get preferences and set the contextual menu for dictionary panel. Also dictionary is not limited to safari but is able to be accessed from any cocoa application. And I am not aware of any hotkey for this action, but there probably is one associated with it.

Already checked Dictionarys preferences. And Panel was already selected.

So putting your cursor over a word and holding COMMAND-CONTROL-D does nothing?

Nope

his feature works in Safari and not Firefox. What app are you using?

Safari man. Ive tried it in most Cocoa apps on my system. Works with none of them. Its driving me crazy.

mad jew · Nov 23, 2005

Maybe try removing com.apple.Dictionary.plist from the Preferences folder. If it doesn't help, you can put it back and keep your old settings.

kainjow · Nov 23, 2005

In Safari (or any Cocoa app), go to the Safari (app) menu, select Services, and see if there is an item in there labeled "Look Up in Dictionary". I believe that is what does the dictionary word lookup thingy.

mkrishnan · Nov 23, 2005

Can you do a couple things for me please?

1) Open Activity monitor and type "applespell" in the search field. Do you find any entries for this daemon? It's the one that is responsible for that popup window, AFAIK.

2) Open Terminal and:

cd /system/library/services
ls -la

You should have a line like:

drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Mar 20 2005 AppleSpell.service

In particular, the series of characters drw... and the root and wheel should be exactly the same.

Project · Nov 23, 2005

mkrishnan said:
Can you do a couple things for me please?

1) Open Activity monitor and type "applespell" in the search field. Do you find any entries for this daemon? It's the one that is responsible for that popup window, AFAIK.

2) Open Terminal and:

cd /system/library/services
ls -la

You should have a line like:

drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Mar 20 2005 AppleSpell.service

In particular, the series of characters drw... and the root and wheel should be exactly the same.

Yep.

1. 306 AppleSpell Jamie 0.00 1 2.00 MB 37.74 MB

2. drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 May 17 2005 AppleSpell.service

What does this mean?

In Safari (or any Cocoa app), go to the Safari (app) menu, select Services, and see if there is an item in there labeled "Look Up in Dictionary". I believe that is what does the dictionary word lookup thingy.

Its there but its greyed out.

And removing the dictionary plist file has done nothing either.

kainjow · Nov 23, 2005

Project said:
Its there but its greyed out.

It's grayed out because you have no text selected.

Project · Nov 23, 2005

kainjow said:
It's grayed out because you have no text selected.

Silly me. But the pop up feature still doesnt work.

Will Cheyney · Nov 23, 2005

The default keyboard shortcut for the dictionary is 'Apple, ctrl and D' (with a word selected).

kainjow · Nov 23, 2005

Will Cheyney said:
The default keyboard shortcut for the dictionary is 'Apple, ctrl and D' (with a word selected).

Actually, you can hold that combo down and move your mouse around words, and it will update for each word.

mkrishnan · Nov 23, 2005

Project said:
Yep.

1. 306 AppleSpell Jamie 0.00 1 2.00 MB 37.74 MB

2. drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 May 17 2005 AppleSpell.service

What does this mean?

It means, as far as I understand, that the system utility that should be giving you those windows exists, has the right permissions, and is running, but is not giving you the windows.

Wait...dumb question time...what is your system language? Does that make a difference? I'd be buggered if someone in the UK couldn't use the OED though.

Mitthrawnuruodo · Nov 23, 2005

Project said:
Ive tried it in most Cocoa apps on my system. Works with none of them. Its driving me crazy.

A couple of ideas I didn't see while skimming through the answers:

Does it work if you're logged into another account on your Mac (make one if necessary)? If so, try ditching the pref file for the pop up dictionary daemon: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.PopupDictDaemon.plist (this is a strong suspect, regardless, by the way).

Jaffa Cake · Nov 23, 2005

A quick suggestion I had a similar problem with my Dictionary, but realised that the problem was caused by me moving it out of the Apps folder into a sub-folder (I'm very anally retentive when it comes to this sort of thing). I moved the app back into the main Apps folder where it was in the first place, and this solved the problem* the pop-up feature started working again.

I don't know if you've moved the Dictionary app around, but if so it might be worthwhile moving it back and seeing if that helps any.

Project · Nov 24, 2005

^ you are right! I solved it after making this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/163283/

for some reason all my apps were in another apps folder. thanks to everyone

mkrishnan · Nov 24, 2005

Wow...when I first got a Mac, I moved apps around, and it caused Software Update to not see them. And so I stopped and never did it again.

But I had no idea the ramifications could be so far-reaching!

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