[11653] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
RE: Jumbotext - A New Feature to WWW
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James P. Salsman)
Mon Jul 3 19:31:20 2000
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 16:28:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: "James P. Salsman" <bovik@best.com>
Message-Id: <200007032328.QAA09949@shell9.ba.best.com>
To: www-talk@w3.org
Cc: joris.dobbelsteen@mail.com
Resent-From: www-talk@w3.org
>... Now since not everybody has a Speech system ...
More and more languages have talking dictionaries on the web all
the time. English has at least a few, for example:
http://dictionary.msn.com/find/entry.asp?search=pronounce
There you can get a RIFF (.wav) and AIFF audio clip of most words.
The trick is providing a useful way to add the selection (which can
be obtained differently on different browsers -- see:
http://www.webreference.com/js/column12/crossbrowser.html -- for a
working form/script example) URL-encoded at the end of your favorite
dictionary GET-method URL stub like the one above.
This should be easy, but if you open a new window, then you need a
way to refer to the window that you are studying from, because each
window can have its own selection. That method would save only a
few copy-and-paste operations into the dictionary's own form, but
when browsing unfamiliar languages, easy access to a dictionary can
make a lot of difference.
Does anyone have a way to refer to the most recent selection from
a different window in J/ECMA/JavaScript? I have a feeling that it
is probably possibly on each platform, but in different ways, like
obtaining the selection to begin with.
Cheers,
James
--
http://www.bovik.org
