word-peek

word-peek lets you click/select on any word in your screen and instantly fetch its dictionary definition, synonyms, antonyms, and example sentences. A lightweight, fast, and convenient tool for learners, readers and writers.

Build Requirements

Compiler toolchain (gcc, make, etc. — install via build-essential on Debian/Ubuntu).

Dependencies

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y \
  libx11-dev \
  libxfixes-dev \
  libxft-dev \
  libpng-dev \
  tesseract-ocr \
  libtesseract-dev \
  libleptonica-dev \
  libcurl4-openssl-dev \
  libcjson-dev

Build

make

Usage

./main

How to use

After you run the program there are two ways to select a word from your computer screen:

• manual selection: simply keep pressing the left mouse button and select the word and make sure the whole word is inside the selection box.

• automatic selection: just click once computer mouse right button in the center of the word. If the word consist of 2 words (ex. back up) click in the space between the two words.

Technologies Used

• X Window System Libraries.
• Tesseract OCR (Optical Character Recognition): Tesseract OCR is a software that can recognize text in images and convert it to various formats.
• Leptonica: The Leptonica image processing and analysis source code comes with a very weakly restricted copyright license.
• libcurl: libcurl is a free and easy-to-use client-side URL transfer library, supporting many protocols and features.
• ibpbg: Library for reading and writing PNG image files.
• cJSON: Ultralightweight JSON parser in ANSI C.

Tip

Make a custom shortcut for this program so that you can launch it while you reading, browsing, watching video, ...etc.