DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / xfce4-dict / xfce4-dict.1.en
XFCE4-DICT(1) XFCE4-DICT(1)

xfce4-dict — a client program to query different dictionaries

xfce4-dict [option] [text ...]

xfce4-dict allows you to search different kinds of dictionary services for words or phrases and shows you the result. Currently you can query a "Dict" server(RFC 2229), any online dictionary service by opening a web browser or search for words using a spell check program like aspell, ispell or enchant.

Homepage: https://docs.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-dict/start

If called without any arguments, the xfce4-dict main window is shown. Any passed text argument(s) are used as search text.

Search the given text using a Dict server(RFC 2229).
Search the given text using a web-based search engine.
Grab the focus on the text field in the panel (has no effect if panel plugin is not loaded).
Check the given text with a spellchecker.
Start stand-alone application even if the panel plugin is loaded.
Grabs the PRIMARY selection content (X selection clipboard), uses it as search text and performs a search. This is useful when you want to create keyboard shortcuts for this command. The search method can be specified with the -d, -w and -s options, if not specified the default search method is used. If the PRIMARY clipboard doesn't contain any text, the normal clipboard is used.
Be verbose (print useful status messages).
Show version information.
-?, --help
Show help information and exit.

xfce4-dict supports all generic GTK options, a list is available on the help screen.

There is a limitation of max. 12 characters in passing a search term to xfce4-dict when the panel plugin is loaded. That is, if you pass a search term as command line argument(s) to xfce4-dict which is longer than 12 characters, it is truncated. To be exact, the limit is 12 bytes so if the search term contains any non-ASCII characters it might be even less than 12 characters. To work around this limitation, you can add the command line '-i' so that xfce4-dict will start a single stand-alone application. Then all passed text is used as search term.

This manual page was written by Enrico Troeger. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

May 20, 2013 xfce4-dict 0.7.0