Internet search for the current word

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created January 2, 2003 · complexity basic · author xiangjiang · version 6.0

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To check the meaning of the word under the cursor, right click mouse, and choose Dic. Either IE or mozilla will be opened and dictionary service offered by www.m-w.com will be ready.

Following is the map:

To open mozilla:

nme <silent> PopUp.&Dic :sil! !start C:/Progra~1/mozilla.org/Mozilla/mozilla -nosplash "<cword> "<CR> http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=<cword>"<CR>;

To open Internet Explorer:

nme <silent> PopUp.&Dic :sil! !start iexplore -nohome "<cword> "<CR> http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=<cword>"<CR>;

Comments

Although ':sil! !start notepad' works on my system (XP Pro), ':sil! !start iexplore' does not. I used this instead:

nme <silent> PopUp.&Dic :sil! !start "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -nohome "http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary? book=Dictionary&va=<cword>"<CR>;

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Want to search Google for cWORD under the cursor?

nm gF vviWgF
vn<silent> gF y:sil! !start C:/progra~1/intern~1/iexplore.exe -nohome <C-R>0<CR> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=<C-R>0<CR>;

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Another one, just open stand URL under the cursor:

For example: http://vim.sourceforge.net ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/patches/README

nm gF viWgF
vn<silent> gF y:sil! !start C:/progra~1/intern~1/iexplore.exe <C-R>=escape(@0,"#%")<CR><CR>

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Another cute one:

Open Windows Explorer on the current working directory from within gvim: right click the mouse, and choose Explorer or hit "e".

nme <silent> PopUp.&Explorer :sil! !start C:/progra~1/intern~1/iexplore.exe -nohome -e "<C-R>=getcwd()<CR>"<CR>

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Using Internet Explorer with leo (german<->english):

nme <silent> PopUp.&Dic :sil! !start "c:\programme\Internet explorer\iexplore.exe" -nohome "<cword> "<CR> http://dict.leo.org/?search=<cword>"<CR>;

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Since we Linux users use our right click to highlight large blocks of text, this might be helpful to some.

I you are using gvim, you could just add a menu in your .vimrc like so:

amenu &Lookup.&PHP :sil! !devphoenix.sh "<cword> "<CR> http://www.php.net/<cword>"<CR>;;
amenu &Lookup.&Google :sil! !devphoenix.sh "<cword> "<CR> http://www.google.com/search?q=<cword>"<CR>;;

where devphoenix.sh is a shell script like so:

#!/bin/bash
BROWSER=~/apps/phoenix/phoenix
BROWSER_BIN=phoenix-bin

if [ -z `ps --noheaders -o pid -C $BROWSER_BIN| head -1` ]
 then $BROWSER & sleep 5
fi

$BROWSER -remote "openURL($1,new-tab)"

This way, if you have a browser open, you get it in a new tab, otherwise you just get the url. I use this little script all the time. ;-) Of course, you can leave out the script and just call it directly, etc.

If you use console vim, I'm sure that you could bind it to a key command with map instead of "amenu [menuitem]". But I've never tried.

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