WaKan Project Website

[d3ntaku]

hi - this is a silly question, but here goes. How does the popup tool work? I assume it is something like Rikai that works across other apps?

Anyway, I hit the "activate popup tool", but dont see a popup anywhere... I tried hovering over kanji in a few apps: firefox, becky ..

Any tips appreciated. I use Babel all the time for simple lookups, but would prefer to keep it in Wakan...

[tony]

There are two popup tools, the one with the button labeled WK and the tooltip text "Activate/deactivate Wakan popup tool" and the one next to it labeled SC with the tooltip text "Activate/deactivate screen popup tool." It is the second one which works across other applications, intercepting their calls to Windows API function DrawText and using the information from these calls to display the popup.

Are neither of the popup tools working for you, or have you only tried one? I think WK is turned on by default and SC off, but I'm not sure since it's been a long time since I started with a new install from a fresh user file and fresh registry settings.

There is a tab in the Settings dialog (now accessed from the Tools menu) which sets some popup tool properties, but if you're not seeing the popup at all, it is unlikely that any of these settings are the problem.

For the purposes of trying to reproduce the problem, what operating system are you running WaKan under? Can you think of any other system configuration settings which might be playing a role in this?

--Tony

[perplex]

[Tom Hodgers]

Hello Perplex,

Open Wakan, go to Tools ---> Dictionary Manager and make sure you have at least one dictionary selected for in "use for pop-up/editor", click on Apply button. As Tony mentioned, click on the right-hand yellow icon labeled SC to activate the screen pop-up tool. Go to any other application, web-page etc. Pop-up tool will show Kanji info and any compound word info from the selected dictionary.

The Screen Pop-up Tool will not function if Wakan is closed.

i.e. WAKAN MUST BE OPEN FOR THE SCREEN POP-UP TOOL TO FUNCTION.

Cheers,

Tom
_________________
Just another
和漢 WAKAN
若人 WHACKO DOing his thing

[perplex]

Tom!

You are completely lost. I'm not d3ntaku.

And you should avoid that silly formula
attached to your messages. It really annoys me. It's so simple minded.

Anyway, my question was aimed at the OS problem.
My situation is like this: At home [win 98] there's no problem with the
pop-up tool.
At school library PCs, it won't work [i.e. the external popup]
They have XP Pro, I believe [I'll check out the version].
Strange is that it worked there a year ago, but now it doesn't.

[perplex]

It is 2002 version with Servis Pack 2.

[katsu]

I'm having a similar problem. Japanese version windows Vista here. I can get pop-ups within the Wakan window just fine but I can't get anything in any other window, even if Wakan is open, a dictionary is selected for pop-ups, and the SC button is down. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox both fail to get any pop-ups going, nor does it work in Microsoft Office Word 2007 or any other software I've tried.

Any advice?

[tony]

Katsu,

My naive guess is that it is a Windows Vista issue; perhaps Vista has security enhancements which prevent the code Filip wrote from hooking the text drawing function calls made by other applications. By the way, when the screen popup tool is working, it draws a small grey line across the kana/kanji near the pointer. Are you seeing that? When the popup tool is working, this forces a redraw, and Filip's code hooks the new call to draw the text.

Unfortunately, I do not have access to a copy of Windows Vista to do any testing.

If you have access to a machine running XP or an earlier version of Windows, could you give it a try on that machine? This won't solve the problem, but if it works there, it will provide a little extra evidence that Vista is the source of the problem. If you can't get it to work under XP, either, then perhaps we can explore system configuration issues which might have an effect.

Another thing to try might be starting up your machine without an internet connection and turning off any firewalls or other security settings you normally have turned on. Again, this will not solve the problem, but if the popup tool then works, it will suggest strongly that some security device is conflicting with the functioning of the popup tool.

Another possibility is that the text is being buffered in memory before being drawn to the screen, so that the redraw does not actually cause the text drawing system functions to be called again. Unfortunately, I do not know of a system configuration setting which would change this behavior if that's what's happening.

--Tony

[katsu]

[wakan]

Hi, I strongly recommend NOT using Screen Popup tool on Windows XP SP2 or higher, Windows 2003 or Windows Vista systems. I've recently tested it on many of these systems and found that there is a very his probability of causing serious system instability. It can cause BSOD (on WXP-SP2) or total system lockup (WVista). At any rate it is not working how it should. I will probably have to remove this function because it relies on too dangerous and low-level system routines and debugging it is a real pain.

Anyway if anybody is reading this post and if for you the Screen Popup IS working, could you please mention what OS you're using? Thanks.

And yes, I have Windows Vita (Business and HomePro) and on my computer whenever I click on the "SC" button, my system freezes. Maybe I should put this warning somewhere on this forum as a big announcement...

[wakan]

...which I have just done. Please continue on http://wakan.manga.cz/forum/viewtopic.php?t=818