Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[vovchik]

Dear Puppians,

Here is a little application I banged together today to translate texts using Google's translate engine. It works from the desktop and obviates the need to load a heavy, java-script-supporting browser. It is written in bash and makes use of gtkdialog, gxmessage and bing, a tiny ping substitute I wrote because it quits after a second unlike ping if the DNS cannot be resolved (i.e. if your connection is dead). All relevant source included.

Since this is an alpha, you might have some suggestions for improvement. I have a few in mind already, but wanted to get this thing off my chest.

Have fun.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[otropogo]

Thanks vovchi.

Love your pet. It's especially handy for checking crummy GT translations (which I run into all the time). If you have a nodding acquaintance with several languages, as I do, you can quickly cycle the original through two or three translations and soon decide what the real meaning of the original is.

BTW I get a dailly abridged version by e-mail of all the posts in the Google Translate help forum (it's really a "help!" forum, because it's full of requests, and almost no help), which informs me of an amazing range of Google Translate features I've never experienced with Puppy/Seamonkey.

These include the option of viewing the pinyin phonetics for Chinese script and of listening to the audio rendition of original text submitted.

Unfortunately, the posters almost never specify how exactly they are accessing Google Translate (ie. OS and/or browser). I suspect most are using Google Chrome, but have no evidence. Many complain bitterly that Google Translate runs automatically on their browser and they want to shut it down, but con't know how!

Do you know if either of the two features above (audio or pinyin) can be accessed with Puppy 4.3.1.?

[vovchik]

Dear Puppians,

I still have to do something about escaping double quotes and ampersands in the text. Any ideas? Please look at the function translate in the gxlat script.

with kind regards,
vovchik

PS. Ostropogo, thanks. I will look into the audio and other features. Perhaps somebody else on the forum knows and can enlighten us.

[neurino]

[vovchik]

Dear neurino,

Many thanks. I am now playing with the filters....

I am not great with sed, but I have written some rather complex filters in the past (that, surprisingly, worked!). Gxlat really needs that filtering for oddball chars. I wrote gxlat initially because I saw a similar implementation in java - which meant, to me, heaps of unnecessary overhead and bulk. The java version also loaded very slowly. I think the only real defect now is the lack of proper filtering and, perhaps, a not up-to-date list of languages (easy to fix).

It may also be time to include clear and clipboard copy/paste buttons.

If you want to give it ago, please do.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[neurino]

[vovchik]

Dear neurino,

I like the idea of a tray front end to Last FM. Please do it. Here is something you might want to use (daemonize). The latest source (1.6) is here: http://github.com/bmc/daemonize/downloads. I have attached 1.5.2.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[neurino]

Thank you, shell-fm already can run as a deamon (-d option) but maybe it's not enough to have it under full control so this may come in handy.

As I said it's all new stuff to me so your pet and link are a nice point to start!

[aragon]

hi vovchik, very nice app.

3 notes / requests:

1. It would be nice, if you would give the user the opportunity to save his/hers "regular" translation languages and the load this settings on future startups.

2. a button to switch the 'translation-direction' would also be nice.

3. cosmetics: please use the close button and not the cancel button. we don't have to cancel as your app runs fine ...

aragon

[vovchik]

Dear aragon,

Thanks for the suggestions. I will include them in the next release. I have also improved the parsing for special chars, so the next release will be better.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[vovchik]

Dear Puppians,

I finally got around to posting a new pet of gxlat. I implemented Aragon's useful suggestion for remembering languages and have made some attempt (half-hearted, though) at html filtering. The "Swap" function is NOT yet implemented, although the button is there. If anybody has a clever way of doing it, please post.

The reason I posted the revised version of gxlat today is that Geoffrey posted a pet of Goot today, which looks OK but is terribly slow and big. It requires java (let's say 9 MB) and is itself 1.5 MB unpacked. This pet is roughly 45k in its packed state.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[Geoffrey]

vovchik,
I've tried this before and this version does the same thing, when first run I get an error that the network connection is down and it closes, but if I run it a second time it works, it looks to me that it times out to quickly before a connection can be made, I'm using quirky 1.2.0 NOP but I don't think that would have much to do with it.
Other than that small problem it's a good app that I would use.

[vovchik]

Dear Geoffrey,

Thanks for telling me - I think I should adjust the timeout for "bing", which I wrote some time ago. There source is there in the /usr/local/gxlat.src dir, I think. I'll look at it.

Is your inet connection generally slow? I am working on a fast connection at the moment and, even with my usual relatively slow connection, I never get the timeout if the connection is really alive. It is set for 2 second checks in Bing, so I will experiment with a longer value. It could be that your ISP's DNS server is slow at resolving, not the connection itself. If that is the case, you could try adding the following DNS servers to /etc/resolv.conf:

[Geoffrey]

[Geoffrey]

vovchik,
my internet connection is 2.5Mbps, I never get any time outs, but it can be slow at getting a connection anywhere up 5 seconds depending on the time of day.