Show results of multiple terms on the search page

[tomashaddad]

At the moment, when a search is carried out on the search page, either manually or via clipboard monitoring, Yomitan displays entries found for the first parsed term only. My suggestion is to also allow for look ups for every term and display them all at once, similar to how ichi.moe works.

My use case is that I primarily immerse using MPV, and I use a clipboard script + Yomitan's clipboard monitoring on the search page for easy subtitle lookups. However, it gets very tedious having to always click the term I want to display definitions for. If this feature was implemented, I could simply leave the search page open on another monitor and see definitions for all terms at a glance, allowing me to immerse much more easily.

I'm aware that this is quite a large request (in terms of design, having to redo the search page, performance considerations, etc) so I don't expect it to be completed anytime soon, but I think it would be a great feature to have.

[YukiNagat0]

Personally, I think that the current implementation of the Search page is the best and far better, than what is done on ichi.moe. Your request only makes sense if two conditions are met at the same time:

1. The User uses bilingual dictionaries with short definitions. Imagine trying to fit long JP->JP definitions into the small boxes. For example, definition for 収める in 広辞苑 第七版 (This word is 異字同訓, but there are still many long definitions in monolingual dictionaries):
   
2. The user has a separate monitor that needs to be open in full screen. Imagine using VN setup with ichi.moe boxes:
   

The point is: The current implementation is universal for any use case, but your request is focused on a very specific use case.

[tomashaddad]

Sorry, I don't mean to say this should completely replace the single column layout, it could just be made a setting you have to turn on. I'll edit my suggestion to make that clear.

I don't think either of the points you brought up are really an issue. Most dictionary entries aren't that dense, and the point isn't to show the entire entry, just a snippet of the top (which may or may not be enough; you could just click into the term to expand its results). Obviously if you shrink your window like that then a single column is better. This functionality would be for people who can afford the horizontal space.

The point is: The current implementation is universal for any use case, but your request is focused on a very specific use case.

I mean, if the current implementation is inconvenient for my use case ...

[YukiNagat0]

Most dictionary entries aren't that dense, and the point isn't to show the entire entry, just a snippet of the top

But how can Yomitan decide which snippet to show?

(which may or may not be enough; you could just click into the term to expand its results)

Sorry, but you just got in a circle. In the begging you wanted to avoid clicking, but here you write exactly the same thing.

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Why do you even find it tedious to click on the word to look up its definition?
This is just my guess, sorry if it's not the case, but it seems like the content you're looking at is harder than N+1 (or there are a lot of words that haven't stuck properly in your memory), so you need to look up more words in a given sentence.

Also, from a language acquisition standpoint, you really should read every definition (and often several dictionaries) for every word thoroughly. So trying to look at every word in the sentence is not really very productive in the language learning process.

I can see the idea you want to introduce - make more use of horizontal space, - but the reality is that your mental capacity is limited, and you can process at most one word with several dictionary definitions at the moment. So, it seems to me that your problem is more related to language learning process, rather than flaws in UI.

[YukiNagat0]

From my experience with Japanese language, after ~8k memorized words, when you are reading new to you content, you will encounter only one or two unknown words, but that only one word may be so hard to understand that you need to read all your installed dictionaries to understand it.

[tomashaddad]

I think you are focusing too much on my specific use case. I think it would be a useful feature in general for anyone who would want to enter something to be parsed and be shown a layout similar to that of ichi.moe, which lets you preview dictionary results for all parsed terms at a glance. A specific benefit I would get from such a feature is that if a word I'm unsure of during clipboard monitoring isn't the first term, I might not need to click into Yomitan to check its meaning if its preview was enough. I don't think opinions on how language learning should be carried out are that relevant here ...