Call the plugin with a keyboard shortcut

[jweickm]

Hi, I was really happy to find that a kind soul had already implemented a German thesaurus lookup plugin for Writemonkey 3. I wanted to ask, if there was a simple way to alter the code in such a way that we can look up a word with a keyboard shortcut instead of clicking with the mouse. Thanks a bunch in advance, j

[Stefanoko]

I don't have an answer to your question, but — maybe you can help me out, if you don't mind. So far, I have not been able to even get it to work at all. How did you install the plugin? I could not find any information on the WM3 site. Copying the files into a subfolder of \WM3\plugins does not seem to suffice. What else do I have to do to make it functional? Any help is highly appreciated.

[jweickm]

Hi, actually, I just copied it into the subfolder. Then right-clicking a word shows up a list of synonym suggestions. Did you buy a license key? Maybe that's required to enable plugins, even if they are user plugins.

[Stefanoko]

Thank you so much for the prompt reply. Yes, I do have a license key, and all other plugins load just nicely. And yet I won't get anything upon Ctrl-right-clicking, other than the regular WM3 context menu. When I call up the dev-tool, it lists an error with the Thesaurus plugin. See screenshot. Maybe it has to do with Win11.

[jweickm]

Strange! I am actually also using it under windows 11. I also didn't change anything in the plugin except for loading it on right-click instead of ctrl+ right-click. Other than that, I can't really think of anything else that might cause this issue. Since the error is in line 84 of the plugin. Maybe try opening up plugin.js and looking at that line?

[Stefanoko]

Don't know what to make of it. Seems like my package.json is malformed or contains invalid code. Already downloaded all files all over again, but no joy. Don't mean to over-extend your helpfulness, Jakob, you already helped me a lot by confirming that I don't need to install or otherwise modify anything to get it to run. Since you also use Win11, let me ask you one more thing: Do you also get multiple thumbnails when pressing ALT-TAB? The longer I keep WM3 open and the more switching I do (headings, documents, jumps), the more thumbnails pile up. After a while my ALT-TAB screen gets cluttered with WM3 thumbs, the task bar however, shows only one instance, same with process explorer: one nw.exe only. And yet the ALT-TAB thumbnails keep piling up. Many thanks Stefan

[jweickm]

Hi Stefan,

sorry for the late reply. I had another look at my configuration and I cannot seem to find any differences. I do not experience the issue with pressing Alt-Tab and I am also using WM3 on a Windows 11 machine. I am sure that you have already tried a clean install of WM3. I don't know if this could be important, but I have placed the writemonkey3 folder inside of Program Files and I am running it from there. Since there is no actual installation process, you might be running it from another location (this should also be fine, since it is a portable app AFAIK, but maybe it's worth a shot). Unfortunately, at this point, I'm also at wisdom's end. Sorry about that. Hope that it will resolve itself on its own.

Best, Jakob

[Stefanoko]

Thank you so much, Jakob. Knowing that Win 11 is not to blame, I can narrow down my hunt for the real source of the issue.

Putting WM into Program Files is not practical for me. I even relocated the database itself to another drive. Which might be the reason for my problems, or maybe it has to do with linking documents to real files. I am still experimenting and will post my findings in the WM forum.

At least, I can rule out Win 11 as the culprit. Your feedback helped me a lot. I really appreciate it. Stefan

[jweickm]

Hi Stefan,

I'm sorry to hear that you are still struggling with the issue. Hope that you can find a solution. It seems that the developer is currently working on a new release again, so maybe it will straighten itself out on its own after that. By the way, I have my database in my Onedrive cloud folder and that has not caused any issues so far. In case you have made extensive modifications to the user settings file, maybe it's worth a try to revert once to the default settings file.

Best, Jakob

[Stefanoko]

Thanks for letting me know about your database residing in the cloud, this also helps in narrowing down the issue.

You also helped me with your issue #399 about the missing text width feature. I had assumed it was me who was missing something, all the while fiddling with Shift+Esc and other shortcuts, unable to hide the panels without altering text widths.

Here is my workaround — although you probably figured this out long before I have: I toggle "Fade User Interface" to ON

To trigger it right away, almost like a hotkey, I set "ui_autofadeout_actions_before_trigger": 1, This fades out the sidebars after just one keystroke. Which is easy enough to delete/backspace, whenever I just want to look at my text, without actually typing anything.

To keep the sidebars out of sight (for proofreading etc.), I set "ui_autofadein_delay" to a very high number, so the panels won't come back any time soon.

To make them visible again, I press F10. To see them all the time, even while typing, well, that's where my work-around falls short. I have to toggle "Fade User Interface" OFF again, and there is no shortcut for that.

It's not a solution, but better than having to put up with text width jumping and jerking left and right all the time.

[jweickm]

Hi Stefan,

wow! Thank you so much for your long and helpful answer. This is a really neat trick that I have to try out. I somehow find the default behaviour a little bit unintuitive so that is a great way of getting around that. My current way of dealing with the constant resizing of the interface is to just leave it off all the time (as was probably intended by the creator) and to just turn it on briefly when I want to do something in the file pane. I will give your workaround a go, though. It sounds like it's keeping the best of both worlds. I really hope that we will see some more development with Writemonkey3, as I keep coming back to it when I just want a distraction-free programme that feels nice to type in. Even though I am using Neovim a lot more for actual work on files, Writemonkey3 is nice for just plain prose writing.

Thanks again for your help! Jakob

[Stefanoko]

Glad I could be of help, too. I am not a coder, so NeoVim seems a bit over my head, but I can imagine it being useful for editing CSS and json files. Will give it a try.

When it comes to writing distraction-free, I've been using Focuswriter (no markdown, only rtf and txt, but it can be configured to recognize ## headings as jump marks). https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/

Mempad has become another favorite. Not a dedicated writing app, it lacks typewriter scrolling, typing sounds, paragraph focus and all that jazz. But I like the speed of it. It comes up instantaneous, custom text width/margins via ini-settings. The tree hides via shortcut and can be nested without limits, which allows deeply structured text. Fully portable with very low overhead. https://www.horstmuc.de/wmem.htm

None of that can match Writemonkey, though. It's a class of its own. Like you, I am hoping to see more development. Keeping my fingers crossed for both of us.

My best Stef