Custom Dictionary for Referencing

Scrivener Wish List
1

Windows 10, Version 3.1.4.0 (February 1st, 2023 Release Date)

Hi, I’ve been using Scrivener for a couple of years, and something I believe would be very beneficial to my workflow and likely others as well, is adding a Custom Dictionary button. It’s something that can be toggled on and off by a button, and entries can be added to it by the author. While the Dictionary button is on, it will highlight words present in the Dictionary in the text, and hovering over the word will give a pop up of either the pronunciation or definition the author put inside the Dictionary.

The idea isn’t to do this automatically for *every word, * (however, that would be so OP). There are a couple of suggestions I’ve found in 2014 and 2018 that ask for something slightly similar; however, I believe this combination of a custom author-created Dictionary and the pop-up toggle button would be an incredibly useful application of a functional Dictionary while writing.

I honestly don’t know what a good hotkey for it would be, because I don’t know all of the hotkeys that are available. Likely Ctrl+[?], Alt+[?] or Shift+[?] would be good choices if any intuitive ones are still available.

After looking through some of the older posts related to Dictionaries, I’ve seen that MacOS has a built in Dictionary, and that making one custom to Scrivener isn’t an idea the developer(s) want to pursue, and I’m wondering if the same applies to this idea for Dictionaries.

4 Likes
2

Bumping this idea!

Would be an excellent idea for those (like myself) who write primarily fantasy/sci-fi/speculative fiction and need a way to keep track of all the new terminology we come up with. The little pop-ups would also be REALLY beneficial for quick referencing definitions of those new terms and phrases when your worldbuilding becomes as large as most do while writing.

3

Bumping again. I have different custom vocabularies for different novels and genres; they’re not cross-novel compatible. What’s the priority of getting this implemented?

4

Can you edit a hunsell dictionary file and add words and rename file. English_novel 1 , 2, 3 etc. would assume could edit and insert file.

Or edit personal word lists and keep cvs file for each book and delete one version and then add new book words all at once. Or delete old vocab all at one time. And then learn new words as edit book/ write new book. This is quick.