What is it?

LucidDoc is a graphical reference tool built with Java 2's Swing. Download version 0.5 (includes source). Send feedback to me.
 
 

What is it for?

Imagine you are writing a document on an arbitrary subject, and you need to get information about a word you have just written. Some examples:

• You want to get the word's definition to make sure your usage is correct.
• You wish to check your facts about the word in an encyclopedia.
• If it is a financial document, you might like to see the current price of a stock symbol you have just referred to.
• Suppose you have just opened up a document in a foreign language you are partially familiar with, you might like to get  translations of one of the harder words.

With a typical editing application you can do certain functions on words like check their spelling but these rely on small fixed information sources which are bundled with the application. On the Web there is a vast amount of reference material which is not exploited by such programs.

LucidDoc is intended to fill this gap. It allows you to view and create documents in an environment where you can click on buttons which do look-ups for you, and display the results in a set of information panes to the right of the document area. In addition, you can create and customize look-up functions and the resources they rely on.
 
 

What does it look like?

More screenshots:

• Edit Function List Dialog
• Edit Function Dialog
• Edit Resource Dialog
• Preferences Dialog

For a detailed technical description of its Java implementation, see LucidDoc Code Design.

Here is a basic description of its operation from the application's Help.
 

LucidDoc is a tool which allows you to find out various things about words in a document you are viewing or creating. While editing documents in a main area as you would with a normal text editor, you can get supplementary notes about what you are doing in a set of information windows.

On selecting a word in an edit window, one or more functions are run to find out things about the word from various resources. Examples of functions might be "Get the definition of this" or "English to French" or "Find a set of web links relevant to this" or "Get the current price for this stock symbol." Resources for the "English to French" function might include forms on the travlang.com website and the wordreference.com site.

LucidDoc comes with a set of prepackaged functions and resources. However, you can create your own functions using the Edit Function Dialog and define resources for each function using the Edit Resource Dialog.

During normal operation you can activate various functions on the toolbar. What is displayed there can be customized using the Edit Function List Dialog.

LucidDoc is implemented in Swing, and can operate on any platform which supports Java 2.