While reviewing a card in the Mac version of Anki, I would like the option to select a word from the definition, right click, and use the “Lookup” or “Search Web” feature of the menu that pops up (right click menu).
As of now, when you select a word and right click, the only option is to Copy…
That’s exactly right. In basically every app i use that’s how it works, you select text and a lot of the same options appear, as well as some others the dev may have added.
I’m not that versed in coding for mac though, so maybe it just works in native apps or i don’t know what.
But yeah, the standard functionality is to have those options
A “Search Web” feature doesn’t make sense in Anki; at least not by default. Meaning the first best practise the apple docs mention would be violated if Anki were to add it to the context menu.
(obviously Anki isn’t bound to apples best practises but I cannot find any docs saying a “Search Web” feature is standard by any means.)
I’m not sure if they are official standards, but there do seem to be general UI design guidelines or best practices that Apple uses for its apps. “Look Up”, “Translate”, “Search”, and “Copy” are common text context menu functions. And, for editable text there are additional common functions like spellcheck, “Cut”, and “Paste”.
But those commands would have to be linked to specific actions that could be performed within the app, right?
I don’t know what “Look Up” would mean in Anki – a term like “Search” might make more sense. Opening the Browse window from the study screen already opens to the current card, but I suppose if you wanted to see if you had a note/card related to another word on the card – that could save you a copy-paste. Maybe it would need something more specific like “Search in Browse.” [As I am describing this, it occurs to me that there’s possibly already an add-on for it …]
“Translate” and “Search Web” don’t make any sense in Anki, unless implemented by specific add-ons. But without an add-on, you can do that with a “dicttionary”-type link to your template – Field Replacements - Anki Manual . “Copy” is already there, and editor fields have Cut-Copy-Paste.
That’s an oft-used Mac (and iOS) feature, it brings up definitions from wikipedia, dictionaries definitions, etc… Very useful to see more info about a subject.
I disagree, useful for the same functionality as Look Up’s.
“Look Up”, “Translate”, and “Search” functionality is provided by the macOS operating system. Here are what they look like for the OP’s example word “poise”:
(“Look Up” can do different things depending on what the operating system feels is appropriate. For example, looking up “Anki” provides a snippet from Wikipedia describing what Anki is.)
Search:
(“Search” just launches a window in the default web browser to the specified search engine page for the search term.)
All are useful, though I personally don’t use “Look Up” (because I instead have preferred dictionaries that I use for looking up definitions). “Translate” I use all the time for my language learning. “Search” might be useful for searching for images to add to Anki cards.