

Help:Visual dictionary

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The OmegaWiki Visual Dictionary helps one find a word and its definition using a visual context. It consists of labeled pictures that have links to the DefinedMeaning pages of the labeled parts.


When you hover with your mouse over one of the labeled parts of the picture, the word for it appears. If you click on the labeled part, you are taken to the Defined Meaning page of the word, where you can see its definitions, synonyms and translations in other languages. The labels are in your default language, but you can switch to another version of the picture using the language links in the left column.


Such pictures are to be named with the Visual: prefix.

In order to make the image have imbedded links, you need to define geometric shapes within the picture that are associated with an Omegawiki page. The Wikipedia has a tutorial on how to create imagemaps.

There is a tool called ImageMapEdit that generates the the code for the imagemap as you click on regions of your image. To use it, you need to place the following line


in your personal common.js page (for example User:InfoCan/common.js).

Once this tool is activated, you will see an "ImageMapEdit >" link on the page of all image files on OmegaWiki. By clicking on this link just below the image, you will be able to create an imagemap for it.

The link from the image should be to a DefinedMeaning page and have a label in the language of the page you are creating.

If the image you will use is already on Commons, you don't need to upload it to Omegawiki. It will be automatically imported if you refer to it on a page you create in OmegaWiki. You may want to first create a temporary page under your userpage, such as user:InfoCan/temp, in order for the image to be imported into Omegawiki. Then, you can work on this image to define the clickable areas on the image that will be linked to DefinedMeaning pages. Finally, you can copy the imagemap code to the final page that will contain the labeled image.


Each language version of a Visual page should end with a slash symbol and a two-letter language code or, if a two-letter code is not available, a three letter code (see the list of ISO 639-2 and -3 codes here). For technical reasons (the requirement of the Mediawiki Extension:Polyglot), the English version of the page does not end with the language code. For example, we have the Visual:bicycle, Visual:bicycle/fr, and Visual:bicycle/tr pages for the English, French and Turkish versions of the bicycle page.

All language versions of a visual page should be categorized identically, in English, followed by a slash symbol and a two- or three-letter language code. For example, versions of the bicycle page mentioned above are categorized under Category:Technology imagemaps, Category:Technology imagemaps/fr and Category:Technology imagemaps/tr respectively. These language-specific category trees should be rooted under Category:Imagemaps, Category:Imagemaps/fr, Category:Imagemaps/tr, etc.

Each image page should be linked to from the Visual:Index page and its language-specific versions (Visual:Index/fr, etc.).