Popup Chinese Translator for Firefox!!

[flameproof]

Any news on FF 2.0 compatibility? Seems not to work anymore....

[xentropic]

I just updated Chinesepera-kun it to work in Firefox 2.0. There are no feature changes in this update, but you can now use it in 2.0.

I just uploaded it to addons.mozilla.org so usually within a day they mozilla crew will post it on the site and it will be available to download, so it should show up sometime tomorrow.

Enjoy.

check my site for current ideas for features in the next release, and please post here or on my site if you have any good ideas on what to add.

http://perapera.wordpress.com/chinesepera-kun/

[flameproof]

A real Yedi! May the force be with you!

[xentropic]

I have been recently working on updating the dictionary and search for better results. I have to to a place now where there are good results and am about done and ready to release.

This will the be the last update for a long time so if there is anything anyone wants changed/included please leave a comment.

In the latest version I changed what happens when you mouse over a character that isnt in the dictionary...it magnifies it, or if you press it will magnify and display it. This replaced the previes window which showed a whole bunch of japanese related information (if the character happened to be used in japanese also) which people complained about me taking out even though it hardly related to chinese. Does everyone want this back? OR even better do you want to use the unihan and display this information for all the chinese characters?? obviosly that would be nice, but the unihan file which can be downloaded and used for free is almost 30MB so rather than writing a 40MB extension, is there someone who wants to make a processed version of that file that only has chinese related information? that should cut it down....

I should mention I have made it so traditional characters also work now no problem. How it works is that you will have to choose your browsing mode in options, then after that it will do simplified or traditional, and export respectively (in BIG5 for traditional). There is also the added option of "show more entries" which will yield many more results in the window.

Well thats about it....

[gato]

Good work, xentropic. The vocab list seems to be missing a newline after each entry. Could you check that?

Have you looked at the StarDict dictionaries?

http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries_zh_CN.php

The 21 century bidirectional dictionary 21世纪英汉汉英双向词典 is a good one, but for some reason it doesn't show pinyin.

[imron]

but the unihan file which can be downloaded and used for free is almost 30MB

Zipped up it's only about 5 MB, but having said that, I can make a reduced version if you like, what tags/info do you need from it?

[gato]

Is Unihan a dictionary? I took a glance at its website. It looks like a Unicode table for programmers. Is this something useful to a Chinese learner? Maybe maintain as an optional module if you think there are people who want it. A browser extension probably shouldn't be too big.

[imron]

It's a massive reference database for CJK unicode characters that includes among other things their pronunciation and also definition. It's limited to characters only (so no words), and probably couldn't be classed as a dictionary, but it still contains loads of useful info (pron, definition, radicals, stroke counts etc).

[gato]

Here's an example of data in the Unihan database for the character "中"

http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=4E2D

I can see that some people might have some use for it, but given that its usefulness-to-size ratio is fairly low for most Chinese learners, I would recommend having it as an add-on module rather than in the main extension.

[imron]

Yep, and on that page among all the not so relevant stuff you'll find:

Mandarin: ZHONG1 ZHONG4

Cantonese: zung1 zung3

Definition: central; center, middle; in the midst of; hit (target); attain

Total Strokes: 4

I agree there's a lot of not so relevant stuff in there, hence the reason Xentropic said:

is there someone who wants to make a processed version of that file that only has chinese related information? that should cut it down....

An uncompressed, stripped down version that only contains the Mandarin pronunciation and the definition takes up a little under 2MB (just did a quick test then), and only ~500KB when compressed.

The biggest benefit is that you are unlikely to come across a character online that is not contained in the Unihan database, although not all characters entries will have definition/pronunciation values.

[xentropic]

yea if someone wants to cut that unihan file down to only containing these:

Mandarin: ZHONG1 ZHONG4

Cantonese: zung1 zung3

Definition: central; center, middle; in the midst of; hit (target); attain

Total Strokes: 4

that would be fine with me, theres also other info like where the hanzi is located in many dictionaries etc, but i think those 4 things are the most useful. if you do make that file ill definately credit you for makin it and put it in and release the next ver. im already done with everything else but wanna get this cleared up and release it so i can get back to using it and studying chinese

you can send it to: peraperakun [at] gmail.com (replace [at] with @)

thanx

[imron]

Done. Check your email. The stripped file is about 3MB uncompressed, or about 740KB compressed.

[xentropic]

thank you very much for that imron!!!!

the extension feels much more solid now. i uploaded it to mozilla so it should post within 24hours. in the future i want to do a few more things with this.

1) allow you to choose which entry in the popup to export

2) allow use of multiple dictionaries, like the ones from stardict

3) export in unicode (for some reason it just doesnt work now ?? so i have to convert to GB2312 or BIG5)

thanks for everyones feedback, i think im done updating for awhile and should get back to studying but ill check here for comments, so next time i get motivation to code ill incorporate them. thanks again

[johnd]

Firstly, thanks for this great extension. I just have one little gripe, if you have any time to look at it:

I added the green book icon to my firefox toolbar, but I found a little problem with the functionality. The "toggle ChinesePera-kun" function seems to work on a tab-by-tab basis, so might be switched on in one tab and off in another. But the toolbar button does not reflect the different states as I change between tabs. Plus, I'd prefer not to have to toggle on for every new tab anyway.

I think it would be better if the toggle operated across all tabs, so that ChinesePera-kun is always on, or always off, everywhere.

Cheers!

[xentropic]

yea im pretty sure everyone who uses this is aware of the problem. this problem is quite firefox related and im sure requires a knowledge of how the firefox framework works, which means its way outside of what i know and have any desire to know. i just know programming logic, and dont know much about frameworks....if someone does know why this is happening ill fix it, but simply put i dont know how to fix it and dont wanna waste time learning, i *used* to be a programmer now im a full-time aspiring polyglot. thanx for the feedback though. good luck in studies.

[xentropic]

Dunno why mozilla is being sooo slow, I posted it tuesday and its still not up so if anybody wants to download, here are all the changes:

*More entries in the dictionary

*Faster Search (needed because of bigger dictionary)

*You can choose "Show More Results" in the options dialog to yield more results (often redundant, OFF by default).

*Press when over a character to display character information about it.(very much thanks to Imron Alston for compiling the info from the huge file)

*Now works with Simplified AND Traditional characters, and will detect automatically, so no longer need to choose anything in the options dialog.

*Fixed newline character not being outputted upon export

*Made the accidental exporting (by hitting ) when trying to copy a little better, but still not perfect.

and here is the download link:

http://www.box.net/public/n6dh71vdyf

[gato]

xentropic, are you sure that the missing newline problem is fixed for the vocab list? I just installed v0.2.2, and the saved vocab list is still missing a newline. [edit: working now!]

The unihan lookup works very well, but you probably want to document the "shift" (for unihan) and "control" (for saving to a vocab list) somewhere, maybe on the preference panel. Thanks for the hard work.

[Stefani]

I installed it, and it works great! It helps so much to get the Pinyin, since I am a novice at Mandarin, but quite illiterate :-)

[necroflux]

xentropic, the Traditional script is working like a charm, and this tool is absolutely incredible!! You rock man, thanks!!

[hlk123]

Hello

I beg your pardon! ... Where is the extension options dialog or the options dialog?

I can not find it!

Thanks.