Wenlin

[PollyWaffle]

I was just given this application a few days ago. It is the most amazing chinese program i have ever used. Has anyone else tried it?

polly

[roddy]

I seem to remember using it years ago. What does it actually do?

Roddy

[wix]

I just googled it and found the website with all the details

http://www.wenlin.com/

[PollyWaffle]

yeah, i tried the demo a couple of years back & didn't think much of it.

to say it is a dictionary is a little unfair as it has all 1100 or so syllables for you to hear, flashcard utility, and a writing tablet for looking up characters quickly.

if used in combination with the free CEL dictionary which lets u copy a character or word to the pooter's clipboard & instantly have the meaning, we can't be stopped :-P

polly

[techie]

I use it all the time. It is an amazing program. One of the features I have discovered is that you can actually search http: chinese sites. Even though this picture is not supported and not talked about in the manual, while raw, it is still quite good.

Of course the value of this program is your ability to download books, novels, short stories in chinese and be able to instantly read them. Use this in conjunction with a good annotator such as the one in mandarintools.com and you can prepare your own lessons.

Finally, if you have not tried the flashcard creation, you should. It allows you to learn all the characters a "bite" at a time and at your own convenience!

I hopy Polly that you will find as much use of this program as I am.

Enjoy it!

[sunyata]

I heard this program is quite useful and I have version 3.0 installed, but haven't gotten around to actually using it yet.

Edited. Admin

[Nephand]

I'm surprised the board owners allow promotion of warez.

A pity really as Wenlin is thoroughly impressive. I ordered it yesterday after using the demo version and it deserves my money. Its interface may look a bit unusual, and quite dated in some screenshots, but it's a very practical system.

I managed to get a discounted copy for £115 here in the UK though, which made me feel a little easier about the spending. [www.camsoft.co.uk]

[beirne]

will also recommend buying Wenlin. At it's core it is a dictionary, but it does lots of dictionary things in a handy way and it has a few other features as well. While the English-Chinese dictionary is not very big, the Chinese-English dictionary is excellent, with over 200,000 entries. If I need to look up a less common English word, I can search through the Chinese-English dictionary until I get a match. Not the smoothest way to do a lookup, but I'm able to look up nearly everything I want.

The key feature of the Wenlin interface is that everything is hypertext. You can wave the pointer over a character and find out the meaning of it or the word it is part of without clicking. This makes it very nice for reading text. If you click on any Chinese or English you get a new window with the definition of what you click on. While the look does not conform to the usual windows style, it should not be a reason for anyone not by buy the software.

Wenlin does lots of things and it is hard to absorb them all upon first usage. Get it for its dictionary and you will find it does a lot of other things for you too.

[Taibei]

i tried the demo a couple of years back & didn't think much of it.

The program has progressed through several stages since then.

I concur with the recommendations here. Wenlin's main dictionary is the amazing ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, which is worth quite a lot in itself (retail US$59).

The program is also amazingly fast.

[sfr@rcn.com]

I have used it for several years and couldn't live without it. When Im studying, I keep it running in the background to check characters, meanings, tones, even cut and paste when my IME wont give me a certain character.

Buy this one. We need to support quality apps like this and Rick Harbaugh"s Zhongwen so they can keep at it.

Sandra

[bjgodefr]

Wenlin is a great program indeed!

I use it mainly for analysing characters. In the textbook I use (New PCR) each chapter introduces a lot words from which the characters are not explained. So thanks to wenlin I can make my own char-study-pages.

I love the etymology they give for each char, way better than any chin textbook.

e.g. 聚会 (get-together, party) I found the bottom part a bit strange, wenlin explains it’s a variation of 众(眾 zhòng) 'crowd', while the top part is the phonetic.

[Tom Bishop]

Let me confirm that Beirne is right: without the financial support of Wenlin users, we couldn't continue to develop the software, dictionaries, and related learning materials. Most of our income is from individual users, not from institutions. We're very grateful to all of our loyal customers. Thanks especially for the kind words from some of you on this forum. As long as we can earn enough money to stay in business (and we're still struggling to do that), we will keep doing our best to make Wenlin as useful, and affordable, as possible. I've been working on Wenlin since 1988, and in my experience, Wenlin users are some of the most intelligent, interesting, and considerate people in the world. If we don't always ask for your serial numbers (for technical support or upgrades), it's because we'd rather have a relationship based on mutual respect. Thank you very much! 非常感谢!

Tom Bishop

Wenlin Institute, Inc. Software for Learning Chinese

E-mail: wenlin@wenlin.com Web: http://www.wenlin.com

Telephone: 1-877-4-WENLIN (1-877-493-6546)

[xuechengfeng]

Tom,

Don't you think more people would be inclined to buy your product if it weren't around $200? Sadly, this is why piracy is rampant. People are afraid of wasting their money on something they don't get to try out first. Who wants to buy a CD that has one good song for $14? Who wants to buy a Chinese product that is useless for $200 (especially when you are already paying pricy tuition money to go learn it at a college)? Not to say your product is junk, but I don't think I want to make such a pricy investment (to a college student at least) on something a few guys say are a good product. If it really costs you near the price of sale to make Wenlin, maybe you need to reconstruct your product.

[beirne]

Not to say your product is junk, but I don't think I want to make such a pricy investment (to a college student at least) on something a few guys say are a good product.

You might want to download the demo to see what it Wenlin is like. You can also read a longer review that I wrote for more information.

If it really costs you near the price of sale to make Wenlin, maybe you need to reconstruct your product.

Please think about what you are saying here. Tom has been working on Wenlin since 1988. He needs to cover his expenses. The problem is that in business while producing CD's and manuals is relatively cheap, developing the software and running a business is not. He has to recover his fixed costs across a small number of sales, because there aren't that many students of Chinese to buy his program. I'm not sure how he would reconstruct the product. He could remove features, but that would take away from what makes Wenlin valuable. I use Wenlin in different ways at different times. Sometimes I want to practice writing characters and other times I want assistance reading texts. Sometimes I just want to look up a word. Wenlin puts all of these functions and many more into one package and that is what makes the program worth the cost.

[sunyata]

Sorry, but I have to agree with xuechengfen on this one....

You make a program and try to market it - then make the price low enough so that more people can afford it (no way I am paying $200 for that) and ensure that it can't be pirated. Then maybe you can be more successful.

If, on the other hand, you make software that is easy to crack and then try to charge over the roof for it - guess what's gonna happen?

Frankly, I don't even like this program that much. There is better stuff out there....

[sfr@rcn.com]

And I agree with Beirne. Wenlin grows with you. And it's useful for beginners and intermediates. (I don't know about advanced students of Chinese because I haven't gotten there yet.) It is also the most flexible of all the computerized Chinese learning programs I've seen--and, as a tech editor of an influential magazine (that no one has heard of), I've seen a lot. Since it takes the place of several other apps, does it seem more worthwhile to buy?

I am well aware how to crack most copy protection and registration programs. However, I would never pirate Wenlin because I want them to stay in business. They deserve whatever profit they can glean out of this program, although I'll bet that their profits are minuscule.

Besides which, Wenlin as a company is about as human and principled a group as I've dealt with.

Sandra

[roddy]

I'm going to stick my nose in here . . .

First off, as some of you are already aware, I'm going to ban discussion of pirated / cracked / copied Chinese learning material on here in the very near future. There are few decent products as there are, and I'll do what I can to support those that exist. This will be taken seriously, and some people might want to edit their posts now. Discussion via pm that is brought to my attention will be treated the same way.

There is a demo version of Wenlin available, and a number of reviews around the web. If this isn't enough for you to make your decision, keep your wallet in your pocket.

There is better stuff out there....

Care to enlighten us?

I'm simply putting it out as a suggestion

Yeah, suggesting people lie to get something at a cheaper price than they are entitled to.

Roddy

[sfr@rcn.com]

Go to it, Roddy!

Sandra

[Konglong]

Thanks Roddy. And thanks to Tom. Some of these posts were getting crazy. Glad it came to a halt.

Wenlin is my tool of choice. Some others have tried to come close, but have failed. I look forward to what Tom comes up with in the future as he continues to improve Wenlin. A PDA lite version would be great.

I have also started to master importing and exporting of additions to my cidian and zidian. Has anyone else tried this? Anyone interested is hosting a list that others can add to? For example, I have seen a few of these online searchable dictionaries Eng/Chin and this would be nice to be able to import the additionis added by others into Wenlin. This way the Wenlin DB could continue to be improved.

Kong

[beirne]

A good PDA dictionary program that runs on a Palm is the Oxford™ English & Chinese Dictionary, soon to be called PlecoDict. It is based on the concise second edition paper dictionary. It includes handwriting recognition and almost-hypertext lookup. You can also load up alternate dictionaries. I have loaded the CEDICT for a broader selection of vocabulary.

The Wenlin tie comes in because Michael Love, another dedicated guy making a nice product for learning Chinese, worked out a deal where he can use the ABC Chinese-English dictionary on the Palm along with the English-Chinese Pinyin Dictionary from the New World Press in China. This is expected sometime this summer and is the reason for the new name for the product.

They are working on a Pocket PC version of the PlecoDict but haven't set a release date. In the meantime you can buy a Palm