My Chinese study dream tool

[shibole]

Right now for windows I'm using:

• Anki - seems to be the best SRS flashcard program
  
• DimSum - handwriting recognition to check my ability to write characters when using Anki
  
• estroke - stroke order lookup
  
• zhongwen.com/book - etymology
  
• Pera-kun (web browser popup tool)
  

Now if only there were a way to easily integrate all of these. For example:

• Have Anki use the handwriting recognition in DimSum to check flashcard answers
  
• Have DimSum use estroke instead of the incomplete stroke order thing it's using now
  
• Have DimSum lookup characters on zhongwen.com and display in a web view pane in the dictionary tab along with what it currently shows
  
• click-to-add dictionary words in DimSum as Anki facts
  
• A screen (or even just web browser) popup tool for looking up words and adding them as Anki facts
  

That would totally kick ass!

What would your dream tool be?

[chinesetools]

# Have DimSum use estroke instead of the incomplete stroke order thing it's using now

Is the e-stroke data available for other programs to use?

# Have DimSum lookup characters on zhongwen.com and display in a web view pane in the dictionary tab along with what it currently shows

This is doable.

# click-to-add dictionary words in DimSum as Anki facts

I'll have to look up what this means.

The DimSum discussion board is at http://www.chinesecomputing.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=1

[shibole]

An Anki "fact" is something like:

你好 nǐhǎo hello

With the Mandarin "model", this fact would be used to generate two "cards" like:

1. Question: "hello" Answer: 你好, nǐhǎo

2. Question: 你好 Answer: nǐhǎo, hello

Other models might take facts with more than 3 fields and generate other cards, but Mandarin is all I care about right now.

As for an API for doing this, I don't know if Anki supports one directly on the local machine without manually importing them from a file, but it might be possible to upload facts to the web-based Anki service which can then be Sync'd with the local version of Anki. It's a bit roundabout but would probably work if the web API is available and sounds like less trouble than an import operation.

I'll check out the DimSum forums. So far I think I like DimSum better than software with similar functionality.

I should see whether these things are open source and if so pitch in to help

[imcgraw]

What, no speech recognition? :-) Check out this demo video .

[stephanhodges]

eStroke from eon basically takes anything from the clipboard, and then draws the characters one after the other. If you put only one character on the clipboard, then it will leave that character up on the screen, and you can redraw (animation style) as my times as you want by pressing the enter key, I believe.

It also can generate a picture with the entire stroke sequence, and is highly customizable for formatting, etc. Lots of other options.

The author is very open to adding new features, etc. if you explain what and why.

At least, they've added several items over the last year that I asked for!

[novemberfog]

I would be happy with just a reliable mouse input system for characters that works the same in both Windows and OS X. Such a tool is available for Japanese (ATOK), and I wish there was one for Chinese that would work with both traditioinal characters and simplified.

Then again I have been holding out on a decent pinyin (not hanin!!) based pinyin system for OS X since version 10.2. That does not seem to be happening anytime soon....

I love my PlecoDict. It is everything that all of my others tool cannot be (except for my paper dictionary as it has so many entries).

[gato]

I would be happy with just a reliable mouse input system for characters that works the same in both Windows and OS X.

Hanwang (whose handwriting recognition software is used by PlecoDict) makes one for Windows, but you are unlikely to find similar software for OS X, at least developed by a Chinese company, since extremely few people in China use Macs. Macs used to be much more expensive than Windoze machines, but I guess they are not any more.

[shibole]

Speaking of handwriting recognition, does anyone know of a cheap graphics tablet that works with the handwriting recognition in windows? Either that or a cheap tablet with some cheap windows handwriting recognition software....

[gato]

Either that or a cheap tablet with some cheap windows handwriting recognition software....

I use a Wacom graphics tablet, mostly as an ergonomically-improved mouse. It's easily on your hand and wrist holding a pen rather than a mouse.

As for a handwriting recognition software, I just downloaded the 飘雪智能手写辨识系统 (Snow Smart Handwriting Recognition System) after seeing your question. It works as a Chinese IME under Windows and its accuracy seems to be very good. Give it a shot.

http://www.skycn.com/soft/21284.html

飘雪智能手写辨识系统 V3.0

[pandaxiongmao]

Then again I have been holding out on a decent pinyin (not hanin!!) based pinyin system for OS X since version 10.2. That does not seem to be happening anytime soon....

According to

http://groups.google.com/group/chinesemac/browse_thread/thread/eab6c4ee003fafcb

there are new pinyin and zhuyin methods in Mac OS 10.5. You can input traditional Chinese using the Pinyin method. You can also enter pinyin plus tone number (I am guessing kind of like Wenlin).

Unfortunately, the promised Chinese voice support promised in the Mac OS X Leopard preview pages is nowhere to be seen in the release copy of Leopard.

[shibole]

chinesetools: I just noticed that DimSum is Java and was looking at your jar file.

Why not make it open source and join forces with ZDT? If nothing else I'd be willing to help add features to DimSum including the one below (assuming it's possible).

Also, regarding eStroke, the data seems to be in a bunch of files but I'm assuming the format isn't opensince they'd be less able to enforce licensing that way. eStroke does support drag-and-drop of characters, so if it were possible to generate a drag-and-drop event in eStroke from within DimSum you could probably add some sort of "use eStroke" preference checkbox and cause the show stroke order button to "call" estroke. I'm unsure what AWT or whatever else can do in this regard, and unfortunately eStroke is Windows-specific....

[johnmck]

For those with a laptop here is an interesting way to use your touchpad as a graphics tablet.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/777196/2_mini_graphics_tablet/

[Hong XQ]

Have Anki use the handwriting recognition in DimSum to check flashcard answers

In the end I think the division of labor has been well thought through (not talking about complex tasks like automatic translation of chunks of text), so taking the best basic bricks is probably a nice way around.

I agree with you on Anki's coolness, in particular, presentation of the cards mixing up the sides in one same review is cool, as are the many degrees of marking.

It turns out I want to do something requiring two bricks:

I'm trying to setup something to revise hsk vocab so that

-I get asked meaning and pinyin and have to draw the character

-if I draw (or select from suggestions:roll: ) it wrong, flashing red light goes off and Anki marks a fail.

-if I draw it right, I can grade myself as to how easy it was.

The presence of the suggestion table really makes it messy: it's getting in the way of the exercise by trying to help, in a sense.

It seems nciku vocab tests come close to flashcards-cum-hwr; only they don't give you the pinyin alongside meaning! (and they haven't got bells and flashing lights implemented yet:) It sounds silly, but since I choose to believe in spaced repetition, can't I keep my old creed on conditioning alongside?)

[imron]

Sounds like you probably want Skritter.

[tooironic]

I'm pretty sure Wenlin can do 90 percent of those things...

[Hong XQ]

@imron: Thanks a lot! Skritter is exactly what I was thinking of, complete with Pavlovian flashing lights and 'approval' of tts voice. What's more, I like how they solved the problem of hwr-selection being a help by having your strokes slightly shift into place if deemed right and vanish if too far.Now to cram like crazy

@tooironic: I like what I see of wenlin, only I'm not sure how to rapidly import/select an hsk vocab list into its flashcard program. I suppose the built-in lists and hsk coincide quite closely though..

All in all I agree with your 90% figure and the abundance of great tools.

Edited August 16, 2009 at 06:05 AM by Hong XQ

[L-F-J]

Got Dimsum for Mac and it does what I need it to.

 

Just wondering about the keyboard shortcut to save a file I'm editing. It says ^S, but I don't know what key ^ refers to...

 

I tried command+S, control+S, etc., and it doesn't seem to do anything. Anyone know? It would just be convenient.

[imron]

^S should be Control+s.  If it's not working, then that's a separate problem.

[L-F-J]

Yeah, it seems to be working. Don't know what I was doing wrong before. Thanks!