Arch Chinese - a Chinese character learning tool

[david808]

We wrote an online Chinese character learning tool, called Arch Chinese. Currently it animates 6,000 simplified Chinese characters, along with pronunciation, English definitions and example words and sentences. It also allows the users to generate character writing practice sheets. Welcome Chinese learners to use it and provide comments/suggestions

Edited October 21, 2008 at 12:40 AM by david808

[cababunga]

Wow, looks awesome! I only can't figure out how to choose a character from the search box. I enter pinyin with a tone number, click search, little window opens with the characters, but I can't click them, can't drag them. Is that just me?

Firefox 2.0

Flash 9.0 r124

[david808]

cababunga,

Hmm. when your mouse hover over a character, it will be highlighted. With Fire Fox 2, you should be able to click the characters on the search result popup. Can you click the characters on the example phrases/words box? I have forwarded your message to one of the developers. I tried FireFox 3 but I could not reproduce the issue.

Thanks

[david808]

cababunga,

We tried Firefox 2.0 with Flash 9.0 r124 in Windows XP and Vista, the search box works fine. Do you still have the problem? If so, you can either post it here or send email to

support@ArchChinese.com. Thanks.

Edited October 21, 2008 at 12:41 AM by david808

[cababunga]

Hmm. when your mouse hover over a character, it will be highlighted.

Yes, it gets light blue border.

With Fire Fox 2, you should be able to click the characters on the search result popup.

When I click, the border blinks, but nothing else happens.

Can you click the characters on the example phrases/words box?

Yes, those work.

I have forwarded your message to one of the developers. I tried FireFox 3 but I could not reproduce the issue.

Thank you. Please note that I'm new here and my posts get moderated, so don't mind my sluggish replies.

__

Alex

[david808]

cababunga,

It is likely you clicked a character that does not have animation data yet. Try a commonly used character, such as the characters listed on the Frequently Used 2500 Character List, to see if it works.

Another way to check is to bring up the Studied Characters popup or History Characters popup, and click the characters on the popups to see if it works for you.

If the characters you are looking for are not in the system yet, or no animation data available for them, send us the characters, we will add them within 24 hours.

We are actively creating new content for the system. Before being published, each character animation has to be reviewed by at least one Chinese teacher. Our goal is to include a full set of simplified Chinese characters, that is more than 10,000 characters, but as you might have noticed, we only cover most frequently used 5000 characters so far.

Thanks again for using the system

[david808]

We have verified and fixed the issue. It only occurs in Linux environment.

So far, we have tested the system in the following environment:

Browsers: Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, FireFox 1.x, FireFox 2.x, FireFox 3.0, Google Chrome and Opera 9.x.

Operating System: Windows 2000, XP and Vista; Linux

We do not have a Mac. If you do, please try it in Safari and let us know if it works.

Thanks.

Arch Chinese Support

[OneEye]

Works fine on a Mac. Tried Safari (3.1.2) and Firefox (3.0.1), on OSX (10.5.4).

[david808]

That is great! So it runs on all major browsers and platforms. For mobil users, we are evaluating the technologies and will provide a solution once we think it is feasible.

[david808]

For those who are interested in this tool: we have added a Character Learning Flashcard sub-system. The users can import/export word list to/from the flashcard.

[david808]

In addition to example words/phrases of a character, now it shows example sentences as well. Currently, the system contains less than 30,000 sentences and will add more when time permits. As in example phrases, you can click any characters in the sentences to look up the meanings and usage of the clicked character.

[david808]

Added character look-up by radicals. Also, the example sentences of each character have been reorganized. Now easy ones display first.

[david808]

reworked practice worksheet generation part. Now it supports character stroke sequences.

[david808]

added searching characters/phrases/example sentences by English phrase, English sentence fragments (e.g. prefer to, might as well, my Chinese teacher, am going to), Chinese phrase, Chinese sentence patterns or fragments (such as 与其...不如)

[david808]

Added Standard Mandarin Chinese Pinyin Table (based on 新华字典). With one click, you can view the tone variations and hear the pronunciations.

[david808]

Added stroke order animation and worksheet generation for traditional Chinese characters.

[Hofmann]

Arch Chinese, someone is spamming on Wikipedia. Stop it.

How not to be a spammer

Sometimes, people come to Wikipedia with the intention of spamming—creating articles which are mere advertisements or self-promotion, or spewing external links to a Web site over many articles.

Some people spam Wikipedia without meaning to. That is, they do things which Wikipedians consider to be spamming, without realizing that their actions are not in line with building an encyclopedia. A new editor who owns a business may see that there are articles about other businesses on Wikipedia, and conclude that it would be appropriate to create his own such article. A Web site operator may see many places in Wikipedia where his or her site would be relevant, and quickly add several dozen links to it.

The following guidelines are intended to suggest how not to be a spammer—that is, how to mention a Web site, product, business, or other resource without appearing to the Wikipedia community that you are trying to abuse Wikipedia for self-promotion.

1. Review your intentions. Wikipedia is not a space for personal promotion or the promotion of products, services, Web sites, fandoms, ideologies, or other memes. If you're here to tell readers how great something is, or to get exposure for an idea or product that nobody's heard of yet, you're in the wrong place. Likewise, if you're here to make sure that the famous Wikipedia cites you as the authority on something (and possibly pull up your sagging PageRank) you'll probably be disappointed, because Wikipedia uses nofollow on all external links, thereby causing search engines to effectively ignore them.

2. Contribute cited text, not bare links. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a link farm. If you have a source to contribute, first contribute some facts that you learned from that source, then cite the source. Don't simply direct readers to another site for the useful facts; add useful facts to the article, then cite the site where you found them. You're here to improve Wikipedia—not just to funnel readers off Wikipedia and onto some other site, right? (If not, see #1 above.)

3. The References section is for references. A reference directs the reader to a work that the writer(s) referred to while writing the article. The References section of a Wikipedia article isn't just a list of related works; it is specifically the list of works used as sources. Therefore, it can never be correct to add a link or reference to References sections if nobody editing the text of the article has actually referred to it.

4. Don't make a new article for your own product or Web site. Most often, when a person creates a new article describing his or her own work, it's because the work is not yet well-known enough to have attracted anyone else's attention, much less independent and reliable sources against which the content can be verified. Articles of this sort are usually deleted. Wikipedia does indeed have articles about popular products and Web sites, but it is not acceptable to use Wikipedia to popularize them.

5. Don't gratuitously set off our spam radar. There are certain stylistic behaviors that will say "spam!" loud and clear to anyone who's watching:

* Adding a link to the top of an unordered list. This is an A-number-1, red-flag, hot-button spam sign. It suggests that you want people to look at your link FIRST FIRST FIRST! You wouldn't butt in at the head of a queue; don't put your link first.

* Adding a link that's snazzier than any of the others. If there's a list of products that gives just their names, and you add a product with a short blurb about how great it is, we'll all know why you did it. The same applies to adding a list item that is in a larger or otherwise more prominent font than the other items.

* Adding many links to (or mentions of) the same site or product. Going through an article and adding the name of your product to every paragraph where it seems relevant is just going to attract the revert button.

* Adding the same link to many articles or many wikis. The first person who notices you doing this will go through all your recent contributions with an itchy trigger finger on the revert button. And that's not much fun. Adding links across our other language editions is a bad idea too.

6. If your product is truly relevant to an article, others will agree—try the talk page. We usually recommend that editors be bold in adding directly to articles. But if the above advice makes you concerned that others will regard your contribution as spam, you can find out without taking that risk: Describe your work on the article's talk page, asking other editors if it is relevant.

7. Do not add an external link to your signature. However, external links to Wikimedia projects are exempt from this rule. For example, Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. (Although Interwiki links are preferable to external links for that purpose.)