Chinese IME, Zhuyin IME, Mandarin & Cantonese dictionaries, etc

[gong mo tai]

Hello All,

I have been working for quite some time on a new website and it is finally ready!

Yes there are many Chinese dictionary sites out there, what makes mine any different?

Here are some of the unique features of my site:

- Has the only ZhuYin IME I am aware of

- The Chinese IME allows input by Pinyin, Cangjie, Jyutping and Zhuyin - we're not just talking single character input; but autocomplete of words (CC-CEDict, etc). My IME supports word input from all 4 of the modes noted above (and again, the Zhuyin mode is unique)

- Cantonese word dictionary... there are a lot of Mandarin dictionaries around, but not many Cantonese dictionaries

- My word dictionaries let the users hear the sound of the syllables; the quality of the recordings is good, I have most (if not all syllables) and you should find that it flows nicely... (there are no pauses between each syllable).

- Want to convert Pinyin to Zhuyin, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Tongyong or others? Give the Mandarin Phonetic conversion tool a try. It doesn't just convert the basic syllables, but supports tones as well when converting (when converting between Hanyu, Zhuyin and GR).

- An annotater than can display either Pinyin OR Jyutping

- All of the content on my site can be displayed in 3 languages (English, French and German), this is true also for the definitions in the Chinese IME.

In addition, there is of course the standard word dictionary & character dictionary and some other tools.

As this site is new and still a work in progress, not everything is working 100% yet. I believe there are some issues with the Style Conversion tool and the Number conversion tool is not extremely useful just yet... but if enough interest is seen in the site, I will develop and refine the site further.

Hope this helps! Any feedback welcome.

Regards

http://www.zhongwenlearner.com

[skylee]

Loading took too long. I lost interest and gave up.

[gong mo tai]

Hi Skylee. Thanks for the comment. Was it the site itself or the IME? The site is hosted in Vietnam, so perhaps you won't get quite the best speed, but it's all I can afford right now I'm afraid... :-(

I would hope the site is quicker after initial load.

Thanks again.

[imron]

The site itself. I also found it painfully slow to load from Australia - taking several minutes in some cases.

[gong mo tai]

That's odd; it loads instantly for me... I think I will need to take this up with my hosting provider and also try find some way of testing it as though I were outside Vietnam (yes, I'm here too, making it difficult to check what it's like for you guys).

Appreciate the feedback. I will check it out.

[imron]

It seems to be going faster now that it was this morning, however timing it now I still get 15-20 seconds of completely white screen before any content appears, and then maybe another 20 seconds after that before all content is loaded (this is on the main screen only).

[Hofmann]

I don't remember where I got this, but most people would leave after waiting 2 seconds.

[roddy]

You can use something like this to check load times. For reference you appear to be about 80 times slower than this site, although I choose to only recognize that tool's stats when we win.

Unless you have trouble with payment methods, there's no reason not to use hosting in the US or some other better connected country. I'm sure Vietnam's lovely, but the Information Superhighway doesn't go there yet.

[gong mo tai]

Hi Roddy,

14 seconds when I checked!! OUCH!! That's just plain nasty.

It's not the payment method I have an issue with; it's the cost of hosting in the west that's the problem. I pay around $65 per year in Vietnam and that includes the SQL database. The cheapest I could find in the west is DiscountASP.NET.... they do a deal for $60 but without SQL... I would have to pay an extra $120 for SQL hosting as well... as I am paying for this site out of my own pocket, I can't really justify that (especially when I am not earning a westerner's salary either).

Does anyone know where I can host an ASP.NET site (and SQL 2008 with Full-Text search) for cheap in the west? If so, I would move the site.

Anyway, I'm trying to get some more info from my hosting service. I hope it can get sorted soon, but honestly the future looks bleak... hundreds of hours of work for nothing... *cry*

[roddy]

Godaddy's budget Window's package?

http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/web-hosting.aspx?ci=8971

Not sure, what little I do know about hosting isn't Windows.

[imron]

A while back I was helping a friend research Windows hosting and came across this provider: http://www.arvixe.com/asp_net_web_hosting. In the end, the person I was helping decided not to go with Windows hosting so I can't say what they are like as hosts, but the company left a strong impression with regards to the responsiveness and competence of its support when handling both technical and non-technical questions I was throwing at them (see this page for a link to their live chat)

Not sure what they're like now, but you could always try getting in touch with their support to see if they can meet your needs. Their cost also seems reasonable and within your budget.

[gong mo tai]

Thanks roddy and imron, I will take a look at these. Much appreciated. :-)

[skylee]

I have just tried the website, The loading speed seems to have improved.

I have only tried the jyutping typing and my observations are -

• I couldn't type the character 聲 using jyutping. Could you tell me if there is a problem with this character?
• I see many squares in the word choices and I don't think they look good.
• The "autocompletion of words" for jyutping is, in my opinion, not useful when compared to the intelligence of common pinyin input methods available on the internet. I don't see this website has much strength over, say, MDBG.
• There are problems when one tries to switch among input methods and between traditional and simplified script output. For example, after I have switched to hanyu pinyin and simplified script, I now can't make it accept jyutping input and output traditional characters no matter how I try.

But I have not tested other features of the website.

[gong mo tai]

Hi Skylee,

- That character is there if you selected "Traditional" mode and typed "seng"

- I will look into that. Can you give me a couple of examples? For instance: tell me: "type zung and look at page 2" or something like that

- "The "autocompletion of words" for jyutping is, in my opinion, not useful when compared to the intelligence of common pinyin input methods available on the internet" - I don't really understand this comment very well. Can you elaborate on what other methods? And I am guessing you mean "...common jyutping methods..." - not "..common pinyin methods...", am I right?

- I am aware of the issues with switching input methods and in fact this has been worked on and I believe already fixed. The changes will be going live soon... after I test a few other changes I made.

Again, thanks for the feedback. I'll try to do whatever I can do to improve the site's usefulness to learners.

About the speed, I noticed that from some speed check tools, it is sometimes faster than other times... but mostly slow. I am looking into moving my site to another host if this is not solved quickly.

[skylee]

- That character is there if you selected "Traditional" mode and typed "seng"

I see. Just want to point out that as far as I know the romanisation of 聲 in jyutping is sing1 (although seng is a variation). Take a look ->

http://www.edbchines...stroke&jpC=lshk

http://humanum.arts....arch.php?q=%C1n

PS - as to the squares, just type sing and then press page down a few times.

[gong mo tai]

Thanks, I will look into the issue where that character is not appearing for "sing".

About the squares... I typed "sing" and went through all 39 pages (in both simplified and traditional modes)... I didn't see any. Perhaps there is some issue on your system? Missing fonts, browser issue...etc... Maybe you can give me a few details of your system: OS, browser (name/version), etc... although (and I may be wrong), but I think the only thing that should cause that is missing fonts... if it's not that, I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you are seeing some squares.

[skylee]

Perhaps the squares had to do with my system's settings. Never mind.

[gong mo tai]

Hi Skylee... all,

I have fixed the issue where "sing" was not showing up. Thanks for mentioning this because it actually pointed out a bug in my data import code. This should fix it for this entry and quite a few others as well.

I have also fixed some other bugs, added some new features (IPA phonetic system, HSK flashcards, advanced word dicttionary querying, improved help etc).

I have just a few things to finish before it is ready for deployment, but the main issue right now is my sorting out the hosting. I am negotiating a refund from my current provider right now, but they're giving me the run-around. If all goes well, I will be hosting my site in the US soon... in the next week or 2 I hope. When I do, then it will have the new version on there as well. I'll let you all know when that goes ahead.

Thanks for your patience and comments. :-)

Regards

http://www.zhongwenlearner.com/

[gong mo tai]

Okay all, the new version is now up and running on a new server in the US. I do hope it is now much better for all of you.

Skylee, although there were no squares before, there will be a few now. This is because I (and this will sound odd), but made some improvements to the data importing. About 1/3 of the data in the Cantonese dictionary / IME comes from Unihan and from there I import many of the single character entries. Unfortunately, some of the characters are very uncommon and cannot be displayed by any font yet... that's why you will see some squares now. I will try work out how I can detect these and exclude them... but for now, you can ignore those ones.

I hope you all like the new improvements. Any feedback most welcome.

Regards

http://www.zhongwenlearner.com

[imron]

Much faster now. Out of curiosity, which host did you end up going with?