Chinese Dictionary - Offline Database Project

[James3287]

Hello,

 

Is anybody interested in developing some chinese dictionary software for offline use?

My basic list of wanted functionality is:-

1. search by pinyin/zhuyin

2. search by hanzi

3. search by radical

4. search by any combination of any of the above

5. Play avaliable sound files

 

I'd also like to impliment wild card matching and searches containing data. (e.g "find me every dictionary entry where fa1 is in the second syllable position AND it is written 发).

 

There are many good online resources but I haven't found one supporting advanced search features.

 

I'd like to impliment it as an offline database server, then let any front end connect to it through some form of IPC. Hopefully this will mean one backend and several frontends, and so cross-platform portable.

 

All the above can change if anybody wants to jump on board and get talking about it.

 

I've already written a pinyin library in c, supporting pinyin input, output, storage and hashing.

https://code.google.com/p/jpinlib/

 

I/O

Often we might want to input pinyin in one form and transform it into another. (e.g Bei3jing1 -->Běijīng). The library offers support to input and output both forms, depending on your needs.

It can also read wild cards for finals or initials (e.g input (w.1) --> output = wā wō wāi wēi wān wēn wāng wēng wū).

 

Storage & Hashing

Offers support for storing pinyin strings efficiently, (a pinyin syllable is only one 16-bit byte).

It also offers hashing functions. (There are, after all only 420 odd pinyin syllables, tones excluded - can use an 8-bit hash key for data structures).

 

I hope somebody will find this useful.

 

Feel free to email me if you're interested in either development or use, always need a fresh set of eyes on an idea!

 

James

[imron]

Merged two similar posts in to one.

[James3287]

Thnaks, that's what I was trying to do!

[skylee]

This dictionary is very good, free of charge and can be used off-line. These days I mainly use it when I need a dictionary. There are ios and android versions as well as an online browser version. You might wish to take a look.

https://www.moedict.tw/about.html

[Kenny同志]

These days I mainly use it when I need a dictionary.

 

It's one of the C-C dictionaries I use most often, too.

[Yadang]

 

This dictionary is very good, free of charge and can be used off-line. These days I mainly use it when I need a dictionary. There are ios and android versions as well as an online browser version.

 

There's also a pleco version of this dictionary which comes with the benefit of all of pleco's great search features (wild cards, combining pinyin and characters in one search, audio, etc.) I think it has everything on your list, with the exception perhaps of "search by any combination of any of the above". I know you can do pinyin and character combos, not sure about combinations with radicals.

 

It kind of sounds like you're looking for a computer version, though, so if that's the case than this won't really help... But, I thought I'd mention it just in case...