Introducing Zydeo, my free Chinese dictionary for Windows

[glu]

Hi folks,

 

I hope this is the right place to post this kind of stuff. I have been working on a Chinese dictionary tool (or "app" as programs are called these days) for the Windows desktop. It's a pure hobby project and open-sourced; I have no commercial interest here.

 

Zydeo contains, of course, CC-CEDICT, and it integrates a handwriting recognition module for inputting new characters. My goal was to create a simple and visually pleasing tool that's free of clutter and concentrates on doing only one thing, but doing that one thing right.

 

It may well be the case that I'm simply filling a much-needed gap here and no one really needs a Windows dictionary these days. But maybe not; who knows. I hope some of you will like it and enjoy using it!

 

Here's the link: https://zydeo.net/

 

Looking forward to any kind of feedback; I'll be checking this thread regularly.

[Shelley]

I had a look at the screen shots and it looks really neat and tidy with the information you need. Liked the idea of handwriting input looked useful too.

 

Tried to download it but it failed.

[imron]

I downloaded and it worked fine.  It's nice and neat and does its one thing well.  The suggestion I would have however is to make search automatic, so that as I start typing it starts showing results (without me needing to explicitly search).

 

Likewise, if I change from Simplified to Traditional or Simplified+Traditional, it would be nice to see that reflected in the GUI straight away without me needing to search again.

[Yang Chuanzhang]

Looks very slick! Any chance of an OSX port?

[glu]

Wow, thanks for the reactions!

 

@Shelley: If you mail me I'll be happy to help (my email is shown at https://zydeo.net/contact/).

 

@imron: Exciting, I was giving both of your suggestions a lot of thought, and at an earlier stage that's in fact how Zydeo worked. I decided against auto-lookup as you type, for now at least, because of another behavior. When you type either English or Pinyin or Hanzi in the search field and you press Enter, Zydeo will automatically switch to lookup in Chinese or English based on what makes sense. That would work kind of funny intersecting with the auto-lookup; but who knows, I might be able to come up with a way to make it work elegantly. For now, indeed, you need an extra key press (Enter) - not when you're drawing Hanzi though.

 

As for S/T/S+T, I also had that at an earlier stage, but I decided it's actually something I expect to be used rarely - my impression is, someone's pretty anchored in either traditional or simplified, without changing around much, so it's not a key thing to update immediately. But I may be wrong.

 

@Yang: No such plans I'm afraid I am not versed in developing for OSX at all.

[imron]

That would work kind of funny intersecting with the auto-lookup

Would it though?  I imagine you could just use the same technique - take what they have typed, do your Chinese/English detection and show results based on that.  The results will then be self selecting - if they start typing in English they'll get English responses if they start typing Chinese they'll get Chinese responses.  You might need to make sure that do partial matches for the English though instead of always doing full word matches. 

 

my impression is, someone's pretty anchored in either traditional or simplified, without changing around much, so it's not a key thing to update immediately.

I think you are right about people being anchored in one or the other, but sometimes you might want to see the other form and even if it only happens once per use for the life of them using the program, do you want them as you say on your website 'to be delighted' when it everything switches automatically, or do you want them have to figure out why things didn't change instantly and then have to figure out which button to press again and hope they don't miss the search icon and hit the delete text icon by accident.

 

I am not versed in developing for OSX at all.

The good news is Microsoft recently open sourced the entire .Net Core Runtime, so you never know, cross-platform, single source C# development might be closer than you think :-D

[Shelley]

Just managed to download it, third time it worked.

 

Very nice, really like the handwriting input.

 

Like the font you have used and the layout is good.

 

One question, is it strict about stroke order?

 

Thank you for sharing

[glu]

@Shelley I'm glad it worked out, and glad you like Zydeo!

 

The handwriting recognition originally comes from Jordan Kiang (HanziLookup, see here: http://www.kiang.org/jordan/software/hanzilookup/). Many, if not most, tools out there that offer handwriting recognition use this exact same code and data.

 

How strict it is about stroke order, well... it's not totally strict, but you do need to get the stroke order at least approximately right. If you don't, you're still likely to get the character you need, just not at the top of the list. It's not good at cursive writing, e.g., when you write 口 with only 1 or 2 strokes as opposed to 3.

[Shelley]

That's good, it is nice that it is needs to be close so it helps when you are learning, not to get sloppy with stroke order, but with a little give to make up for character's stroke order you are not familiar with.

[DanielW]

@Yang Chuanzhang    I'm wondering why you want an OS X export. You can add CC-CEDICT into your system-wide Dictionary app - download it from http://xiaocidian.com. The built-in Dictionary app already includes the 牛津英汉汉英词典 and 

现代汉语规范词典 by default.