I am happy to share the Primezero Click IMEs with you! These are designed to help me find Chinese characters on Primezero Chinese Tools using the lookup chart. Hope this helps you.
There are two versions: Basic and Standard.
Basic Version
The Basic Version is designed for the new and first-year Chinese students.
I wanted the Basic version to be just plain simple, with only about 2000 characters available for click-entry. I also wanted the characters to be more legible since they will not be as familiar to new learners.
Standard Version
The Standard Version is designed for more advanced learners with a larger set of characters available.
I wanted the frequently-used characters (red+gold) to be highlighted so students can easily pick them out. These are also good reference points for finding similar characters.
In the kanji/radical lookup chart, I wanted to show users selections with more than 100 characters, so I highlighted that too (gray+lightblue).
So, pretty much a mess. More work needed.
Development Notes
I needed to complete the new Primezero IME within a few days of brainstorming because I would just have code nightmares otherwise.
After wireframing the new Click IME, started experimenting with some layouts. One of them included a translucent DIV layer with the some cheesy animations for the characters. Then I changed my mind and just said to myself, “get this out the door right away” …
So, I will get some rest now, then get working again soon …
Reading Unicode reference texts and various papers on semantics on psycholinguistics.
Ahh, yes. Reading in the quietness watching the world pass by, discovering how little I understand about various topics of life. Then, with the new knowledge I acquire, I do my best to stand on the shoulders of giants to give my small, tiny contribution.
Scanning through the Unicode character code charts, I learned some new characters and have a new feel for how Asian language processing can be properly implemented for simple, flexible applications.
The coolest thing about working with Unicode is that I get to “think in hexadecimal”, which is just a fun way to organize the world.
So, a new Primezero Chinese Tools IME may be in progress …
Development notes so far…
users do not want tedious entry of characters
on the other hand, users do not want to be bound by a restricted subset
users want visual cues for frequently used characters
learners may want information about their character before they use it
learners may want to hear the character sound
UniHan is very verbose and difficult to wield for smaller projects so smaller indexes must be somehow utilized
I was watching Transformers Energon Super Link sequences on YouTube. This is so true in object-oriented applications development. Development packages like Android and OpenSocial is allow us to “super link” our applications.
When we develop two classes and then implement them in an application. This is sorta what happens…
A concise English-Chinese dictionary, with romanized standard pronunciation.
This dictionary uses Wade-Giles. It is much smaller than most of the other dictionaries. Thus, space on each page is optimized.
The entries are ordered by English alphabetically, showing the part of speech. There are no tone marks; instead they use the tone numbers, which is confusing to some people.
The interesting thing about this dictionary is that they use “script” for writing the Chinese characters.
This is useful because most learners cannot recognize the computer’s typeface Chinese characters.
Also, many people cannot write Chinese characters like a computer can. In fact, the computer characters don’t make sense to some native speakers who are not tech savvy.
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
Chinese-English dictionary of contemporary usage / compiled by Wen-shun Chi, with the assistance of John S. Service, Mei-hsia Huang, Chi-ping Chen.
This dictionary is very simple.
Chinese. Pinyin. English definition.
This dictionary also has been ordered by pinyin. Each entry is preceded by the Chinese characters. This dictionary use Wade-Giles romanization by character-by-character transcription.
Each character or radical has a unique ID number that identifies the character’s position in the dictionary.
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
Han Ying ci dian = A Chinese-English dictionary / Beijing wai guo yu xue yuan Ying yu xi “Han Ying ci dian” bian xie zu bian ; [zhu bian Wu Jingrong].
This dictionary has a beautiful cover.
This dictionary will be much easier to use for the 1st- and 2nd-year students. This dictionary is ordered by Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks. However, each entry is bulleted by the Chinese characters in brackets.
This dictionary has sample sentences and multiple definitions per entry. There is no reference to parts of speech or etymology. There is a notation I have noticed in a few dictionaries that is also used here.
The tilde (~) is used to denote usage of the entry. Some people may prefer this to highlighting the words with color or text decorations, such as underline or bold.
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
The foursquare dictionary in Chinese and English, based on the four corner method of classification. Compiled by James Alexander Herring.
huh? four corners method?
Well, the romanization is Wade-Giles. and two others????
There is a zhuyin table at the front of the book and a tutorial (primer) on how to use this interesting dictionary. However, this is too confusing for me. For whom was this dictionary intended?
There appears to be too much information.
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
Ying Han zhuan ming ci dian : ren ming di ming shi jian = An English-Chinese dictionary of proper names / zhu bian Jin Pingtuo.
This dictionary contains proper names order by English. This is likely intended for intermediate- and advanced-level Chinese speakers because there is no romanization. Arrgh.
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
This dictionary has an intriguing format. It also contains a numerical radical index. There is more white space, which is more comforting to the eyes.
Most pages have illustrations to accompany the entries. Character and word components accompany most entries, saving cross-referencing time.
Uses Information-Rich Interface with parts of speech, radicals, word combinations, romanization, and illustrations as seen below.
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
Ying Han Han Ying fan yi shou ce = Beginner’s translation handbook
Fang Letian bian ji.
This is very nice. There is no romanization. I think it was written for Chinese people to learn how to use these phrases in English.
Although it was written for Chinese native speakers who already know the characters and sounds, I think it is good for learners, too.
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
This dictionary uses Simplified National Romanization which is so peculiar to me. What is more strange is that it is published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The romanization is so strange for me to use. I know Hanyu Pinyin, so I can decipher the pronounciation for the characters.
To confuse things for me (even more), there is a numerical index for radicals. This was intended for Chinese native speakers. Once you understand this method, however, you can look up characters very quickly.
Uses multiple indexing techniques including numbers, radicals and uses Simplified National Romanization…
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
Xinhua Dictionary with English Translation (Han Ying shuang jie xin hua zi dian)
I accidentally saw this dictionary. Lucky me!
Ordered by pinyin. It is not clustered with the PL1455 dictionaries.
Something interesting about this dictionary is that it contains the character, pinyin and zhuyin, as well as the Chinese and English translations.
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
PL 1455 .C675 1988 EAST ASIAN
The Facts on File English/Chinese visual dictionary : look up the word from the picture, find the picture from the word / Jean-Claude Corbeil, Mein-ven Lee.
The layout of this picture dictionary is simple and powerful.
The effective use of white space draws the viewer’s eyes toward the items of interest.
Entries such as “rocket”, “space shuttle”, and “space suits” (pages 456, 457 & 458) are excellent examples for people interested specifically in a certain topic.
It is a good resource for just about anything you want to know about “visually”.
Picture or visual dictionaries have advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages of visual dictionaries
One advantage is that when you find an entry, all the related terms are nearby on a diagram or a word list. You do not need to thumb through the pages for additional related terms.
Another advantage is that the objects are often group together to provide improved context for the user. For example, the soccer entry in the visual dictionary has the field, players, positions, and equipment in one diagram.
This is ideal for students writing essays or journal articles about certain topics. The vocabulary is readily available because the relations are apparent and within a clear context.
Disadvantages of visual dictionaries
A disadvantage of picture dictionaries is that pronunciation clutters diagrams and is often removed for clarity. Another disadvantage related to space on a page is an example of grammar examples or sample sentences. So, you really have a caveman-like discussion with the reader.
Here are some examples:
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
An Analytical Vocabulary of the New Testament / F. W. Baller; Prepared for the use of junior members of the China Inland Mission
This book has me curious. It appears to be written in October 1893. Wow! A long time ago..
The purpose of the book was to help missionaries read all the Chinese characters found in the Gospel of the Holy Bible.
We find that the entires are order by radicals; something peculiar is that the noun/verb compounds are provided directly below the entries.
Very simple design with word compounds below each entry.
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series
The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
After many years of research, I still do not fully understand what truly makes a “good” dictionary. In an effort to better understand what comprises a useful dictionary, I am constantly exploring ideas and concepts used in print dictionaries.
The following series will share some notes on some print dictionaries.
Print Dictionaries Designed For Niche Users
Each print dictionary has its own rhyme or reason. Each has its own style that reflects the taste of the authors and publishers. Every print dictionary is designed for a niche end-user.
Unfortunately, the authors sometimes do not represent the end-users who are either Chinese language students or non-Chinese-speaking professionals who only need to lookup a few words from time to time. this introduces a learning curve for each design of print dictionary.
Some printed lexicons rely on Chinese radical indexes while others provide some type of romanization of entries in alphabetical order. Some print dictionaries simply sort their entries in English in alphabetical order.
In this series, we will how various lookup methods are implemented.
Series Format
Each print dictionary in this research series is first described by its Library of Congress Call Number, followed by its title found in the East Asia Collection at Hayden Library at Arizona State University.
The report will then discuss some details about the dictionary.
Finding Articles In Primezero English-Chinese Print Dictionary Research Series
About Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series The Primezero English-Chinese Dictionary Research Series is a chance to share some ideas and concepts from print dictionaries online for implementation or just discussion.
Read this article at Apple Developer Connection: Controlling QuickTime Using JavaScript. It is a great, simple and clean introduction to all you need to know for using JavaScript + QuickTime.
Here are the advantages to using QuickTime to handle sound that I have seen so far:
QuickTime works on Windows and Mac. It works in Firefox, Camino, Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Safari and Shiira. The only open issue is with Opera.
Students learning Chinese who download podcasts to iTunes will have the QuickTime plugin
The Pinyin Inventory was discussed in an earlier post. I am happy to introduce an implementation of the Pinyin inventory as a talking dictionary feature in this update.
Primezero Chinese Tools 1.4 adds the following features:
Larger Chinese characters
Talking Dictionary Feature that allows you to hear pinyin sounds
The Corgilabs (Primezero Labs) Pinyin Inventory was a project designed to record native speakers voices to teach non-native speakers pronunciation.
The idea is that you can hear native speakers saying the words in a dictionary or in a newspaper, just as in the typical text-to-speech (TTS). The difference between this and other TTS setups is that you can have over 1000 different voices in a dictionary for a partial or complete set of sounds.
I was very lucky to find the lovely Leylop through T-Salon.
…Very, very lucky because from Leylop I received my first complete set of sounds.
Since then, I have had an awesome tone bank for testing text-to-speech and speech recognition applications. For this, I am truly grateful.
If you are dabbling with the PZPinyinReader class for pinyin processing, you can use PZPinyinReader->pzpinyin_hearpinyin( ) to hear pinyin using the tone bank.
It is my pleasure to share the source code for a thermodynamics plugin I wrote for Google Calculator and similar applications.
I created the PZKelvin class to allow applications like Google Calculator to make sensible temperature calculations. You can download the lastest version of PZKelvin from my codesite project pzphp on Google Code.
Solving a Simple Problem
I love Google Calculator! It is an amazingly powerful built-in utility. However, you can make sub-zero-Kelvin calculations on Google Calculator, which is thermodynamically impossible since temperature does not exist below Absolute Zero. PZKelvin provides a “no conversions available” message for those impossible calculations.
EXAMPLE: To convert 100 degrees below zero Celsius to Kelvin,
you only need to use the following code:
$kelvin = new PZKelvin();
$very_cold = $kelvin->pzkelvin_temperature_convert("-100C in Kelvin");
The result is a temperature of 173.15 Kelvin. Brrrr. Chilly.
To improve usability, I designed the input to accept various jargon.
(for example, degC, degF, K, Kelvin, Rankine on either side).
Primezero Research and Innovation is an engineering and semantics workshop, specializing in product development and rapid prototyping. Learn more about Primezero.
Web 2.0 is winding down, and as we look to the next logical buzzword, Web 3.0, experience in data miningwill be is in demand. A large set of data usually contains a lot of information that is more useless than a DVD Rewinder.
*crickets*
The easiest way to deal with large sets of data is in textfiles (at least for me) is using regular expressions (regex).
EXAMPLE PROBLEM:
Your client wants a glossary of all the Fortune 500 companies that have Chinese names. The deliverable is the English name and the Chinese name. Any English names without Chinese translations must be removed from the list. You are given a textfile and some root beer money. Good luck.
NOTE: There are many possible solutions, including processing the file directly in several languages (the usual method for huge datasets), but for simplicity and focus on regular expressions, I am using the text editor.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION:
Download the sample UTF-8 encoded textfile contain the Fortune 500 companies (fortune500_u8.txt). Open the file in a nice text editor (like vim, or emacs or TextMate) that allows you to use regular expressions.
Step 1: Removing Numbers From Each Line
You will notice that each line of the 500 lines has a number.
You want to remove that number as it is not part of the deliverables package. Your text editor will have a FIND AND REPLACE function.
You can remove the numbers ranging from 1 to 3 digits using the following regex patterns in the find box and the replace box.
FIND :
^\d{1,3}\s
REPLACE WITH:
NULL (by this, i mean leave this completely blank. no whitespace. zipp. nada.)
EXPLANATION: Remove the numbers (1 to 3 digits) and space at the beginning of each line).
RESULT :
All 500 rows will be modified. You should still have 500 lines.
No more line numbers.
Step 2: Removing Country of Origin and Industry from Each Line
The remaining lines will contain English name of the company, the Chinese translation, the country of origin and the company’s industry. We want to remove the country of origin and the industry from each line now. You can remove them using the following regex patterns in the find box and the replace box.
FIND :
\s{1}\w{1,9}(/\w{1,9})?\s{1}\w{1,9}$
REPLACE WITH :
NULL (by this, i mean leave this completely blank. no whitespace)
EXPLANATION:
The last word can be 1 to 9 characters long and there must be a space between the last word (industry) and the country of origin. Some lines may have two countries of origin, in which case both countries of origin are delimited by a forward slash ( / ). There must then be another space between the country of origin and the Chinese translation of the company. Select all the above described and delete them.
RESULT :
All 500 rows will be modified. You should still have 500 lines.
No more extra data about country and industry. We’re almost done.
Step 3: Removing Lines with No Chinese Translation for Company Name
The client wants you to discard all lines with no “valid” Chinese translation of a company name. Quick review of the dataset and we see that each line with 的 contains no “valid” translation. So, we can use the following regex pattern.
FIND:
.*的\n
REPLACE WITH:
NULL (once again, nothin, not even whitespace characters)
EXPLANATION:
Take all characters on the same line with 的 including the newline character and delete them all.
RESULT:
69 lines removed. You should have 431 lines remaining.
The deliverable is now ready.
Conclusion: You see? Even a moron such as myself can look smart with regex patterns.
Working with regular expressions makes your life much easier and you appear to be smarter. I am a good example of this: I am as dumb as a log, but still able to drastically reduce work time with regex patterns. Hope this helped someone.
Question: In Windows XP Home Edition, only Chinese characters are only showing up as boxes. How can this be fixed?
There are several ways to fix this.
Download and install NJStar Communicator to read Chinese, Korean and Japanese characters .
- OR - Try installing Asian fonts using the Regional and Language Options in your WindowsXP Control Panel.
- OR IF FIX#2 DOES NOT WORK, - Trick Microsoft Internet Explorer into self-installing all the Chinese fonts using Chinese encodings: Chinese Simplified or Chinese Traditional. See screesnshot below. REMEMBER: Switch back to UTF-8 Encoding after installing the Chinese fonts.
pzSoleri was a good reference point for me since it was my first experiment with how color and position of UI components affect the perceived integrity of a search tool. Effectively, I was experimenting with how visual literacy affects my web applications development. That information has been very useful to me in my recent projects.
Using pzSoleri in the current Chinese Tools release
In pzSoleri, I wanted to see both forms of the Chinese characters side-by-side. Bold colors were used for one form (usually the traditional one) of characters, lighter colors were assigned to the other form (often the simplified) while the pinyin and definitions were cast in readable fonts.
I took those ideas from pzSoleri and applied them in the Primezero Chinese Tools 1.1 update. The height for each entry is much smaller and results page is simpler and cleaner.
I underestimated the problem. The price of gasoline will exceed two loaves of bread soon. This is pitiful, but expected, as the cost of a barrel of oil starts its rise past $100.
So, I need to re-pose the question:
Are you willing to drive in your car to and from work for TWO LOAVES OF BREAD PER GALLON OR MORE?
Then you may need to ask yourself:
Is it more important to work? or is it more important to eat?
The Primezero Chinese Number Converter was created to help me learn to count in the Chinese language. I am still learning.
The idea was inspired by Google’s Calculator.
The following guide explains the basic functions of this utility that has been useful for me.
The Big Picture
The main purpose of the Primezero Chinese Number Converter is to provide a fast method for converting commonly-used quantities into Chinese. With this simple idea in mind, the interface is also designed to be simple:
I try to practice Chinese characters as often as posssible. My professor would say, “if you do not use them, you will lose them.” That is very true.
The ones I regularly write I remember. On the other hand, the characters I seldom jot down are a bit cloudy in my memory.
Below is a PDF of some Chinese Practice Paper I designed for myself. It has 3 big boxes on the left side to show demonstration characters and 99 characters boxes on the main sheet for me to use for practice.
You can also use this for practice of Japanese, Korean, Thai, or any other Asian languages.
Download it now! Hope you find it useful and remember: practice makes perfect.
More work needed.
Thank you for using the tool and your feedback is totally awesome!!
