Chinese reading material, etc

[taiwanshaun]

This might be considered too far away from the core of Pleco's purpose, but I was just wondering, have you guys ever thought about extending Pleco's abilities (particularly the built-in reader) to include some educational/teaching content? For example, a subscription based (maybe 1 or 2 USD a month), an all Chinese newsletter (weekly or monthly perhaps) that is automatically pulled into the built-in reader for intermediate/advanced readers of Chinese that includes articles covering culture, history, entertainment, etc? I enjoy reading stuff in Pleco, but most days I simply don't have enough time to find some good Chinese content off the internet, copy it to a file, and download it into Pleco.

-- Shaun

 

[mikelove]

This might be considered too far away from the core of Pleco's purpose, but I was just wondering, have you guys ever thought about extending Pleco's abilities (particularly the built-in reader) to include some educational/teaching content? For example, a subscription based (maybe 1 or 2 USD a month), an all Chinese newsletter (weekly or monthly perhaps) that is automatically pulled into the built-in reader for intermediate/advanced readers of Chinese that includes articles covering culture, history, entertainment, etc? I enjoy reading stuff in Pleco, but most days I simply don't have enough time to find some good Chinese content off the internet, copy it to a file, and download it into Pleco.

It's a neat idea, but it'd take a lot of staff time - someone would have to curate this thing, not to mention arranging the appropriate content licenses - and we don't have anyone to do that at the moment; if someone else started a service like this we'd probably be interested in linking to it, but it's unlikely we'd do anything like it on our end unless and until we hire a new full-time editor or two.

 

[dcarpent]

Just out of curiosity, how big is Pleco (how many people do you employ)? Do you most of the coding, or do you have programmers working for you? Not looking for job, just curious.

 

[mikelove]

Just out of curiosity, how big is Pleco (how many people do you employ)? Do you most of the coding, or do you have programmers working for you? Not looking for job, just curious.

Varies from month to month, as does the portion of the programming being done by me.

 

[character]

I think it would be great if Pleco could license some/all of the Chinese Breeze graded readers for in-app purchase. They're great for beginners, but as physical books one really needs to sit down and puzzle out the character combinations, the grammar, etc. with something such as Pleco or Wenlin. They might also help Pleco get into some classrooms as they would provide a gentler introduction to reading longer material than going between a separate book and dictionary.

 

[mikelove]

I think it would be great if Pleco could license some/all of the Chinese Breeze graded readers for in-app purchase. They're great for beginners, but as physical books one really needs to sit down and puzzle out the character combinations, the grammar, etc. with something such as Pleco or Wenlin. They might also help Pleco get into some classrooms as they would provide a gentler introduction to reading longer material than going between a separate book and dictionary.

We actually have a good relationship with C&T already, but I'm not sure if they'd be interested in licensing those out... we can make some inquiries, though.

 

[character]

We actually have a good relationship with C&T already, but I'm not sure if they'd be interested in licensing those out... we can make some inquiries, though.

I think they're put out by Peking University Press. It would be great if you can ask about them.

 

[kun4]

I think it would be great if Pleco could license some/all of the Chinese Breeze graded readers for in-app purchase.

I'd like to second that. Once you've got a book in electronic format, tools such as Calibre can be used to convert to .txt for Pleco. The hard part is finding suitable books.

 

[character]

Just saw that the 300 and 500 character Chinese Breeze books are now available as Amazon Kindle ebooks.

 

[tsr]

Just saw that the 300 and 500 character Chinese Breeze books are now available as Amazon Kindle ebooks.

Thanks character! I just ordered them.

 

[Alexis]

Just saw that the 300 and 500 character Chinese Breeze books are now available as Amazon Kindle ebooks.

Thanks character! I just ordered them.

Do you still see them available? They turned up in a google search, but when I click on the link they seem to have been removed from the Kindle store
I do have the paper copies already, but I would prefer the electronic versions.

 

[character]

Do you still see them available? They turned up in a google search, but when I click on the link they seem to have been removed from the Kindle store

You may have to look at the .com version of their site, set your region(?), etc. Here's a link to one of them: Chinese Breeze - Secrets of a computer company [Kindle Edition]