Radical Dictionary & Flashcards - iOS/Android tested

I

insighter

举人
Yes that link was basically what I meant.

I mean, if you thought you would do it yourself in the next six months I would wait but if you don't know then I'll take a stab at it. For those characters that do have variants I was hoping to add a new section, maybe called Variants in bold. I'm sorry but I'm not sure how to unlock user dictionaries and a quick search on the forums and through Pleco didn't yield anything. Would I need to use that desktop program MySQL to add in special characters/change the headword or is that possible once I unlock the user dict.?
 
T

tsr

秀才
insighter said:
I'm sorry but I'm not sure how to unlock user dictionaries and a quick search on the forums and through Pleco didn't yield anything. Would I need to use that desktop program MySQL to add in special characters/change the headword or is that possible once I unlock the user dict.?
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Fortunately, it's easier than using MySQL commands to edit the dictionary. Here's the information on it from the manual:
Pleco Instruction Manual said:
Locking a user dictionary prevents further editing, useful for dictionaries you're distributing publicly, and also speeds up scrolling / browsing through the dictionary a bit due to some extra indexes it generates.

To lock a user dictionary database, go into Manage Dicts, tap on its name, scroll down and tap on "Lock Database." (this may take a minute or two with larger dictionaries) Tap on "Unlock Database" to [un]lock it again. [quoted from Locking/Unlocking]
Click to expand...

By the way, Mike, the manual has a typo in it as seen from the quote above. It should say "Tap on 'Unlock Database' to unlock it again."
 
O

ohlordamen

举人
ldolse, awesome job on this. When I import the flashcards I have a few missing words, the list is at the end. I did a re-import with only having the Radical Dictionary selected but it didn't fix it. I've also tried to edit the flashcard, like rou4, when I click "Edit card text" it shows up with the headword and pinyin but nothing else. Also if when clicking on "convert to dict-based card" you just get a blank screen. I've also tried to add them from the "Rad" but some show up blank, like ri4.

Any ideas?

Thanks again from all your hard work.

//Radicals/Top 25
⺝ rou4
⺜ ri4
⺮ zhu3

//Radicals/26-50
⻊ zu2
⻏ yi4

//Radicals/51-100
⻗ yu3
⺝ yue4

//Radicals/101-200
⺌ xiao3
⺷ yang2
⺋ jie2
⺈ dao1

//Radicals/Uncommon
⺗ xin1
⺪ pi3
⺶ yang2
⺳ gang1
⺻ yu4
⺄⺁ <- 乁 yi2⺄⺁乂 ai4
龴 <- 乂 yi4龴尣 wang1
龶 <- 天 tian1龶去 qu4
龸 chang4⺼ rou4
龹 juan3
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
ohlordamen said:
ldolse, awesome job on this. When I import the flashcards I have a few missing words, the list is at the end. I did a re-import with only having the Radical Dictionary selected but it didn't fix it. I've also tried to edit the flashcard, like rou4, when I click "Edit card text" it shows up with the headword and pinyin but nothing else. Also if when clicking on "convert to dict-based card" you just get a blank screen. I've also tried to add them from the "Rad" but some show up blank, like ri4.
Click to expand...

Those entries use Unicode characters that our iOS/Android search engine doesn't search for - IIRC they weren't well supported by the built-in fonts on iOS when we started working on Pleco for iOS, and weren't consistently supported by Chinese fonts on Android either. We're adding support for them now (as iOS' font coverage has improved and on top of that we've now licensed some custom fonts with very thorough character set coverage), but we had to wait until a big search upgrade to do it since there's the potential for changes like that to have unintended consequences.

As far as some entries added from "rad" not displaying correctly - do they display correctly in the dictionary at least, or not at all? If they don't display correctly in the dictionary then that suggests that your device's Chinese font files still don't cover those characters - are you on Android? If so, try installing a different custom font file through Settings / General, one with more comprehensive character set support. The add-from-Rad approach definitely should get around the search engine issue.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Another approach you could try would be to go Manage Dicts, tap on the radical dictionary, "Export Entries," then reimport them as a flashcard list - that should ensure that every flashcard is populated. (ldolse, you might want to post that as the primary / official version for now - people can import it into flashcards and then convert them to user dictionary entries if they feel like it)
 
O

ohlordamen

举人
mikelove said:
As far as some entries added from "rad" not displaying correctly - do they display correctly in the dictionary at least, or not at all? If they don't display correctly in the dictionary then that suggests that your device's Chinese font files still don't cover those characters - are you on Android? If so, try installing a different custom font file through Settings / General, one with more comprehensive character set support. The add-from-Rad approach definitely should get around the search engine issue.
Click to expand...

I'm on a HTC Shift, Android 2.3.4 I hunted around and found some fonts online, but being new to all of this I have not idea if they have a more comprehensive character set, or what I should be looking for (Is there a good Font that I can/should use, that you can recommend, also where to get it?). As for the displaying in the dictionary, they do not display in there either. That was one of the first things I tired was to see if they were listed and just not being picked up with I imported the flashcards, which I ran into with my Michel Thomas flashcard file, and have to "convert to dict-based card".

mikelove said:
Another approach you could try would be to go Manage Dicts, tap on the radical dictionary, "Export Entries," then reimport them as a flashcard list - that should ensure that every flashcard is populated. (ldolse, you might want to post that as the primary / official version for now - people can import it into flashcards and then convert them to user dictionary entries if they feel like it)
Click to expand...

This didn't seem to work also.

Like I said, since I'm just starting to learn Chinese, I don't think I'll be using it to much where missing a few words here and there would cause me a problem.

Thank You you two for the hard work. :D
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
ohlordamen said:
I'm on a HTC Shift, Android 2.3.4 I hunted around and found some fonts online, but being new to all of this I have not idea if they have a more comprehensive character set, or what I should be looking for (Is there a good Font that I can/should use, that you can recommend, also where to get it?). As for the displaying in the dictionary, they do not display in there either. That was one of the first things I tired was to see if they were listed and just not being picked up with I imported the flashcards, which I ran into with my Michel Thomas flashcard file, and have to "convert to dict-based card".
Click to expand...

I'm not actually sure if they're in any free fonts - they're not even completely covered in our newly licensed ones; coverage of those character blocks is very spotty in general.

ohlordamen said:
This didn't seem to work also.
Click to expand...

Delete the old radical cards and then import that file (with definitions "from file") and that should work better. (otherwise you'd end up with the new cards flagged as "duplicates" and their texts not updating the old ones)
 
L

ldolse

状元
I recall that Droid Sans had very good coverage, but it had some cosmetic issues for some chinese characters. It's quite possible the font has been updated since I last checked it (several years back):
http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Droid+Sans

Sun-ExtA is also a good choice if Android lets you install ttf format - link to that is in the first post.
 
D

dhammadarsa

Member
Hi All

thanks for this great work.

I had one small error: yan2 turned up in "uncategorised" and it had the definition as "gold". I just made a new flashcard from the dictionary saved it in the top 25 and deleted the old one.

I have one question/problem. When I test myself on the writing of the radicals, I don't get the entries from the radical dictionary, but just a standard dictionary. Since quite a few radicals are not stand alone characters, they don't appear in the normal dictionay entries. Does anyone know how I'd change that? I think there might need to be a change to the Flashcard settings in the Pleco main program.

Kind Regards
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
dhammadarsa said:
I have one question/problem. When I test myself on the writing of the radicals, I don't get the entries from the radical dictionary, but just a standard dictionary. Since quite a few radicals are not stand alone characters, they don't appear in the normal dictionay entries. Does anyone know how I'd change that? I think there might need to be a change to the Flashcard settings in the Pleco main program.
Click to expand...

Did you already have cards for these radicals in your flashcard database? If so then by default the software would add those cards to the new categories rather than creating new cards. It might be best to delete all of the radical categories and then import the database again with duplicate handling set to "allow."
 
L

LongShiKong

举人
As an aside to this thread...

...those hoping for a visual mnemonic connecting a character to its idiomatic origin might want to look at: Tracing the Roots of Chinese Characters: 500 Cases /汉字演变：五百例 written by Li Leyi 李乐毅 and published by Beijing Language and Culture University Press 2000. Each of the 1,000 characters presented in this 2 volume series comes with a graphic depiction of it's original meaning prior to the characters abstraction and simplification stages (also shown).
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I've just updated this (with ldolse's permission) with a flashcard file that includes the definitions (which should work around the non-matching-up bug), a database that already has its format updated (so no more need to "Upgrade Database,") and instructions that reflect the fact that it's now much easier to install custom dictionaries on Android. So if you try it again on Android/iOS now it should hopefully work a bit better.
 
D

dhammadarsa

Member
Ok, that's great. Where can I donwload it from?

I had a look at the forum again and the only links I could see were in the original email, which has the date of the last update at: Last edited by ldolse on Sat Apr 07, 2012 1:39 pm, edited 20 times in total.
 
D

dhammadarsa

Member
ok, thanks.

I thought that date would have changed when you uploaded the new files, but I guess it only changes when you change the text of the post, not attachments.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
dhammadarsa said:
I thought that date would have changed when you uploaded the new files, but I guess it only changes when you change the text of the post, not attachments.
Click to expand...

No, it just doesn't change when a moderator updates it (which was the case here).
 
H

hairyleprechaun

状元
I was thrown off by the
Last edited by ldolse on Sat Apr 07, 2012 2:39 pm
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timestamp as well when I went to download the flashcard file. However, the giveaway that it is a new file is to look at the number of times the file has been downloaded. In my case, it was zero at the time, which was a dead giveaway that the file was recent.

Thanks for the updates Mike and Idolse!
 
M

MMarks

举人
Could some kind person tell me how to et/update this radical dictionary? It's very good. I have just been making flashcards based on Reading and Writing Chinese, wanting to compare Pleco with Skritter. I used the radical dictionary for a few entries. But when I am tested on one of the radicals, all the screen shows is the word kwukyel. Google tells me what that means, but it's obviously wrong. So I came here and I see I probably haven't got the newest version. I think the instructions at the beginning of this thread are possibly outdated. I have an iPod Touch. I really want to get into one system or another for practising cards, but I find Pleco very complex. So I thought I'd start here from scratch again.

Thanks in advance.
 
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