Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese"

[mikelove]

Compiled by my father, John Love. Currently an iBooks/iPad exclusive at:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/dao-jing-for-students-chinese/id556070273?mt=11

This is the first attempt I know of to bring the Chinese tap-lookup concept you might know from the Pleco document reader to a regular iBooks textbook; every character has (quite painstakingly) been turned into a tappable link that brings up a glossary page with a short definition.

Moreover, it's a really interesting title in general - he's basically come up with a nice clean text of the original 道德经, then added lots of notes / explanations so as to help somebody who knows some modern Chinese but not much Classical Chinese to get through it.

 

[lechuan]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

Sounds very interesting (and hopefully a harbinger of future Chinese readers). At what point in one's Chinese studies would they be ready to tackle this level of text?

 

[dcarpent]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

Just downloaded it. Looks useful, and worth the price. However, it is a real pity (for Pleco users) that the app could not be linked to Pleco (esp. with the upcoming Classical dictionary!) If you select a word you get a brief definition, but if you then select "Dictionary" you get "No definition found." Frustrating, since you KNOW you have additional definitions in on your iPad, just locked inside Pleco. Another complaint (will there be a 2.0?): the pages cannot be zoomed, nor can you go into portrait mode to view one page at a time. One attraction of the iPad for old guys with poor eyesight (e.g., me), is that you can zoom in on text to make it easier to read. The font in the book is pretty small and it seems to be fixed. Again, this is a pity in an e-book. Finally, the characters are too close to the side of the screen. Tap on one to look up its meaning and it advances the page instead. You can tap and hold as a work around, but should you have to?

 

[mikelove]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

Sounds very interesting (and hopefully a harbinger of future Chinese readers). At what point in one's Chinese studies would they be ready to tackle this level of text?

I believe he's targeting intermediate-and-above - my own sense of it is that you'd want to be past the point where you're intimidated by Chinese characters.

Just downloaded it. Looks useful, and worth the price. However, it is a real pity (for Pleco users) that the app could not be linked to Pleco (esp. with the upcoming Classical dictionary!) If you select a word you get a brief definition, but if you then select "Dictionary" you get "No definition found." Frustrating, since you KNOW you have additional definitions in on your iPad, just locked inside Pleco. Another complaint (will there be a 2.0?): the pages cannot be zoomed, nor can you go into portrait mode to view one page at a time. One attraction of the iPad for old guys with poor eyesight (e.g., me), is that you can zoom in on text to make it easier to read. The font in the book is pretty small and it seems to be fixed. Again, this is a pity in an e-book. Finally, the characters are too close to the side of the screen. Tap on one to look up its meaning and it advances the page instead. You can tap and hold as a work around, but should you have to?

Thanks! I'll pass this feedback along. A Pleco version might happen once we get our own EPUB support working but there's not much we can do to integrate with iBooks - part of the idea here was to make this usable in a school textbook ordering scenario, which Pleco really isn't. Portrait mode I think is an iBooks textbook limitation, margins and zooming I'm not sure about but I'll see what he thinks.

 

[Manou]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

It looks like it can't be purchased outside the US. I've just tried to buy it in the Hong Kong iTunes store - your link brings no result

 

[mikelove]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

It looks like it can't be purchased outside the US. I've just tried to buy it in the Hong Kong iTunes store - your link brings no result

That's odd - I'll ask him about it, can't think of a reason why it would be blocked there.

 

[Vzzzbx]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

Yep. I just used the web link to try CA, GB, AU, NZ. No luck.

Edit: Appears to be fixed.

 

[mikelove]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

Yep. I just used the web link to try CA, GB, AU, NZ. No luck.

Edit: Appears to be fixed.

Yes, turns out he'd forgotten to enable it there but it should be fixed now.

 

[Manou]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

Yes, turns out he'd forgotten to enable it there but it should be fixed now.

Not fixed for Hong Kong though. The link still leads nowhere and a search for the title doesn't bring any result.
Edit to add: an author search also doesn't get a result.

 

[mikelove]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

Not fixed for Hong Kong though. The link still leads nowhere and a search for the title doesn't bring any result.
Edit to add: an author search also doesn't get a result.

There's no option to sell in HK, apparently - not sure how one goes about getting an iBook approved for sale there but it's not through the same system as US books anyway. (perhaps the textbook store in general hasn't made it to HK yet?)

 

[daniel123]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

It is also Not possible to buy it in Germany. Hope this could be changed. I would like to buy it.

 

[Manou]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

Not fixed for Hong Kong though. The link still leads nowhere and a search for the title doesn't bring any result.
Edit to add: an author search also doesn't get a result.

There's no option to sell in HK, apparently - not sure how one goes about getting an iBook approved for sale there but it's not through the same system as US books anyway. (perhaps the textbook store in general hasn't made it to HK yet?)

Any chance that he sells it on Amazon as well?
The only books in the Hong Kong iBook store are the free classics, no other section there...

 

[mikelove]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

It is also Not possible to buy it in Germany. Hope this could be changed. I would like to buy it.

There seem to be some regional limitations on iBooks that Apple's working on - he's turned one every region he can at the moment, from what I can tell.

Any chance that he sells it on Amazon as well?
The only books in the Hong Kong iBook store are the free classics, no other section there...

Not yet - the glossary bit won't really work outside of iBooks - but maybe in the future.

 

[justcharlie]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

I'd like to read this but after trying the sample, I think the tap-to-translate feature is really far behind the pasteboard reader in Pleco. If it were that good, I would buy it even though I generally refrain from buying books in iTunes.

 

[mikelove]

Re: Shameless plug: "The Dao De Jing for Students of Chinese

I'd like to read this but after trying the sample, I think the tap-to-translate feature is really far behind the pasteboard reader in Pleco. If it were that good, I would buy it even though I generally refrain from buying books in iTunes.

It was an attempt to do the same thing without needing Pleco - give you the whole thing in an integrated package. But it's necessarily a bit limited since iBooks really isn't designed around that functionality... are you bothered by the sensitivity / difficulty of tapping characters at the margins, or by some other aspect of it?