All About
Chinese Toolbox READER
Chinese Toolbox READER builds on the foundation of Chinese Toolbox FREE, providing more functionality for learning Chinese through reading. The main improvement over Chinese Toolbox FREE is the integrated word dictionary (CC-CEDICT), enabling you to “see” the words in Chinese text.
This guide describes the new features in Chinese Toolbox READER. Since all the basics of Chinese Toolbox READER exist in Chinese Toolbox FREE, you should first check out the Chinese Toolbox FREE Guide, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the program.
Installation
Chinese Toolbox FREE 9.1.2 and Chinese Toolbox READER 9.2.0.0 can coexist on your computer. You do not need to uninstall Chinese Toolbox FREE before installing Chinese Toolbox READER.
This is important for transferring data from CTF to CTR.
Supported Versions of Windows
Chinese Toolbox READER has been tested on the Release Candidate of Windows 7. Also, restrictions preventing the program from running on untested versions of Windows have been removed. For example, although the program has not been tested on Windows 2003, code preventing it from starting up on Windows 2003 has been removed. The program should run fine on any version of Windows beginning with Windows 2000. Please send an email to support@chinesetoolbox.com if you encounter any problems running the program.
Promotional Launch Restriction
The current version of Chinese Toolbox READER is a promotional release. It will be free until the release of Chinese Toolbox READER 10.0. Since the release date of Chinese Toolbox READER 10.0 is not yet known, a variable mechanism is used to see if the program is still within the promotional period. This mechanism is to check with CT Server during program startup. CT Server tells Chinese Toolbox READER whether or not the promotion is still in effect. The downside of such a promotion is that the program needs to go online each time the program is started. If Chinese Toolbox READER is not able to detect an Internet connection or if for any other reason the program is not able to connect to CT Server, the program will shut down shortly after starting. Just as there’s no such restriction with Chinese Toolbox FREE,
the 10.0 release of Chinese Toolbox READER will have no such restriction.
Launching the Program
Chinese Toolbox READER takes significantly longer to load than Chinese Toolbox FREE. Once loaded, Chinese Toolbox READER responsiveness is the same as Chinese Toolbox FREE. During the loading of CT Free,
the splash screen progress bar advances from start to finish only once, and then the program windows appear. The splash screen progress bar for Chinese Toolbox READER is displayed twice: the first represents the loading of the word dictionary; the second represents the loading of the character dictionary and interface. As you will see, the loading of the word dictionary takes much longer than the loading of the character dictionary and interface. Hopefully, the launch time will be shorted in an upcoming release.
Migrating Data from CT Free to CT Reader
To transfer your character understanding data from Chinese Toolbox FREE to Chinese Toolbox READER, run CT Free and click on “Export character dictionary” from the File menu. Then launch CT
Reader and click on “Import character dictionary” from the File menu. Tutorial 4: Export and Import explains how to do this in CT Free when moving data from one computer to another. The concepts apply as well when migrating data to Chinese Toolbox READER.
Updating the Word Dictionary File
The file cedict_ts.u8 in \Program Files\Chinese Toolbox\Chinese Toolbox READER\ (or wherever you installed the program) is the word dictionary file. When this file is updated by MDBG.net, you can download and copy it to the Chinese Toolbox READER program directory, replacing the word dictionary shipped with Chinese Toolbox READER with a more recent version. To download an updated word dictionary, go to the CC-CEDICT download page and click on cedict_1_0_ts_utf-8_mdbg.zip.
General Information about the Word Dictionary
Words are indicated in the reader via underlines. Characters in the reader that are part of the same word will appear with a single underline. When you navigate (via keyboard or mouse) to a character in
the reader, a word definition will appear in the Word Dictionary window if that character is underlined, indicating it is part of a word entry. The character will also appear in the main (character dictionary) window.
The word dictionary file (cedict_ts.u8) is read from disk each time the program is started.
While loading, an internal memory structure is created which is accessed during the running of the program. When you paste text into the reader, the reader checks each character to see if it’s included in the word dictionary
memory structure. If so, the character is underlined, along with any adjacent characters that are part of the word.
Many entries in the word dictionary are composed of one or more words themselves. However, in the current release of Chinese Toolbox READER you do not see those component words. For example, when 中國人 (Chinese person) appears in the reader text, these three characters are all underlined, indicating they consist of a single entry in the word dictionary. However, 中國人 is actually composed of 中國 (China) plus 人 (person). If you were to paste 中國 into the reader, you would see it underlined with a definition in the word dictionary window of /China/Middle Kingdom/. The ability to drill down and see the component words in a word dictionary entry will appear in an upcoming release (hopefully early 2010).
Not all of the entries in the word dictionary are used by Chinese Toolbox READER 9.2. Those currently not used include the following:
- Single character entries. Single character definitions are currently provided by the Unihan character dictionary. The single character entries in the CC-CEDICT word dictionary may be appended to the
Unihan definitions in a future release, but this decision has not been made yet.
- Entries that do not begin with a Chinese character (e.g., Ｔ恤, ＵＳＢ手指).
- Entries that contain one or more characters not represented by the character dictionary. In Chinese Toolbox READER 9.2 only one entry of the CC-CEDICT dictionary falls into this category.
Planned Enhancements
The word dictionary implementation as represented by Chinese Toolbox READER 9.2 is only a start. Much more is in the works for Chinese Toolbox READER and the integrated word dictionary. Some of the planned features for an upcoming release are described in the Upcoming Release page.
Feedback Requested
If anything is lacking in this description of Chinese Toolbox READER, please send an email to support@chinesetoolbox.com.
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