Keyboard Controls
When working with the Reader, the keyboard is the primary input device. By using the keyboard to advance to the next character while reading, the program updates timestamps of characters as they are encountered, even if they are marked for unassisted reading. This is useful when you want to review characters that you know, but which you have not seen for a very long time.
Reader Controls
The following keyboard shortcuts can be used in the Reader (the Reader must be selected)
Spacebar: Mark the selected character as Known (Familiar, Recognizable). When pressed on a character or word already marked as Known, the character and word definitions are shown in the respective dictionary windows. Tutorial 1 explains in detail how to read characters in Chinese Toolbox. It explains how to use the spacebar to mark characters as Known, and how to revert characters to Unknown.
Shift-Spacebar: Mark the current word in the Reader (also shown in the Word Dictionary window) as Known. The word is added to the “Known Words” list of the Reader window.
The following screen shot shows the Reader cursor on an unknown word.
After pressing Shift-Spacebar, the word becomes Known: The underline is removed to indicate that its dictionary entry should not automatically be shown the next time the word is encountered. The following screen shot shows the same word marked for unassisted reading.
Notice that when you mark a work as Known, any characters in the word not already known are also marked as Known. In version 11.0.1.0 (due in September 2011) this behavior will be configurable.
Shift-Right: Begin or expand the selection. Pressing Shift-Right causes the current character to be added to the selection. Repeatedly pressing Shift-Right continues to expand the selection. Only characters with pink shaded backgrounds are included in the selection. (This color can be changed in the Settings dialog.) When a multi-character selection exists, you can press Ctrl-C or use the local menu to Copy the selected characters to the clipboard. The selection is also used for creating temporary words (Ctrl-D).
Ctrl-D: Mark selected characters as a temporary word. No definition required. This is used to group consecutive characters that have a particular meaning only in the current context; e.g. an uncommon name. This prevents the characters from being parsed incorrectly as parts of other words.
Ctrl-E: Exclude the current word from the word dictionary. The word will no longer be loaded from disk when the application starts in the future.
Ctrl-T: Temporarily exclude the current word from the word dictionary for the current run of the program only. Temporarily removing a word may produce a parsing more appropriate for the displayed reader text.
Ctrl-W: Add the word displayed in the word dictionary to the vocabulary list. Click on the “Vocabulary” tab of the Reader window to view all vocabulary words.
Character Dictionary Controls
These keyboard controls require that the primary character be selected; if not, no other frame in the Character Dictionary window can be selected for these to work.
Left: Display the previous character entry.
Right: Display the next character entry.
Home: Display the first character entry.
End: Display the last character entry.
Though not a keyboard control, you can jump directly to a character entry by clicking in the Entry # field, click once again to clear the field, type the entry number, and press Enter.
Note also that you can edit any field of the Character Dictionary that has a red border. Your changes are saved automatically when you exit the program.
Word Dictionary Controls
Enter: When a character is selected in the entry frame of the Word Dictionary window, and this character is part of a component word, pressing Enter will cause that word to become the main entry in the Word Dictionary window. See Drilling Down to Component Words for more information.