Upcoming Release
The next major release is planned for early 2010 (How early? That I don’t know.) I’m hoping to release Chinese Toolbox FREE 10.0 and Chinese Toolbox READER 10.0 simultaneously. Chinese Toolbox READER 9.2 will continue to be free until the release of version 10. There may or may not be additional minor updates of Chinese Toolbox READER before the version 10 release. This decision has not been made yet.
With the 2010 release of Chinese Toolbox READER, there will be a modest charge for using the program (probably less than $30 per year). Hopefully, this will provide the funding to expand the project beyond a single person.
I’ve listed below a few of the many tasks on my to-do list. These are tasks that come to mind at the moment, and the ones that will likely be developed first.
- Show the word components of the displayed entry in the word dictionary window.
- Add a window to sequentially list the words in the word dictionary.
- Develop features for the word dictionary similar to those of the character dictionary. For example, when the user can recognize and read a word in the text, that word (like in the character dictionary) should be marked for
unassisted reading. When marked as such, the word will not be underlined in the reader.
- All words marked as recognizable will be shown in another window for review.
- Enable marking of words in the reader text for exclusion from your view of the word dictionary. Reason: You may not agree with some of the entries in the word dictionary, and you may want them removed.
- Improve search functionality. For example, you should be able to search on recognizable or unrecognizable characters and/or words.
- Implement online lookup of character, word, and phrase definitions, and translations for longer text selections.
- Provide integrated access to other online resources, particularly sound files of character pronunciations.
- Expand and improve the current character review system.
- Provide options to display zhuyin and/or pinyin next to or under the characters displayed in the reader.
- Improve the look and feel of the interface.
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