Why Chinese Toolbox?

Chinese Toolbox 2011 is not merely a Chinese dictionary, or a Chinese reader program, or a Chinese reading assistant. It is software to help you really learn to read Chinese, and in learning to read Chinese, you are learning the language itself: radicals, characters, words, phrases, idioms, how words and phrases contextually fit together. The more and better you’re able to read, the better you’ll be able to communicate verbally with others. Features are built in to the program to help you do more reading and less translating. Other Chinese reader programs provide automatic lookup of word and character definitions, but no other program helps you to rely less on built-in dictionaries through marking for unassisted reading.

The following is a list of the key aspects of Chinese Toolbox 2011 that set it apart from other Chinese reading programs.

1. Document management: As a tool to help you read Chinese documents, it makes sense to be able to manage the documents you’re studying. Chinese Toolbox allows you to maintain numerous documents, and conveniently switch between them. Each time you switch to a previously imported document, characters and words you had marked as Known in one document will show up correctly parsed in the document you’re switching to. The Reader window allows you to name documents as you see fit, and all your document names appear in the Documents menu of the main window.
2. Access online resources within Chinese Toolbox: Anyone who studies Chinese these days uses online resources from a number of different websites. With the Context Links functionality, you can “connect” these websites to Chinese Toolbox. See Context Links for more information.
3. Reader text parsing control: Chinese reading assistants display the meanings of words according to rules built into the software. Sometimes part of a person’s name and the text that either precedes or follows the name may be incorrectly marked by a Chinese reading assistant as being a word when, in the current context, it is not a word at all. Chinese Toolbox 2011 provides several keyboard shortcuts that give you more control over how Chinese text is parsed. See Word Parsing Control for more information.
4. Personalized character frequency list: Character frequency lists are commonly available for studying Chinese, but Chinese Toolbox 2011 dynamically keeps track of the characters you see most frequently. Each time you import a document (paste text) into Chinese Toolbox 2011, the characters of the text are counted and added to previous tallies. When you click on the Character Frequency tab of the Reader, a list of characters is shown beginning with the most frequently occurring character. By regularly reviewing this list, you can ensure that you are focusing your attention on the characters that occur most frequently in your reading.
5. List of unknown words: Why view a list of words you already know? Why not focus on the words that you DON’T know? The Unknown Words in Current Document tab in the Reader shows all the words in the current document that you haven’t yet learned. By hiding the words you already know, you can better focus your attention on the words that you have not yet learned.
6. Chinese Toolbox is being actively and aggressively developed. Some software programs for learning Chinese are rarely updated, and when they are, the minor improvements are touted as major. Work on improving Chinese Toolbox continues regularly, and always will. Between major releases, minor updates will be regulary made available, usually via beta (or prerelease) versions.
7. Chinese Toolbox contains two customizable dictionaries: Unihan, a character dictionary from Unicode.org and CC-CEDICT, a community supported word dictionary. Character and word definitions appear automatically as you advance through the reader text.
8. Chinese Toolbox is self-contained. You don’t need to load any third-party software to run Chinese Toolbox. Everything you need is built directly into the program. If your computer is running Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 and East-Asian language files are installed, then you’re ready to run Chinese Toolbox 2011.
9. Imported text is clean. When you import text into some Chinese readers, you may get a lot of white space junk (tabs, odd line breaks, etc.) that has nothing to do with the text you want to read. Chinese Toolbox 2011 filters out all redundant white space, so when the text appears in the Reader, it is cleanly laid out. When you press the right arrow key, the selection box is guaranteed to select a Chinese character, not a space or tab or anything that is irrelevant to your reading.
10. Reader navigation is simple and intuitive using the keyboard. You simply press the right arrow key to select the next character or the left arrow key to select the previous character. Of course, if you want to select a character with the mouse, that works too.
11. Characters are time-stamped when selected. Chinese Toolbox 2011 keeps track of when characters were last viewed. Initially, characters do not have time stamps. Each time you select a character in the Reader, or view the character in the dictionary, a time stamp is either attached to the character, or the previous time stamp is updated. This feature makes possible character review in time stamp order, available on the Character Review menu.
12. Most data can be customized. As a learning tool, it makes sense that one be able to edit the data as he or she sees fit. In Chinese Toolbox 2011 all frames with red borders can receive text input. Customizable data frames exist in the character dictionary window (Pinyin, Zhuyin, Definition, and Notes), in the Radical Information window, and in the Word Dictionary window (Notes). For example, if you prefer “Human” instead of “Man” as the English name for radical #9, you can change it yourself in the Radical Information window.
13. Most data can be exported, modified, and reimported. When character dictionary and character understanding data is exported, it can be processed, analyzed, modified or selectively replaced. This is discussed in greater detail in Tutorial 4: Dictionary Export and Import. The Word Dictionary exists as a text file (cedict_ts.u8) in the Chinese Toolbox 2011 program directory. This file can be edited or replaced with an updated version from the mdbg.net website.
14. The program can be used offline. FREE and READER Modes of Chinese Toolbox 2011 can be run offline. The 15-day trial period (TRIAL Mode) does require an Internet connection.

Click here for the complete list of new functionality in Chinese Toolbox 2011.