Review of Chinese Dictionary

[cdict fan]

I have been using the DictonaryforMid with the Chinese dictionary and thought I would post my impressions.  I use it frequently and like it a lot.  I have a Moto L7 that has Java and Chinese input.  In general I have no problem with the program, but
1) Some characters dont display correctly.  Mainly it is the vowel with the tone signs display as solid blocks of black.  Kind of mystery vowels, does make it a bit tough some times.
2) It is a bit slow.  It takes about 30 seconds to start up, and searches take between 2 to 11 seconds

Things I would like to see
1) It would be nice if it had a setting for simplified vs. traditional characters.  I live in mainland and have no use for traditional characters most of the time.  It would make it a bit easier if I did not have to bother about figuring out which is the simplified or traditional character.
2) Copy character.  I wish I could copy characters that I look up.  Some times I am working on an SMS in Chinese and lookup a character, it would be nice to copy and paste it in.
3) Editable Dictonary.  I would like to add some terms that relate to my profession.  CEDICT is pretty good, but by no means comprehensive.

In general the Chinese dictionary is very useful and dispite its few flaws, it is a great upload.

[Tomcollins]

Hi!

Thank you very much for your posting!!

1) I know about the problems with the accents. Most of the mobiles don't support some of these Characters. In the Chinese-german version in changed it to pinyin with tones, e.g. pin1yin1. I can provide a version using Cedict too, i'll let you know when it's ready.
2) java is slow, but maybe there will be improvements in later versions... (on newer mobiles it also might be a little bit faster.)


1) i know, i want that feature too, but it will take some time and someone to implement it... (also see 3)
2) see 2
3) well you can not edit it on the fly, but you can edit in the cedict, and then generate and create a 'new' dictionary (see setting up a new dictionary). in the beginning it's seems lots of work, but the second time its easy and fast (few minutes).
like that you could also just delete the traditionals you don't need! and you can change other things too!!
If you need some help with the setting up, let me know!

Greetings,
Sebastian

[Shadowdh]

I have just started using this useful little tool... I would echo the comments made regarding the speed and the blacked out vowels... if that can be fixed it would be great... I also use an L7 so it may be peculiar to that model... thanks for the dictionary... cant wait till someone more technology savvy makes the changes...

[Gert]

Thank you for your feedback !

Just a few quick words from me:

1. (some characters not correctly displayed): That problem will be solved with the bitmap fonts.

2. (response time slow): Please do read this posting: http://dictionarymid.gottfried-signs.ch/index.php?topic=34.0

Regards,
Gert

[Shadowdh]

Thank you for your feedback !

Just a few quick words from me:

1. (some characters not correctly displayed): That problem will be solved with the bitmap fonts.

The characters display fine but some vowels with tone marks dont (although when translating chinese to english (or is it the other way) it seems the same vowels with tone marks are ok).. ooops and if by characters you mean vowels with tone marks please ignore this... also re the bitmap fonts... is that something I do or is it in a new edition of the application... please excuse my ignorance as I am really not technology savvy...

2. (response time slow): Please do read this posting: http://dictionarymid.gottfried-signs.ch/index.php?topic=34.0

Regards,
Gert

Thanks and will do now...

[Tomcollins]

Hi!

The dictionary uses the fonts of the devices (mobiles). these fonts are sometimes limited. e.g. some the vowels with tone marks are not "in" the font of the mobiles. So in this case it is your device (unfortunately like a lot of devices), which does not support some specific vowl-with-tone-characters.
We are working on a new feature for our dictionary, which is the use of a bitmapfont, which means that the software uses its own fonts, not the one of the device. This font will have all necessary characters (also all vowels with tones). We will also provide a cedict version with numbers behind the pin1yin1 too, but we are waiting for some additional features till we do an update.

Sebastian

[Shadowdh]

Thanks for the info and clearing it up for me Sebastian... much appreciated...

[cdict fan]

Thanks for all the replies to my message.  I have a couple of additional suggestions.

1) for the bad character question, I understand editing the 42 thousand odd entries would be to big a bother, rather for my character challenged phone, I would suggest replace all the toned vowels with simple vowels.  Sure I wont know what tone it is, but I am lousy at tones anyway.  I would prefer this to a blank.  I would think this could be done with a global replace.  If you want I can edit cedict for this.

2) I know it is a lot to ask, but what would be really cool is if I could take chunks of text (from SMS) and have the dictionary translate one word at a time.  Kind of  a next word, next word, next word system where I would click for the next word.  My current system is a bit complex where I copy the chunk (maybe 30 characters), paste them in and then delete all but the next one.  Obviously not the most efficient system.  I would guess that it would work by looking for a 2 word combo, and if none go for a single character.

In general on the comments about it being slow, while yes it does take a bit of time to load up, I dont mind that and the searches are quick enough for my simple L7.

As always, it is very useful and I am very happy with it despite its minor flaws.

[Gert]

To 1): Thanks to Sebastian we will have the bitmap fonts feature available shortly. That should sholve your problem.

On the response times: it would be useful to know where the slow response times come from. I still do not to know the detailed response times for the L7. I need to get the response times from the log output, see thread http://dictionarymid.gottfried-signs.ch/index.php?topic=34.0

Gert

[cdict fan]

I'll try to log a few response times, but here is a killer trick I found to make dealing with Chinese SMS's much easier.  First, I have to 'forward' the SMS so that I can copy all the text.  After I copy the text, I abort the forward message and open DFM.  If I have to go back to the message or if I am writing a message and need a new term, I don't exit DFM once I have my term, rather I hit the 'stop' button (end call) and chose suspend and then go to my message.  This greatly reduces the startup time to only a fraction of a second.  When going back and forth between messages and SMS it really cuts down the time problem, such that it is not really a problem.

One more new wish list item would be if DFM could automatically 'know' if it is english or chinese.  I would guess it would take some logic where if the character was between A and Z, it would be english otherwise, check for Chinese.  I dont know if java can breakdown the first character like that.  Another option would be to automatically check english first, and if it did not find anything it would check Chinese.

[Gert]

Good that you have a 'suspend' feature on your Motorola L7. Unfortunately there are still devices out there that don't have such a feature.

Yes, something like a "search over all languages" was already requested before. It should be not too much effort to implement this.

I'll keep this in my head - and hope that there will be someone with the time to implement this

Gert

[Tomcollins]

Hi!

It's funny, since all your postings reflect the development of my first cedict dictionary for mobiles. We first had problems with the pinyin, then I didn't want to switch the language, so we implemented this and one of the last thoughts was also the sms translation (something like: just the marked text is translated). We implemented all this quite fine, but unfortenately it is just for symbian 2.1 mobiles (SonyEricsson P908/910) so I joined this project.

Well, I know which features are useful and I also want to implement some more, it just takes time...
But the language switch should be quite fast if you use the keys: menu-key --> switch language key (should be #1 or #2)...
I think we will implement the pinyin for the next version with normal vowels with numbers first. And we'll do a later version with both pinyin version, so one is able to choose, which is shown. Unfortunately this feature won't be implemented in this version, but stay tuned...
Nice to see that someone is interested!

Sebastian

[Tomcollins]

I finally found the time to set up a new version. Please have a try (feedback appreciated):

http://stud3.tuwien.ac.at/~e0225729/MID/DictionaryForMIDs_3.1.2_ChiEng_CEDICT.zip

Really sorry for taking so long,
Sebastian