josvanouwerkerk Posted December 9, 2007 at 07:18 AM Report Share Posted December 9, 2007 at 07:18 AM First of all, I'm new to this forum and pretty new to using ZDT. Before I found ZDT, I had the idea to build a tool like this myself. But, with one addition, an object relation view to be able to casually browse through the Chinese language. Now that I've seen ZDT, I think it might be better to add this to ZDT, since ZDT already handles the rest. Ok, so, here's the idea. I'm pretty sure there is a good open source object view available. One of those views where your selected item is in the center and other information is spread around it according to how strong the relation is. The idea is to be able to easily browse between characters and words. So, if you see a word, it's easy to find the meaning of the characters in it, similar words, character components, etc. Main elements in the view would be: - Characters (including radicals) - Toneless pinyin - Chinese words - English words Each character has a strong relation to its radical and weaker relations to its other components. Each character has a relation to its toneless pinyin representation. This combination will also pull similar characters close to it. Specially if they share the same toneless pinyin representation. (Pulled in by character component and pinyin similarity.) Next, Chinese words have a relation to the characters in it and the English meaning. This also pulls in Chinese words that use similar characters and have a similar meaning. The actual values for these relations have to be determined by testing, but this is the general idea. I'd enjoy to see some feedback on it. I'm currently not working as a programmer, but I have about 10 years of experience in Java programming. My specialties include data structures, so that should be helpful in this case. I'm estimating that not all information needed for this view is already available, so it needs to be calculated on the fly and cached for later use. Keeping speed and dictionary updates in mind, this becomes a nice data structure problem to solve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bogleg Posted December 15, 2007 at 03:52 PM Report Share Posted December 15, 2007 at 03:52 PM Hey, that sounds like it could be an interesting project. Let me know if you decide to start doing some development on this and I can help you out if you need any assistance. Just PM if you have any questions. Thanks Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpvalois Posted December 25, 2007 at 04:52 PM Report Share Posted December 25, 2007 at 04:52 PM Hi there, I'd love to see this functionality implemented in ZDT. Where would you take you data from? Unihan.txt? I think Wenlin takes much of its data from Unihan.txt, but they seem to have lots of stuff that's not in there. Zhongwen.com seems to share much of the same info for breaking down a character, I only wish they had a free database to offer... I've just posted a message asking about Unihan.txt support (and enhanced flashcards) and am particularly interested in the DAL/DAO aspect of such an undertaking. Regards, Jean-Philippe Valois Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
josvanouwerkerk Posted December 30, 2007 at 06:55 PM Author Report Share Posted December 30, 2007 at 06:55 PM Well, I would preferably use information available in ZDT. So, just add a view. I haven't studied the ZDT API yet, so I'm not sure how the information is accessible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpvalois Posted December 31, 2007 at 03:29 AM Report Share Posted December 31, 2007 at 03:29 AM I asked the question because I was under the impression that the ZDT database was pretty much based on the CEDICT database, which to my knowledge does not hold radical info, nor stroke count or such other detailed bits and pieces. Perhaps I am wrong, as I have yet to find out about the inner workings of ZDT myself. Good luck. jp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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