HanziCraft

[hedwards 72]

That's good to know. I always struggle a bit with the balance between doing things correctly and doing the things that I have time for. Unfortunately, they're not always the same thing and sometimes doing it correctly is impossible without access to a good set of references.

 

I'd expect this to be a rather monumental undertaking, especially if one is doing research rather than relying upon what radicals appear to be present. I know that there's at least a few that are identical in terms of the strokes, but have completely different origins, different meanings and ideally shouldn't be confused with each other.

[889 1,802]

As said, Wenlin is very good on components. Not only does it break down each character into components, but you can backward search as well; that is you can take any character and find what other characters use it as a component. You're not limited to radicals, as in many indexing systems. You can also find all words and phrases using a particular character.

[li3wei1 440]

www.archchinese.com does that too, and it's free.

[889 1,802]

Yes, but you get what you pay for.

Let's use the character 曾 as an example.

Archchinese doesn't break that character into components. Wenlin gives me four searchable components for it.

Archchinese gives me nine characters that include 曾 as a component. Wenlin gives me over sixty.

Archchinese gives me eleven words with 曾. Wenlin gives me twenty-seven words and expressions.