iPad text/pdf reader apps that include built in chinese dictionaries?

[deathtrap]

Hi, I'm looking for an app that I can load my own texts into and will give me the definition of a word if I highlight it. I know Pleco has something similar to this but it's limited to text copied from the clipboard where I want to load complete text files and get this functionality.

Anyone out there use or know of such a software?

Thank you.

[SiMaKe]

In addition to the Pasteboard Reader mentioned in your post, Pleco has a separate Document File Reader in which files can be downloaded onto the iPad and read with the functionality you are looking for. Files can be transferred from your desktop via iTunes.

[lechuan]

According to the manual, Pleco natively opens .txt files: http://www.pleco.com/ipmanual/reader.html

[yaokong]

Yepp, Pleco opens txt files, with some common encodings as well, and also html files. AFAIK epub or pdf support will be added soon, check plecoforums.com

[trevelyan]

If you have online access, you can always try the Chinese annotator at Popup Chinese, which works off a dictionary of well over 200,000 entries at this point. As a bonus, once you have a free account, clicking on words instantly adds them to your vocab list, which has built-in SRS functionality for spaced-repetition testing.

[mikelove]

EPUB and PDF support are both coming, PDF probably first since the iPhone/iPad have native support for decoding PDFs and don't have native support for decoding EPUBs. (only through iBooks, which developers can't tap into) Android doesn't natively support either and may have to wait a bit longer for PDF support.

PDF reading will require our OCR rather than our document reader add-on, though, since the only reliable way to extract characters from PDFs is to OCR them. (in fact, those two add-ons may be combined in our next major update)

EDIT: to alleviate a few people's worries: if you've only bought one of those two modules you'd still have access to it, we're certainly not going to take away any add-on functionality for existing users.

[gato]

I've been using the Duokan (多看阅读) book reader app on my iPhone for a few weeks and find it to be the best reader out there for Chinese texts.

Here are some great features

- supports EPUZ and PDF format

- supports bookmarks, notes, with online synching across devices

- has a built-in Chinese-to-Chinese dictionary, plus online dictionary search support

- allows copy & paste (the Kindle app doesn't allow copying of text, possibly for copyright reasons, which is the main reason I am moving away from the Kindle app for Chinese text). I need the ability to copy text for query on Pleco.

Duokan is available on both the iOS and Android. I also use the duokan system for my e-ink Kindle DGX, which doesn't support Chinese natively, but that's a different system from the iOS and Android app.

You can find it here:

http://home.duokan.com/index.html

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.duokan.reader

[skylee]

Re #7. That looks interesting. I will download it when I have wifi later. Does it support traditional Chinese? (Oh there is a comment saying that it supports conversion between the simplified and traditional scripts. Sounds good.)

I use Cool Reader and Dolphin E-book to read epub on my Android phone. Cool Reader is pretty good IMHO. But as all the books I read are in English, I am not sure if they support Chinese. And I have no idea if they have dictionary support.

[gato]

You can check out this site with many books, many in traditional Chinese characters and some in simplified Chinese, downloadable in both EPUB and MOBI format.

http://book.zi5.me/books/page/540