Convert Vocabulary List to Writing Practice Grid
chipmunkgeek
September 13, 2008, 05:26 PM posted in General DiscussionFor awhile now, I've been wanting to practice writing the characters that are in my ChinesePod vocabulary lists, and have wanted a practice writing grid which I can print out to practice these characters.
I've been working on developing a web tool that takes my ChinesePod exported vocabulary list (an XML file) and then creates a PDF file with a writing grid for those characters. Here is a screenshot of what the final PDF looks like:
If you're interested in using this tool to create your own vocab writing PDFs, I've put the tool up at:
http://www.miryclay.com/chinesepod/vocab2grid.php
I hope that this tool will be helpful for you! It has been for me. If you have any comments or feedback, feel free to let me know. Enjoy!
chipmunkgeek
September 12, 2008, 07:10 PM@calkins - Glad you liked the grids! I'd love to hear if the PDF creation was smooth and simple for you, or if you have any ideas for enhancements!
mandarinboy
September 13, 2008, 06:15 PMWorks great! fast and simple. One nice addition would be to be able to add grids to the squares. Like Chinese practice papers. I usualy uses whiteboards to practice my writing but from time to time I also use Chinese practice papers to get the proportions right.
calkins
September 13, 2008, 06:52 PMIt worked great for me too...very easy. The only thing I need now is to know the stroke order for each character, but I know that wouldn't be possible for this tool. MDBG is good for that.
chipmunkgeek
September 14, 2008, 06:55 AMI'm glad you've been able to create your grid PDFs with ease! These are becoming helpful for me as I practice my writing more.
@mandarinboy - Thanks for the suggestion! I added extra grid lines within each writing square. This may help you to get your characters more proportional
@calkins - Where do you go online for learning stroke order?
mandarinboy
September 14, 2008, 07:04 AMThere is one great resource for stroke order animations: http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?cdqchi=%E4%BD%A0%E5%A5%BD
For each character there are two brushes in the left part. One is for Ocrat gif animations and one is for a java applet that paints the strokes. Ocrat is having the most animations at this point but they are not creating any more animations while we are still adding new stroke order data for the java applet. That is an open source project. If you like to add stroke order data for printing i think the easiest thing would be to take the ocrat data and take the frames in the animation and print them. I have done that in other programs my self.
Good job by the way, I am very impressed over the ease of use and the speed. I tested with an large file and it took less than a second.
perle2
September 14, 2008, 07:24 AMNice practice grid. Thank you.
chipmunkgeek
September 16, 2008, 04:23 AM@mandarinboy - Great! I'm glad that it is working, and that you can get the writing grid quickly, even for large files.
Thanks also for the link on stroke order animations. I was doing some searching, and here is another page that I found that animates character stroke order.
user76423
September 16, 2008, 06:45 AMIf one is interested in stroke order animations for trad. characters, visit this site (ministry of education of the ROC) :
http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw
calkins
September 12, 2008, 01:45 PMVery cool, thanks for sharing! I've been slacking on my writing practice lately...this just might get me going again.