Nciku - dictionary with handwriting input

bazza
August 26, 2007, 09:48 PM posted in General Discussion

John posted about this Sinosplice, so I thought I'd share it here as well. 

http://www.nciku.com/

Handy if you can't remember the pinyin for a character. 

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bazza
August 26, 2007, 09:55 PM

The drawing thing a bit slow though, you have to wait for it to update it's guesses between each stroke.

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excuter
August 26, 2007, 10:16 PM

still don´t know how to get the tonepairdrills to work with windowsmediaplayer, maybe I´ll try after I found out about that one... maybe I don´t wait that long we´ll see...:-)

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wei1xiao4
August 27, 2007, 12:27 AM

I have also had trouble getting the tone pair drills to work from Sinosplice, but I have a Macbook. Any advice. I have tried several times after I watched the YouTube video of that curious guy demonstrating continuous repetition of the words. How come he can get it to work but I can't. Help!

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John
August 27, 2007, 12:55 AM

excuter and wei1xiao4, This is the first I've heard of the tone drills not working. They're simple MP3 files. Why wouldn't they work?

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wei1xiao4
August 27, 2007, 07:04 PM

John, do you think it is because I use a Mac? My son is a computer wiz and he couldn't get it to work for me either. I really think those tone drills would be beneficial. I'm probably doing something wrong.

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excuter
August 27, 2007, 07:06 PM

the mp3 files work for themselfes, but the m3u and the pls lists don´t (using windows mediaplayer). I can open them both with winamp but don´t get them to give me even one litlle sound.

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excuter
August 27, 2007, 07:11 PM

ok, I take everything back ( without the winamp thing and the mp3s :-) ) after I unpacked it in a folder it worked. Now let´s see what the other programm can do for me ;-)

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nitrox
August 27, 2007, 08:09 PM

I don't know whether this has been discussed here before, but I found another cool character entry system. It is called 笔画输入法 and available from google. http://dl.google.com/pinyin/GooglePinyinInstaller.exe It is actually a normal pinyin entry system but also allows to enter characters by the following "radicals" 1. hen (h) 一 2. Shu (s) | 3. Pie (p) / 4. Na/Dian (n/d) \ ` 5. Zhe (z) 乙 After you enable the shu ru fa, you have to type first "u", followed by the above "radicals" using THE CORRECT stroke order. So let's look at the following example: Gao 高 enter: udhszhszszh note that a box(kou) is written using Shu(s) Zhe(z) Hen(h). The z is basically any connected line with one or several changes in direction. This can be a little tricky and needs some practice. The character 弓 e.g. consists of z, h, z (the last z contains 3 strokes). Sometimes Shu can contain a small hook at the end 了 is written as uzs Don't confuse p and h. p is written from right to left, whereas h is written from left to right. 毛 e.g. is written as uphhz. Notice that the top stroke is not a hen but a pie (This is better seen with some fonts than with others). I found that with some practice (and knowing the stroke order) you can quickly enter chinese characters. Have fun

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goulnik
August 28, 2007, 01:08 PM

Hi Nitrox, thanks for pointing this out, pinyin is probably way faster but as a learning aid and practice to write characters, this feature of the 谷歌 (google) IME is really cool - what you call radical are actually basic strokes though, which also include d for 点 (dot). I'm sure there are lots of shortcuts in that tool, just haven't had time to explore them yet. Online help is of course in Chinese