Archive for December, 2006
I’ve been working on an early version of a custom import wizard for the ZDT. Currently, it allows you to swap the positions of the various elements (characters, pinyin, definition), pick different delimiters, and choose your desired pinyin format (w/ tones numbers or w/ tonemarks). I’ve mocked up the UI already but before going any further, I’d like to solicit opinions to see if this custom import will meet people’s needs. I’m trying not to make it overly complicated, but I also want to make sure its useful. Check out the screenshot and leave a comment.
December 30th, 2006
I want to make people aware that there is a donation link for the ZDT. I’ve put in a lot of work into the program for the past couple of years and I hope its helping you in your chinese learning. The reason I’m mentioning this now is not because I actually need the money, but I would like to use any donations made toward purchasing other commercial applications that can be integrated with the ZDT. Two of the more popular requests from users are Supermemo and Wenlin integration. While there is basic Supermemo support already, there have been requests for more advanced customization. This is difficult without the program to test with.
There are also other ways to help the cause. I’m also looking for any graphical designers that would be willing to volunteer their time to update the ZDT icons. I know the standard icon on Windows leaves something to be desired. If you’ve been creating word lists for any chinese books you’ve been studying from, please send them to me so I can post them and share them with everyone else.
And if you do nothing else, please continue to send in your bug reports and feature requests. I’m always interested in people’s feedback.
Thanks for the support.
Chris
December 18th, 2006
It’s been a little more than a month and a half since I had done any ZDT work at all. So to get back into the swing of things, I’m putting out a very minor release. There are no new features, but it fixes a couple of prominent bugs that popped into the 0.6.0 release. You can download the release from here.
Bugs fixed
- You can now multi-select entries and the copy and delete actions are still enabled.
- Importing using the ‘Use definitions from database’ option works properly. Previously if an entry did not exist in the dictionary, it would silently skip importing that entry. Now, it will fallback and use the content from the imported file.
- Thanks to Wade Chia, Supermemo export now exports the required ID attribute. Supermemo users, please let me know if this works.
December 7th, 2006