ZDT Blog | Learn Chinese With ZDT

0.8.0 sandbox build out

Chris — Thu, 01 May 2008 06:25:14 +0000

I’ve put out a new sandbox build that contains the new Flashcard notes functionality. Now you can attach text, images and sounds to your flashcards. Keep in mind that this is not beta, or alpha software. It’s just a snapshot of stuff I’m working on. That said, I’d like your comments on whether you think this new notes feature is useful.

Known limitations:

Can only play mp3 sound files.
Cannot stop sound file once you’ve started to play it. So don’t attach big sound files!
No shortcut key to play attached sound.
Attachments do not get backed-up.

Please make sure that you keep a back up of your existing word lists if you try this build, as it will make modifications to your user database.

Adding notes to flashcards

Chris — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:08:20 +0000

One of the most frequent requests I get from people is that they want the ability to add user defined content to their flashcards. I’ve started to take a look at implementing this and here are some (very early) screenshots of what I have so far. Currently it supports the addition of textual information and the ability to embed an image. I will also add the ability to attach a sound as well.

This Note editor will be a tab in the Add/Edit entry dialogs.

Any comments so far?

ZDT update

Chris — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:20:43 +0000

As you may have noticed, there hasn’t been much ZDT development going on since 0.7.0 came out in November. I’ve been pretty busy with other projects over the past several months.
I have just recently started on 0.7.1 development, by making several user requested bug fixes and small enhancements. I’ve been putting these builds in the sandbox area of the project page. So check them out and please give me your feedback.

New CEDICT plugin released

Chris — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:23:44 +0000

Just to let people know, I’ve updated the CEDICT plugin to the Nov 26th version of the CEDICT dictionary. It contains almost 55,000 entries, compared to the 27,000 entries the old one had. To install, just drop it into your ZDT plugins directory. You can download it from here.

NPCR Vol 1 Word List added

Chris — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:15:14 +0000

Carl McCabe has graciously submitted his word lists for all 14 chapters of the New Practical Chinese Reader, Vol 1 textbook. If you are currently using the ZDT to create some interesting word lists, please consider sharing to help others out with their Chinese learning. Just send me an email.

ZDT 0.7.0 New and Noteworthy.

Chris — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:03:56 +0000

The latest and greatest ZDT 0.7.0 final release is now available. If you’re still on 0.6.1, you should find quite a bit of new stuff. People that have been playing around with the beta and rc releases will notice a variety of bug fixes and performance improvements. Thanks to all the people who have helped contribute to this release. If you find this program useful, please consider helping out or making a donation. Your support is what allows ZDT development to continue.

New features since 0.6.1

Character and pinyin fonts can be changed individually.
Stroke Order Animations are now accessible via hotkey (F5). Works in dictionary, flashcard, and category editors.
Pinyin Recall Mode can now be configured to show character only, definition only or both. (Thanks to Uwe)
Custom import will now import a better percentage of entries for S P D and T P D patterns.
Self Review mode improvements. Can now show more than one aspect (character, pinyin, definition) on a card at a time. Also, users can now score themselves on the test.
User database can be changed without restarting application.
Special characters (like spaces, periods, commas, etc) can now be included in pinyin and character fields.
Interval flashcard testing. The better you know a flashcard, the less often it gets shown to you. Shamelessly copied from the excellent flashcard program IFlash.
Resume last flashcard session. If you close the program or stop a flashcard session in the middle, you will now have the option to resume from where you left off.
Multiple sound plugin support. If you have multiple sound plugins installed, they will both be available to you to play. NOTE: The old sound plugin will not work from this version on. Please download the net.sourceforge.zdt.sound.adso or net.sourceforge.zdt.sound.roddy sound plugins instead.
Roddy sound plugin available. Sounds given to me by Roddy from chinese-forums.com. Male voice, no neutral tones.
Keyboard hotkeys can be changed via preferences.
A ton of bugs have also been fixed. Take a look at the changelog for more details.

ZDT 0.7.0 final almost here?

Chris — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 13:51:35 +0000

Please check out the latest rc6 build in the sandbox. I’m hoping to turn this build into the 0.7.0 final release. If people can try it out and let me know if they find any new major, show-stopping bugs in it, I would appreciate it. I will defer any minor bugs/feature requests until the next release. Thanks!

Handedict plugin updated (again)

Chris — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:48:16 +0000

I have just uploaded the 0.2.1 version of the handedict plugin. It turns out that the plugin was missing all entries that contained a ü in its pinyin field. Thanks to Heinz Küpper for pointing this out. As a result, there are now almost 1400 more entries in the dictionary. If you are using an older version of the plugin, please delete it from your plugins directory before you install this new one.

Handedict plugin updated

Chris — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:13:35 +0000

For all you German speaking Chinese learners, I’ve just uploaded version 0.2.0 of the Handedict plugin which is based off the Oct 11th version of the Handedict dictionary. If you’re daring, try it with the latest ZDT 0.7.0 rc3 build and you should notice some speed improvements in annotating text using this dictionary.

ZDT & Vista

Chris — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:53:10 +0000

It seems like there’s still some several very strange problems that are occurring while running ZDT with Vista. Solving these problems has been hampered by the fact that I don’t have a Vista machine to work with. Well, that’s about to change. Thanks to some generous donations, I should be finally be getting a copy of Vista this Friday. I think I will hold off on the 0.7.0 final release until I can address some of the more major Vista issues. But in the meantime, I will keep releasing builds in the sandbox for people to play with and test. Look for rc3 to be uploaded in a few days.