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the old (non-linux) zaurus was awesome for looking up kanji, but mine died years ago.
still, there are a few programs floating around in dark corners of the net that will process a series of mouse gestures and guess at what kanji was drawn. i find this much easier to use than guessing at radicals. unfortunately the programs usually only display the characters, and not the translated meaning, so then you have to copy and paste into a dictionary program if you don't know what it means, which is probably why you were writing it in the first place.
this interface is just about ideal: http://kanji.sljfaq.org/draw.html
if only those links went to the jisho entry instead.
stroke order diagrams like this would be cool too: http://kanji.sljfaq.org/kanjivg/
I notice Ben Bullock posts to this forum; is there any particular reason this feature doesn't exist yet?
I can help out on development stuff if you need volunteers. I know a little bit of Mason but havent used Catalyst. -
As Aodh notes, IME pad is pretty fabulous, but in response to your enquiry I've added a new feature to my site which allows you to choose where the links go to. The current options are WWWJDIC in Australia, this site, and Tangorin. WWWJDIC is the default because these pages are linked from the front page of WWWJDIC. This feature was something I was offering to add for Grzegorz Bober at Tangorin but he never got back to me. Anyway, it was easy enough to implement this feature so I've added it. Note that currently it is only on the "testing version" of the site until I'm sure it works.
In case you're interested, one reason that a lot of people use my site is, rather than for looking up kanji, they use it to check their kanji handwriting! The very strict stroke order dependence of the algorithm turns out to be useful for people learning kanji. In that sense it actually has an advantage over IME pad.
Please note: technical gibberish follows. Feel free to ignore.
Another feature I offered to Grzegorz Bober when he contacted me was for him to use my handwriting recognition program as part of his interface, by using the referrer field to make the kanji links on my page go back to Tangorin instead of sending them to WWWJDIC. But he never replied about that. If somebody wanted me to add that feature, I'd be glad to do so. -
If you live in Japan, I recommend buying a Nintendo DS and the 漢字字典 (kanji jiten) software for it. You can draw kanji on the touch-pad and it will look them up for you (even if you screw up the stroke order, or have sloppy handwriting). It's seriously awesome. The portability has been a lifesaver for looking up Kanji on signs, food-labels in supermarkets etc.. It is made for Japanese people who are studying English however, so it may not be available outside of Japan. As for its disadvantages, I have found grammatical errors, and a noticeable amount of archaic language in the English sentences that appear, hopefully the reverse isn't true :-P but that's like 8% of the time probably.
It comes with Kanji quizzes too, and a "国語" feature if you want to look up really specific cocktail-party stuff (like how to write ロシア in Kanji), and what the counter is for ghosts and eyedrops. :-D
That doesn't solve the feature request thing but I've found it useful in conjunction with using denshi jisho. If I connect to denshi jisho with my keitai it costs money :^( -
Haha, yeah that would be funny if it was the same!
I've never heard them used in real life, but apparently 位 is a counter for ghosts (it's on denshi jisho, and rikai-chan for firefox too :)
I forgot the eyedrops one. I came a across it once accidentally when switching to the kokugo setting and reading the explanation. It might be 滴 as in 点滴
A lot of times the explanations have OTHER words I don't know so it becomes a bit of a goose chase to look up those words too(because the dictionary probably assumes your Kanji ability is high school graduate level :-/ )
I end up following that goose to the end on days like the graduation day when there are no classes :-P -
The counter for eyedrops is here, under めぐすり:
http://www.benricho.org/kazu/ma.html -
Yeah, rikai-chan is great, but it's hard to look up specific counters either here or on rikai-chan (or my personal 電子辞書). Though since you pointed it out, I now realize you can type in "counter" and "ghosts" in denshi jisho to get the counter for ghosts, but the same doesn't seem to work for eyedrops.
Thanks, Ben. You're just full of good sites. I'll have to look more into the 便利帳. It does seem very 便利. -
The DS software that paulusmaximus referred to can be imported from play-asia.com (http://tinyurl.com/yb4p8ga). The cartridge is region free, so it can be used on any Nintendo DS/DS Lite/DSi system.
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Nice link ChuckX! I didn't know about that site! :-D
Dude speaking of that, I was using that cartridge today. It has 1 hilarious mistake in it. Some coworker was blabbing about his new baby and how his wife is breastfeeding it (I felt like Al Bundy having to hear that haha). I heard him say 母乳 and for some reason I wanted to know the kun'yomi for 乳, so I looked it up in the DS and it had the English entries "Milk" and "Breast" and then it said ことわざ or something like that and it displayed the sentence "Music soothes [smoothes] the savage breast"
Apparently the makers of the DS software mixed up "beast" and "breast" lol. Conversely if I looked up 獣 it says "beast" for the one-word definition but it had the same sentence with 'breast' (I'm guessing the example sentences which contain the word you entered must be looked up by the software at run-time, and this one was indexed incorrectly). I've never heard of music "smoothing" the savage beast either... but the DS software does try to cover a bit of non-US English (not taught in Japan). It could just be obscure dialect. I do see a number of things like that in the DS software, but I still recommend it. ;-)
I haven't encountered any breasts that are savage, but sometimes the ladies attached to them can be. j/k :-D -
Hi everyone,
This thread is somewhat old but I stumbled across it just now. I have written a program that coaches users on how they draw the kanji, and also provides a spaced repetition system, dynamic memory model, integrated mnemonics, a beginner-friendly text input method and online and offline links to usage and readings.
I am still looking for beta testers so if anyone is interested in this sort of program, please let me know.
Preview here...
http://cerebware.110mb.com/downloads/The%20Kanji%20Sketch%20Pad.html
I'd be happy to send a link to a download, but it is still in beta mode so I have not released it to the general public. Will cost about $5 when finished, with a freeware version that has 80 kanji instead of the full 2000 or so joyo kanji.
Oh yeah, nearly forgot. Links straight to jisho.org.
Cheers,
Torrential.
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In this Discussion
- Aodh March 2010
- Ben Bullock March 2010
- chuckx March 2010
- paulusmaximus March 2010
- Richard March 2010
- tamatama March 2010
- Torrential March 2011