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Overview of Chinese Toolbox FREE
This page briefly describes the main features of Chinese Toolbox FREE. Topics are ordered alphabetically.
Character Variants and Radical/Strokes
The Character Variants and Radical/Strokes information all come from the Unihan database. To display one of these variants or radicals as the main entry in the character dictionary, first click on the frame to select it, then click on it again to display it as the current dictionary entry.
Copy
Click on any frame containing text to show the selection box. Press Ctrl-c. The text in the frame is copied to the Windows clipboard. You can now paste this text into any Windows application that allows pasting from the Windows clipboard.
This Copy functionality is especially useful if you use Chinese Toolbox FREE with other programs or websites for learning Chinese. For example, click on the large character frame in the dictionary window then press Ctrl-c to copy the character you’re currently studying. In another program or website, paste this character, say, to do a search. Exercising this Copy functionality is discussed in more detail in Tutorial 5: Looking Up Words and Phrases.
The Reader and Search Results window is special in many ways. First, this frame supports pages of information. Only one page is displayed at a time, but when you copy the Reader and Search Results window, you get all of the text contained in that window for all pages. One other caveat: the text that is copied depends on which tab (above the reader frame) is selected. Clicking on the Reader Text tab or Search Results tab causes either the reader text or the previous search results to be displayed in the reader frame.
Customization
The customizable character dictionary fields exist in three windows: the main window with the character dictionary, the Radical Information window, and the Character Understanding and Review window. Information in fields with red borders can be changed, and this changed data can be exported to a text file as described below.
Data Import and Export
Export character dictionary and Import character dictionary under the File menu allow you to move your personal Chinese Toolbox FREE data in and out of the program. Possibly the most common reason for doing this would be if you use Chinese Toolbox FREE on more than one computer and you want to maintain your learning history on both computers. You could also maintain your own character dictionary and distribute the customized dictionary file for others to use, say in a university setting. Both import and export are very quick, usually taking only a few seconds.
The export writes the entire character dictionary with your notes, your character understanding info, your need-to-learn info, and the radical information to a UTF-8 text file, CharacterDictionary.txt. Character time stamps currently are not exported. CharacterDictionary.txt is written to your “Chinese Toolbox” documents directory.
The import looks for CharacterDictionary.txt in the “Chinese Toolbox” documents directory. If this file does not exist, the import fails with an error message. After importing, the program will automatically shut down. You will need to start the program again to use it with the new dictionary data. After restarting the program, the display of the Reading window will reflect the new character understanding data.
If you edit the CharacterDictionary.txt file, you must ensure that you save it in UTF-8 format; otherwise, the import back into Chinese Toolbox FREE will fail. Also, do not edit the first line of the file. This line contains the headers for associating data in the file with data-containing frames in Chinese Toolbox FREE.
More information regarding export and import is provided in Tutorial 4: Dictionary Export and Import.
Dictionary Navigation
When the character dictionary window is active (the one with the menu), press the left or right direction keys to show previous or next character in the dictionary, respectively. Pressing the Home key goes to the first character in the dictionary, and End shows the last character.
To display a specific entry, click twice in the “Entry #” field, then type the number of the entry you want to display. Hit the Enter key, and the specified dictionary entry will be displayed.
Notes
Enter any of your per-character study notes here. The notes you enter are associated with the main character displayed in the dictionary window. These notes are exportable and searchable.
Page Menu
The Page Menu is used to redisplay any closed pages (windows). For example, if you don’t see the Search page, click on the Search menu item of the Page menu. The Search page (window) will appear.
Radical Information Window
The 214 radicals exist at the beginning of the character dictionary. Entries 1 to 269 include traditional, simplified, traditional variant, and simplified variant forms of the radicals. As with the primary fields of the character dictionary, if you don’t agree with the information here, you can change it. Any changes here will appear in the exported CharacterDictionary.txt file.
The information in this window was compiled by the Chinese Toolbox FREE author from various sources; the information was not programmatically imported from the Unihan database.
Search
The four fields of the search window correspond to four fields in the character dictionary. Associated with each of these fields is a “Whole word only” checkbox. The Definition field also has an associated “Case-sensitive” checkbox. To search the character dictionary for characters, you must type something in at least one of these fields; they cannot all be blank. Typing a search string in more than one field means that all entered strings will exist for characters returned in the search results. An example follows:
Type the letter p in the Pinyin search field, clear the “Whole word only” checkbox, and press Search. You get 901 characters spanning five pages in the search results. If you then type man in the English definition field (leaving p in the Pinyin field), clear the “Whole word only” checkbox for the English field, and press Search, you get ten characters in the search results. However, for all but one of these characters, man exists in the English field as part of the word woman. So if you check the “Whole word only” checkbox for the English field, then press Search, only one character will appear in your search results. This is the only character in the entire character dictionary that has a p in the Pinyin field and man as a whole word in the English field.
After performing a simple search of the character dictionary, you may want to refine the search by limiting the search scope to the previous search results. This can be done by checking the “Restrict search to previous search results” checkbox, just below the Search button. When you use this “Restrict search” checkbox, you may want to refine your search one field at a time.
Switching Between Dictionary and Reader
The dictionary and reader windows are the windows you’ll likely use most frequently. Pressing Ctrl-a enables you to conveniently switch between these windows.
Windows
The window containing the character dictionary and the menu is the main window. Clicking on its close button (the X in the upper right corner of the window) will confirm whether or not you want to shut down the program. Clicking on the close button for any other window (a secondary window) will merely close that window. The next time you start the program, any previously closed windows will not appear.
When you start the program, windows will be positioned exactly as they were the last time the program was shut down.