Klaus Thul

Seven useful China-Apps

March 24, 2013 · 2 Comments

The following post (in German) lists some useful Apps for China – including KTdict:

http://kscheib.de/sieben-nutzliche-china-apps/

 

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KTdict 2.1 is available – scribble area in trainer

February 23, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Since yesterday, KTdict 2.1 is available in the App-store:

  • The dictionaries of KTdict C-E and KTdict C-D have been updated to the latest versions of CC-CEDIT and HanDeDict, respectively.
  • The reader-function allows now import of .txt files with more encodings (encoding is the way Chinese characters are translated to numbers the computer can understand). In addition to UTF8, it supports now also UTF16 as well as GB18030. Also, memory management in the reader was improved, which allows it to handle larger documents.
  • Users of the paid versions will get a scribble area in the trainer, which is handy to practice writing of Chinese characters right on the device – saving the need for an extra pen and paper. This comes with an improved design of the trainer on the iPad (see below).

We also spend extra effort on improving overall stability of the App. Thanks to everybody who gave feedback and reported issues through Email, this web-site or the app-store.

screenshot

 

 

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KTdict will require iOS 5.0 with next version

February 23, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Future versions of KTdict will not support iOS versions <5.0. If not done yet, please take the time and upgrade your device to the newest version of iOS. It is worth it also for many other features Apple added to iOS.

I understand that this leaves users of the original iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod touch without a possibility to upgrade KTdict (current version will continue to work). But this decision allows to use several new features added with iOS 5.0 and also greatly simplifies testing of KTdict – therefore providing benefit to vast majority of users (~95% of iOS devices are on 5.0 or above).

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KTdict 2.0 is out – iPhone 5 support and new Chinese reader

October 13, 2012 · 8 Comments

KTdict 2.0 is out. It supports iPhone 5 natively as well has multiple bug-fixes for iOS 6.0.

But there is also a major new feature: An integrated Chinese reader. This allows you to import Chinese texts (e. g. from a Chinese web-site into KTdict). If you tap on a character, KTdict will immediately look up the word starting from this Character in the dictionary.

I hope this is a powerful tool for many people to learn reading Chinese!

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KTdict 1.9.1

August 12, 2012 · 3 Comments

KTdict 1.9.1 is available, which is a maintenance release:

  • improved start-up speed of the application
  • fixed a crash when search consisted only of spaces
  • corrected handling of duplicate cards
  • fixed a display issue of the flashcard list

The last two items only affects users of the paid versions.

Thanks to everybody who helped with resolving these bugs.

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KTdict 1.9 is out!

June 17, 2012 · Leave a Comment

It took longer then anticipated, but KTdict 1.9 is finally out.

This is a major “under-the hood” revision to enable one major new feature: support for iCloud. For people (and I think this are getting more and more) with multiple iOS devices, this allows the automated synchronization of

  • settings
  • search history
  • flashcards (for paid versions)
  • lesson definitions (for paid versions)
  • learning results / statistics

Additional enhancements are:

  • Support for landscape orientation on iPhone/iPod touch
  • Better search in flashcard database, including possibility to search using pinyin
  • Support for retina display on the new iPad

Hope most of you like it. Drop me a mail at ktdict@me.com or leave comments here.

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KTdict C-E featured in “That’s Shanghai” magazine

March 18, 2012 · 2 Comments

“That’s Shanghai” magazine has an article on iPhone. Glad to see that it features KTdict C-E among “Free Shanghai-friendly apps”:

KTdict in "That's Shanghai"

This is encouraging for the work on the next version, which is in process on getting wrapped up.

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KTdict 1.8

August 7, 2011 · 14 Comments

KTdict version 1.8 is available in the App-Store. This is mainly a maintenance release and has the following improvements and bug-fixes:

  • Correct handling of ΓΌ in pinyin input
  • Possibility to store pinyin in clipboard also on iPad
  • Better compatibility with older (3.x) iOS versions
  • Better organized flashcard list on iPad (paid versions)
  • Improved stability of flashcard import (paid versions)
  • Visual indication of progress during flashcard training (paid versions )

Thanks to everybody who provided feedback.

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Vocabulary from “Chinese made easier”

March 12, 2011 · 9 Comments

A comment to my last post made me aware of the excellent vocabulary list available at www.chinesemadeeasier.com.

I converted the vocabulary list into .csv files which can be easily imported into KTdict. They are available at the following links:

Lesson 1 to 40: cme_ktdict L1 to L40.csv
Lesson 41 to 60: cme_ktdict L41 to L60.csv
Lesson 61 to 70: cme_ktdict L61 to L70.csv

Thanks to Martin Symonds – the author of Chinese Made Easier – for permission!

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HSK vocabulary

March 6, 2011 · 7 Comments

The vocabulary lists for the HSK test are available for free at Lingomi. I converted the files into a format which can be read directly by KTdict.

Install on your device using the following steps:

  1. Download the file hsk_ktdict.csv and email it to an account you can access from your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.
  2. Open the Email and tap on the attachment. The content of the .csv file
    will now be displayed as a preview. Tap first on the action-button in the upper right corner, then select “Open in KTdict”. If KTdict is not in the list, tap on “Open In…” first and then select KTdict.
  3. KTdict will open and the flashcard import dialog will appear. You can modify the group assignments to import only selected levels of the HSK (the file includes 5003 flashcards in total).
  4. Tap on “import” to load the flashcards into KTdict.

Conversion of the data was done with a small ruby script available here.

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