Custom dict with accents

[herve]

Hi all,
I would like to create my own french/chinese (and chinese/french, of course) dictionary, but I can't do it properly without the ability to insert characters with accents.
Is there, or will there be a possibility for Oxford Dict to accept appropriate fonts ?

Herve

 

[mikelove]

There's no way I know of to do it now, because we stupidly sent with GB-2312 as the encoding standard for Chinese in our data files and it uses a lot of the accent characters as codes for displaying Chinese.

However, in the upcoming ABC dictionary (and the Oxford update we're calling "Oxford 3.0" that'll likely accompany it) we're switching to Unicode encoding, which should make accented characters very doable. (actually with the proper font files you'll be able to insert text in just about any language you want)

 

[haraldalbrecht]

However, in the upcoming ABC dictionary (and the Oxford update we're calling "Oxford 3.0" that'll likely accompany it) we're switching to Unicode encoding, which should make accented characters very doable. (actually with the proper font files you'll be able to insert text in just about any language you want)

Oh yes, please! Maybe Unicode will then be my excuse to step up to a TT3, but since my native tongue is German, I would also like to be able to use German umlauts and the sharp s. Will there be an import utility so I can write a filter for my existing flash card application and transfer my card sets to the ABC/Oxford?

 

[mikelove]

Will there be an import utility so I can write a filter for my existing flash card application and transfer my card sets to the ABC/Oxford?

We're planning to offer something like that, yes; if we don't get around to writing a full-fledged desktop conduit, at a bare minimum there will certainly be an option for importing flashcards from a Memo Pad record, PalmDoc file or the output of some other desktop-based converter program.

 

[haraldalbrecht]

We're planning to offer something like that, yes; if we don't get around to writing a full-fledged desktop conduit, at a bare minimum there will certainly be an option for importing flashcards from a Memo Pad record, PalmDoc file or the output of some other desktop-based converter program.

I would be already satisfied by a simple conduit that just takes an UTF-8 encoded text file, where each line is of the form <simpl><TAB><trad><TAB><pinyin><TAB><explanation>

If there then would be additionally a way to separate the lines into flash card sets or groups, I would be perfectly happy.

 

[mikelove]

That's certainly doable; the MakeDict program already does that to some extent now with GB-2312, so doing it with the flashcard system shouldn't be all that difficult.