開発中

Thank you to all you have generously donated to this project!! I have been working every weekend on developing the next version which has involved an education in how the whole Firefox plugin framework works so I can get some of the more inherent bugs fixed while I rewrite this from scratch for Firefox 3. But all is going well. Thanks again for the donations, I got an ACIDMAN dvd I’ve been wanting for awhile (^^)/

Firefox3 Beta Versions

Not enough to push out an update, but for those you really want to use this with the Firefox 3 Betas, you can download compatible versions in my “Box” on the left here. Uninstall the old versions first. Enjoy!

PS: Thank you to those who have already donated! I’ll be working hard this weekend on getting a new version of this out soon!

Worth a cup of coffee?

Is Chinese or Japanese Perapera-kun worth a cup of coffee?

My philosophy toward free software is that if I met the person who coded some program that really helped me out or I used alot, sure I would offer to buy him a coffee or a beer for his troubles.

So if this has helped you at to some degree in your studies or your profession (I know more than a few people who use this almost full time in their jobs) I encourage you to donate the cost of a cup of coffee by clicking on the donation link on the left of the screen.

Besides making my efforts feel appreciated, this will greatly motivate me to get the updates I want to do faster and write some other plug-ins and language related software I have been thinking of creating. Thank you.

I’m excited to finally be working on a new version and here is a list of major changes I will be implementing:

• Can save vocabulary words to a sidebar for easy viewing & reviewing
• Choose example sentences to be saved with your word
• Saved words can be highlighted when you view other websites
• Redesigned settings dialog thats easier to use
• Easier way to save words, no more CTRL key confict!
• Possible integration with a Chinese/Japanese study site
• Better looking pop-up box
• A sounds option to pronounce those tones on the words

Still Alive!!!

Wow embarrassing how old that last post was but alot has happened in the past year including moving back to America and a career change. My new career and job has sucked up all the my time but now I have settled in and can work on my side projects again.

Anyways, here’s the new. I will release a minor update of the plug-in so that it works with Firefox 3 this weekend. The next update will be huge and I will be devoting time to it regularly now so the update will come in a reasonable time frame.

I thank all the people who have downloaded, reviewed, commented and sent me feedback. I have had some good dialogs with many of you, and have a really good feel for what will be changed in the next version.

Chinesepera-kun 0.2.2 Released

Here are the changes:

• More entries in the dictionary
• Faster Search (needed because of bigger dictionary)
• You can choose “Show More Results” in the options dialog to yield more results (often redundant, OFF by default).
• Press when over a character to display character information about it.(very much thanks to Imron Alston for compiling the info from the huge file)
• Now works with Simplified AND Traditional characters, and will detect automatically, so no longer need to choose anything in the options dialog.
• Fixed newline character not being outputted upon export
• Made the accidental exporting when trying to copy and hitting a little better, but still not perfect

Enjoy! https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3349/

Chinesepera-kun’s Next Release…

I have been recently working on updating the dictionary and search for better results. I have to to a place now where there are good results and am about done and ready to release. This will the be the last update for a long time so if there is anything anyone wants changed/included please leave a comment. Main changes are:

• Rewrote search code so it should be about twice as fast now.
• Updated the dictionary file, so now theres more entries (hence the faster search was needed).
• Traditional characters are now supported in browsing and exporting, just choose traditional hanzi in the options menu.(simplified is the default)
• Added the option to see more results displayed, by choosing “Show More Results” in the options dialog. (off by default)
• Stripped out the japanese kanji related info.
• In place of that japanese related info window, if you press it will magnify the hanzi.

Some people have complained about the japanese kanji window being removed, I dont know why, most the information was irrelevant, but if its something everyone wants back I will put it back..leave a comment.

OR if you want the same thing with chinese character information there is the UNIHAN dictionary which holds that information but is 30MB in size…so it would make the extension huge. It contains alot of information that has to do with Japanese and Korean so if someone wants to make a processed version of that file with only the chinese info cherry picked, and sent it to me I can implement that. Or I could try to make it as an optional add-on (much like the names dictionary for the japanese version). Up to you…I dont personally need so I dont plan to add it.

Any other feature requests ?? Leave a comment.

Firefox 2.0 Updates

Both of my extensions have been updated to work with the new version of Firefox (2.0). No functionality changes have been added, just a compatibility update, so look in the next few weeks for a new version of Chinesepera-kun with some much needed changes and possibly an updated Perapera-kun (Japanese) with a few bug fixes/updates a couple people wanted.

Perapera-kun (Japanese) 0.5.22
Chinesepera-kun 0.2.0

Finally Chinese Popups in Firefox

Finally it is here. An extension that does the same functionality as Rikai-chan did for Japanese, for Chinese!!!

This is a mod of my mod Perapera-kun, which was a mod of Rikai-chan. It works the exact same way as Perapera-kun including exporting words to a list for study. So you no longer have to pain thru copying, pasting, and right clicking to find how to pronounce a character. At least Im rejoicing…now I can officially begin studying Chinese. Enjoy!
Download Here More Info Here

Rikai-chan becomes Perapera-kun

An otherwise great plugin, Rikai-chan was patently missing the ability to export words. Most people who used Rikai-chan study Japanese and were not people who just wanted to skim a Japanese Hentai site!!…wait I take that back…they probably were, so for the few of us ACTUALLY studying languages or at least are doing so in addition to browsing asian porn sites….enjoy!
Download Here More Info Here

Japanese and Chinese Resource Links - 8/17

Found some great resources today.

Japanese
I found a blog awhile back called MutantFrog Travelogue which offers up interesting viewpoints on Japan related news/politics. In a recent post about which reports on Japan he respects he trivially tossed a link in his post to http://www.gregoryclark.net/ who is a used to be famous/is still famous australian who has lived in Japan and written many an article for Japan Times and other publications in Japan (in Japanese and English) and has these posted on his website. The articles are all in 2-column form with English on the left, and Japanese on the right–a great resource for learning political or recent news vocabulary!

Chinese
This also applies to Japanese, but a resource I found a loooong time ago (before I was studying Chinese) then remembered is MIT’s OpenCourseWare program. Everything is released under the CreativeCommons copyright and therefore is 100% free. You can download the whole course or go thru all the homework assignments, tests, handouts, and in the case of Chinese (and others I suppose), even textbooks are online for free. They also have culture and history courses available for the interested. Amazing resource and quite handy since I’m still at the starting out stage in Chinese. Highly Recommended.

• Chinese I
• Advanced Japanese I
• MIT’s directory of OpenCourseWare