ChinesePera-kun

**Updated 11.11.2006 - Latest Version: 0.2.2 (click for details)

Chinesepera-kun Extension Preview

Chinese-Forum post about this extension where theres ongoing conversation about it: http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?t=12798

This is the Chinese version of Perapera-kun which works the same way but yep, you guessed it Chinese. It will work when you hover or Simplified or Traditional characters. It gets entries from the Adsotrans.com dictionary file which is a project that incorporates other dictionaries including the CEDICT. Here are the details:

  • Displays popups of the pinyin pronunciation and the English definition when you hover over Chinese text on a website.
  • Go to the toolbar customize window in Firefox and add the green book icon to your toolbar, then simply press it when you are on a site that displays Chinese to turn the function on.
  • If you want to see more information about a character, press <SHIFT> when your pointer is over the character.
  • You can export the topmost entry to a file you can use to study later. First choose a file location to export to in the options dialog (in the extensions menu). When an entry is being displayed hit <CTRL> to save the entry to file.
  • You can choose the export format to be EDICT format or with Tabs inbetween the hanzi, pinyin, and definition.
  • The exported file is encoded in GB2312 for Simplified Chinese, and BIG5 for Traditional Chinese.

Here are planned updates:

  • Options dialog redesign
  • Better dictionary file
  • Allow exporting of any of the entries in the popup and not just the one at the top

If you have any (constructive) comments or ideas for updates please post them, and if you use this extension please put leave feedback also on the Mozilla site: https://addons.mozilla.org/ because if you search for “Chinese” currently I think you get like a ton of extensions not having to do with Chinese before mine pops up, so spread the word. Enjoy.

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8 Responses to “ChinesePera-kun”

  1. andyindc, on September 17th, 2006 at 3:04 am Said:

    I found it via on addons.mozilla.org. This is a great idea. I’m especially looking forward to the pinyin tone marks! They are much more intuitive memorable than the digits. This is fun!

  2. ecoice, on October 31st, 2006 at 7:44 am Said:

    I love this very much….but is it possible to make it compatible with version 2.0?

    Also, I have some suggestions:

    1. I don’t really see the point of the japanese hiragana, as this is supposed to be Chinese
    2. I wish that the pinyin would be much bigger or at least in the top portion of the pop up? I did not realize there was pinyin until a few minutes ago, when I have had this extension for a a month or two.

    Thank you for the hard work though!!

  3. captaininclusion, on March 17th, 2007 at 2:12 pm Said:

    Thank you for providing this plug-in! It’s definitely going to help me with my Chinese studies. As a suggestion, it would be great, when scrolling over text, if you also had the option to view the cantonese romanization in addition or in place of the pinyin. (I’m not sure how difficult that would be but I noticed that you can view the cantonese romanization when you use the “Lookup” command).

    I think that would be really useful for those of us also trying to learn Cantonese in addition to Mandarin.

  4. meiguorenindc, on August 1st, 2007 at 1:32 pm Said:

    This is an absolutely fantastic Firefox add-on! Everyone is always impressed with how well I read Chinese characters. After I bask in their compliment for just a moment, I reveal my secret: Chinesepera-kun. Thanks so much for your contribution and hard work.

    I just learned about the shift key extra through one of the comments. A word is missing on the Firefox add-on page describing Chinesepera-kun, so I wasn’t taking full advantage. Do you think you could add an additional key combo like shift-tab or shift-. or something so that we could get the same output that comes up if we choose “Show more entries” from the Preferences/Options dialog? Taking it one step further, it would be cool if we could specify the maximum number of additional entries.

    Again, thanks for the awesome work!

  5. reinerz, on February 8th, 2008 at 12:00 am Said:

    Hi,

    I have recently changed to THUNDERBIRD 2.0.0.9. and now Chineseperakun does not install anymore. Is it a big deal to make it compatible with version 2.x of Thunderbird. In Firefox 2.0.0.9 it is working excellent, thanks for your work!

    Best wishes,
    Reiner

  6. Learning to Read Chinese with Firefox and Perapera-kun, on March 3rd, 2008 at 5:54 am Said:

    [...] features to the browser (like blocking all ads). I found a very helpful Firefox extension called Perapera-kun. To use Perapera-kun, just put your mouse over a Chinese character and small window pops up with [...]

  7. bakabonbon, on March 28th, 2008 at 2:14 am Said:

    Thanks so much for doing this! Reading Chinese/Japanese is so much easier. I have another request: Could you mod Rikaichan again for Korean? There seems to be no option for Korean on the net at the moment.

    Thanks again!

  8. enjahova, on May 7th, 2008 at 12:16 am Said:

    I love this plugin, it’s exactly what I had been looking for! I can finally read Chinese news articles without a ton of copy pasting, and all Chinese forums are way more accessible!

    Thanks again, props!
    Ian

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