Ok, here are the 3 options for the alternative Chinese flag to be incorporated into the next version.

Black ‘wen’ on red:

Black ‘zhong’ on red:

Yello ‘zhong’ on red:

Mozilla has finally got around to approving the new version after sitting 2 weeks in the queue. So for those who haven’t yet, here is the link the pages on the mozilla add-ons site where you can download and install the latest version. Although the Japanese and Chinese versions have now become 1 plugin, I left them both up on separate pages so people who already had them installed would get the update automatically.

I have already been working on the next release, so look for that to appear in the box.net download section on this blog soon (alot sooner than the time between the last update, I promise!! hehe) Since it takes mozilla around 2 weeks to approve, you’ll have it that much sooner from here. Enjoy!

Perapera-kun 2.0:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3343 or
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3349

How to install and use

http://perapera.wordpress.com/perapera-kun
http://perapera.wordpress.com/chinese/

Well its finally released. Here is the new version of Perapera-kun for Firefox. Took a bit longer than I was hoping but I am now happy with what is released. I submitted it to Firefox but they always take forever to actually update it on their site so it is available here first for anyone who wants to try it out. You can find it in the download box in the left or find the direct links to the file at the end of this post. Here are the new features:

• Wordlist Sidebar: Press ‘S’ while displaying an entry to save it to the wordlist. (Also is a “Grab Entries!” button, but more about that in a later post. Stay tuned.) You can add, delete, and export these entries to a file whenever you want.
• Japanese and Chinese united: Now both Japanese and Chinese are handled in 1 plug-in by adding the dictionaries you want.
• Korean support coming very soon! Currenty it will display the romanized pronunciation but I dont have a dictionary to use yet. Can anyone help?
• StatusBar Icon: Now everything is easily controlled via the Perapera-kun status bar icon. Enable multiple languages with one click, options dialog, and more.
• New Chinese-English Dictionary: I now use the open public CCEDICT to feed the entries for Chinese-English. This should fix alot of the inconsistencies the previous dictionary had.
• Chinese-German Dictionary: Uses the HanDeDict open public dictionary for Chinese-German. Please only install 1 Chinese dictionary at a time.
• Supports Japanese to English, French, German, and Russian dictionaries along with the Japanese Names dictionary compiled by polarcloud.com
• Redeigned options dialog that is cleaner and easier to use.
• New icon for the add-on

After you download the add-on you will need to install the dictionary add-on for the language you want to use.  For Japanese, visit polarcloud.com to install one of those dictionaries and for Chinese, download the English or German dictionary in my download box or in the links below. Thanks for using and I look forward to your feedback.

**LINKS UPDATED: The following links will now download from Mozilla.

Perapera-kun 2.0
Chinese-English Dictionary
Chinese-German Dictionary
Japanese Dictionaries at Polarcloud.com

In the Box.net applet on the left I uploaded versions that will install and work on Firefox 3.5 but without any of the new features, so this is just a temporary fix until the real version is released.

Well I survived the smoother than expected move to Japan and am now up and running with my internet and all is good. Just getting settled down today to start my sprint of working on some of my development work, of which Perapera-kun is at the top of the list. I got some emails from Mozilla about the 3.5 version of Firefox getting close to dropping so, if all goes as planned I will have the next version ready by the launch of 3.5 and there wont be any gap in releases.

Well it’s official now. Found sometime to take over my apartment lease, cancelled all my utilities, put a deposit down on a  place in Tokyo, bought the ticket, and just put in my notice at work.  I’m moving back to Japan.

Has been a really conflicted last 3 weeks with lots of mixed feelings and philosophical discussions in my head, along with reading  ’The Alchemist’ to help psyche me into making the leap. But I made the decision and am giving up a well paid job in the midst of economic depression to roll the dice on starting my own little dev group.

So #1 on my todo list is the redesign of Perakun with all the features I have always thought it should have had. So that will be my job for the next few weeks. I appreciate everyones feedback and donations as always and look forward to making even more useful and powerful language learning tools.

There are alot of ideas and directions that I am thinking of going as I get back into developing the next version, and I am kind of curious how everyone uses these plugins.

Are many of you eastern language obsessed and would want 1 plugin that had the ability to do Chinese, Japanese, Korean and others? I know I would use that for at least 2/3 of those languages. Should they be separate plugins or consolidated into one to rule them all? Hmm…

ps. you might see some beta versions of pera-kun popping up soon silently in this box here on the left, they will be versions 1.1beta, in case anyone wants to test run them.

I’ve been progging now for ~3hours. Embarrassed to admit but one of the reasons I haven’t updated the plugins for awhile, is that I did update them and added some minor tweaks and fixes to them, then lost everything (including tons of my other files) in a accidental keyboard (or my brain) malfunction when I was reinstalling Vista on my comp. So I have been annoyed when I think of all I lost, including all my development environment files.

Well now I’m back to the point I was pre-crash, and ready to add some cool features. Based on some of the feedback, it looks like saving vocab easily to a list is pretty desired. I was thinking putting them all in the Sidebar for viewing and allowing you to export them to some kind of file from there. How does that sound?

Many of the issues this plugin had when ported to FF3 will now be fixed and some other minor features. My goal is to be more active with this, and keep adding on a regular basis from now on.

In other news, I have had alot of great feedback from the community and other developers and content suppliers. So I am teaming up with some good guys to bring more useful features, and hopefully a more useful tool to all the language learners out there.

oh and PS, I bought an iMac, which has been responsible for alot of my programming rejuvenation as of late.

Happy Studying!

I get about 3 emails/month asking me to do a Korean version of Perakun. I would totally be up for doing it, I guess theres only 2 problems with me doing it.

1. Is there a free dictionary available like the EDICT for Japanese, or CEDICT for Chinese?

2.This is the big one. I dont know Korean, so I would need an algorithm or way to convert verbs and adjectives to their dictionary form. I dont know how to conjugate Korean verbs and adjectives (if they are conjugated) or turning any other part of speech in Korean into their dictionary form. If someone knows if this software exists, or is studying Korean and would be willing to help with that part of the project, I would love to do this plugin.

Post a comment, or email me if you know the answers to these 2 or would like to help out with making a Korean Pera-kun. Thanks.

Ok, Im in the programming mood lately and am looking to update perakun and wonder what you guys think should be added.