Anyone out there using this? It seems rather useful:

http://lwt.sourceforge.net/#screencasts

I've only setup an account, but yes, it does look interesting. I haven't yet dove in as I have a pretty good workflow with Pleco already, but once I have more time to devote to it we'll see how it goes.

FYI, for those that are intimidated by the setup a free account can be had below...

http://www.fluentin3months.com/lwt/index.php

http://www.livinginthemiddlekingdom.com writes:

"I have been using LWT more and more lately, and I really like it and find it an extremely useful (maybe even go so far as to say powerful) tool for language learning."

Apparently someone set it up over here and forgot about it: http://soundfundamentals.net/index.php. So anyone can try it out to their heart's content.
I added one text but it seems there is no Chinese or Japanese parser, i.e. every character is seen as an individual word. While it is possible to set the word boundaries, it seems a pain in the ass.

http://chinesetoolbox.com seems to be a standalone program which provides the same that LWT does, but with a proper Chinese parser. Unfortunately, it costs $39.95 a year.

Does anyone know if there are similar, free products?

Free no, but http://www.lingq.com/ provides the same and more functionality with proper parsing for 10 bucks a month, plus a host of additional languages.

I'm writing a piece of software which does proper parsing for articles etc based on what you know in Skritter. Will display the article nicely. Over half done at the moment. Only for Mac OSX though...

@Byzanti - just wanted to say that sounds like a great app, very interested in seeing it when available.

@Byzanti: would be interested in the parsing algorithm if you are willing to share.
@mandarinfromscratch: LWT basically wants to be a free Lingq clone. Does Lingq have commercial texts and audio (like the Chinese Breeze series) as well?

范博涵, this is my first foray into proper programming. The code works fine, but it is as ugly as sin. You're welcome to it, but I doubt its use! Or if you're running OSX I can just send you the current build. Parser bits are all done but haven't started on the reader bits yet. Email address?

Edit: it's in Objective-C btw...

"that letter before w" dash 43jova at hotmail dot com

Change "that letter before w" to the single letter I'm referring to and don't use "". ;-)

Just need the parser algorithm, so the code will do just fine.

Check your email!

(edit: I sent it to the first email you posted....)

You don't need a Chinese parser for LWT.

Just set LWT to "make each character a word" and import into LWT the HSK 1-6 vocab with translations or the old HSK vocab (easily be found via Google).

Now these words and characters are immediately recognized in LWT. The only thing you do is to set your knowledge status of these words while reading, plus to add the more rare words and characters.

Very easy.

@LWT Good tip, will give that a try soon.

After reading this thread I was curious about the program 'chinese toolbox', so I installed it on my system and loaded a chapter of the 电子书 that I am currently reading. It was a bit of a disappointment: on the 4th line of this chapter there is the word 裤兜 which doesn't seem to be in the cedict dictionary that 'chinese toolbox' uses. But hey, no problem, I assumed it would be easy to add the word to some custom list. Unfortunately, after looking around and trying some things for about 30 minutes I found this info on the website:

The 12.1.0.0 release will involve changes to the interface and will be released no later than August 2012. At minimum, the following tasks will be implemented for version 12.1.

1. ...

2. Add support for word dictionary customization. In particular, enable the adding, editing, and removing of custom word entries.

Honestly, I was shocked. How is it possible that such a basic requirement is not available in version 12 (!) of a piece of software that has been in development since many years? And paying software too! Cedict is not reliable enough for completeness except for the most basic of texts. I don't know about you but for me this is a reason not to use this program.

Marc

Hi Marc,

Drawing a comparison between your Chinese Toolbox/CE-Dict experience and LWT, I believe that there is no way for it to automatically recognize all new words with just a HSK 1-6 word list. However, I believe that one would be able to add unknown words in LWT, although this may be a bit cumbersome.

Perhaps LWT Project could expound on this, and additionally tell us if it is possible to batch mark words as 'known' using e.g. an export from Skritter.