I've been writing an app to assist with reading Chinese articles and books. I wanted to design something that looked good, that made it a pleasure to read. I also wanted something that did some wizardry based on the vocab I knew in Skritter.

So, without further ado...: http://www.byzanti.co.uk

It's in beta at the moment, so I apologise for any bugs you may find! Let me know what they are - and I'll fix them. Also, if there are any features you'd like to see, or if you'd like parts done differently, let me know.

At the moment it only runs on OSX, however if there's interest, I may eventually make an ipad version.

Looks cool! Any chance of a windows version?

Well done!

I have been waiting for something like this for a very long time!

Windows?

This is great--love it! And no bugs so far. Is there a possibility of an "add all to Skritter" option? (I know this is not generally a good idea, but I have a special situation at the moment.)

Looks great, I just pasted in text from http://faculty.virginia.edu/cll/chinese_reading/Beginning/a_letter.html

Would be nice if you can hit a 'play' button and it would just read the text for you too :)

Looks great and I would love to get it, unfortunately, I am using windows. However, if there would be an iPad version, I definitely would use it.

* It would be nice to be able to frequency sort the summary list (either by a total frequency from a public corpus or by frequency within the analyzed text).

* Autoupdating from Skritter on a regular (i.e. weekly) basis would be nice. (If possible.)

* The ability to save/remember past texts and where you left off would make it a very useful desktop book reader.

* Loading from websites isn't a huge priority for me, as copying and pasting "Print" views is very easy. If possible, Instapaper integration would be great (and much more useful than URL loading in my case). Overall, loading from a .txt file (i.e. for books) would be most useful.

* Even better would be recognizing a directory automatically. Give a list of the text files in that directory with some very basic comparison statistics that might make it easier to choose what is most appropriate to your level.

* Counter for new words added this session/day - help avoid a Skritter adding binge!

* I'd like if it could just analyze or summarize the next X characters of text (e.g. 5000); additionally, if it could mark the line where that threshold is for setting daily reading goals (rounding to nearest paragraph or sentence would be even better). This, coupled with bookmarking, frequency analysis, and an 'added counter' could make this my goto application for reading books (especially if on the iPad).

* All of the above would streamline a process I use when reading books which is something like this:
--- Use a mix of tools from http://zhtoolkit.com/, Pleco Reader, TextEdit, etc with a lot of copying and pasting to...
--- Compare a few potential books for suitability, based on the average frequency of unknown words and the percent of unique words in the text which are already known to me
--- Analyze entire text to select 50-100 most frequent new words in text; study them for a couple days/weeks before starting the book at all.
--- Read 5000-10000 characters of text per day using Pleco Reader. Add 3-10 most frequent/important looking words that I encounter during that day's reading, although this is usually just based on a hunch of importance while reading the text, and loaded more heavily towards words at the front of the session (i.e. maybe I miss some more important later ones because I've hit my daily quota already).

* Would definitely be interested in a iOS version.

Also, biggest complaint on current functionality is the inability to add a word from the summary list! Besides that what is there already seems to work well, based on my article for today...

And! I'd suggest sharing over at http://www.chinese-forums.com/ where you'll surely get some good feedback also.

Thanks for your comments everyone! (Especially icebear!). In turn:

Catherine, aharlekyn, I think the chance of a Windows version are slim. An ipad one is more likely, although I would definitely be completing the OSX version before considering it.

Nick, for the moment could you copy and paste the summary into Skritter's quick add tool? I'll add a proper 'add all to Skritter' when I sort out the URL parsing feature. If I didn't, the alternative would be to open many hundred browser windows at once! However, if you want to tell the program you know all the items in the summary, you can copy and paste it into the Preferences --> Known Vocab --> Add vocab.

Mats, see most post below!

Icebear

*Frequency sort the summary list - good idea. Should be able to do both within the text, and based on a public corpus.

* Autoupdating from Skritter on a regular (i.e. weekly) basis would be nice. (If possible.). - This is one thing I really want to do. Will email Scott/Nick...

* The ability to save/remember past texts and where you left off would make it a very useful desktop book reader. - Plan on doing both.

* Instapaper integration. - Does instapaper download the pages into a directory on your mac? In what format?

* Overall, loading from a .txt file (i.e. for books) would be most useful. - Yes, I also plan on getting rid of the excessive new lines that most txt files have as they don't word wrap.

* Give a list of the text files in that directory with some very basic comparison statistics... - The way I'm doing it at the moment, this would likely take too long. I'll consider it if I can improve the parser speed.

* Counter for new words added this session/day - help avoid a Skritter adding binge! - Will do.

* I'd like if it could just analyze or summarize the next X characters of text (e.g. 5000); - That would be easy to do.

* additionally, if it could mark the line where that threshold is for setting daily reading goals (rounding to nearest paragraph or sentence would be even better). -- I can definitely do this when I sort out saving and bookmarks.

Thank you for your suggestions - they're good! I will hold off posting on Chinese-forums for the moment, I'm pretty busy the next two weeks, so don't know how much time I'll have to work on the app.

Also, biggest complaint on current functionality is the inability to add a word from the summary list!

-- Yeah, it's not as easy as it could be. As I mentioned to Nick, if adding to Skritter you can copy and paste the line in to Skritter's quick add. To add to the app itself, go to preferences -> known vocab -> add vocab, and then copy and paste the lines you want in (you don't need to strip out the definition or anything, it'll just ignore it).

@Byzanti re Instapaper - I use the bookmarklet on news pages I like and then load the pure text article on the iOS app (which downloads the text for offline use). I then have to do a export -> copy text function and paste into Pleco. The same could be done with your (eventual) iPad app, but smoothing the process out would of course be preferred. If not, the ability to save a copied text would be a close second. I'm not sure if Instapaper plays ball with complimentary developers, and this is definitely the lowest priority suggestion on my list.

Regarding summary statistics, if not for all files in an entire directory, I would still welcome a few more summary statistics on the individual file (after having checked text). E.g. character count and unknown characters (%), word count and unknown words (%), and those two again but only counting unique instances (e.g. not every 在). These can give a quick idea of how difficult a article or text may be for an intermediate reader, and if its a good idea to dive in or not (i.e. if there is too much new vocabulary it can be too frustrating).

Still, very pleased with this early version, it will likely steal a bit of Pleco Reader's time when I'm near my laptop. Frequency sorting of the summary, bookmarks, the added counter and analyzing only a certain quantity of text from the current position onward would add (or replicate) all of the functions I want/use in other reading programs, currently mostly web-based or iOS, so its nice to have a desktop option!

Right. I'll definitely work on providing more statistics, quickest would be to do it as you say, for a file you've just checked. Other statistics functionality might come later...

Mats Fredholm, you can use the in built Mac speech tool to read Chinese. You just need to set it up for Chinese first.

Here's what to do:
1. Go to Preferences --> Speech -->Text to speech
2. Select the drop down menu at the top 'System voice'. Select 'customise'.
3. Select one of the Chinese ones (eg Ting ting). Wait for it to download and install.
4. Select Ting-ting from the 'System voice' drop down menu.

5. Open the Chinese Reader app and paste in some text
6. Go to Edit-->Speech-->Start speaking.

It's actually pretty good!

Aha, thanks but I can't find it, I guess I need to upgrade to Lion now - I have not found many reasons before ;)

I just upgraded to Lion myself due to this app... Actually, it runs reasonably smoothly, with only a little more RAM usage. From what people were saying, I was expecting it to be a wreck. I'm on an early 2008 Macbook with 4gb ram. I'm not sure I'd want to run it with 2gb however.

Thanks Byzanti--I managed to totally miss the summary view! How about adding tone marks instead of numbers? I have some Objective-C code for this if you need it.

You do?? I will gladly accept it!

I had searched on Google to see if anyone had already written code for doing that, but there was nothing that didn't require a lot of work on my part.

This looks really great, Byzanti. The only problems I'm having at the moment are:

i) I can't seem to save anything, so I paste text in, but then I can't save the text to return to later.
ii) The popup is a little bit twitchy when it comes to selecting 'I know this word' etc. So as you move the mouse to the link to click it, the box moves down.

Full-screen, distraction-free reading would be a fine addition somewhere down the line.

But it's already an impressive piece of work. Thanks!

I agree that the box that popup is a bit unstable - sometimes it can be tricky to get your mouse down onto it in order to click one of the two buttons.

I'd also like if when I clicked "Add to Skritter" it would also add it to my list of known words/Skritter list, seeing as it would then be scheduled for study. (This would be unnecessary with regular syncing with Skritter.)

thinkbudda, am working on saving and bookmarks at present!

With the popup, do you mean the popup moves when your mouse is over it, or do you mean like icebear it is sometimes difficult to get down to the popup? The popup code was initially quite complicated with all sorts of timers to handle this, but it wasn't entirely reliable. I'll have another look at it.

icebear, I'll add a preference for that.

Edit: icebear, when you say the popup is difficult to get down to, why is this? Is it because the mouse is first hitting another character in the word which shifts the popup along? The popup is then not where you expect it to be? Or is it vanishing between the character and the popup itself. You can test for the latter by moving the mouse really slowly from the character to the popup. On my machine the popup stays up and doesn't vanish.

@Byzanti - moving slowly does the trick. The problem is that sometimes it catches another character when I'm actually trying to move onto the box (say, I have to move right then down instead of diagonally because diagonally means I might cross the word below).

Maybe you could create a "dead zone" of a handful of pixels around the perimeter where moving the mouse there doesn't kill the box or find a new word.

Ah, I see. Are you moving right then down because the popup is not aligned with the first character of the word, but instead aligned with the character the mouse is on? I should be able to make it align with the first character of the word if that is the issue.

I'm a little unsure why you should be concerned with crossing the word below - the characters either side yes, but the word below the word you're currently on should be covered up by the popup.

I'll see if I can do it without deadzones - the popup would feel unresponsive when moving to neighbouring words.

@Byzanti - Yes, I think ensuring that it always aligns with the first character of the word in question would solve the issue.

Yes, it's the issue identified by icebear. Saving and bookmarks will be brilliant.
Oh, and how about a paypal link on your website so we can give donations to a coffee/development fund?

I've updated the website with a new version. This one includes saving & loading, bookmarks, and also the 'add to Skritter' functionality that you wanted Icebear (turn it on in preferences).

The popup issue is a little tricky, I hope to get that sorted in the next version. Also I'm still to add Nick's pinyin converter, so there are tone marks instead of numbers (thanks!).

Summaries wont save until the next version or the one after - I'm waiting to revamp the summary page first.

Also, most importantly!!! The app name now has a space in it, so you might want to delete the old version, otherwise you'll end up with two. Deleting it wont affect any preferences you've changed or vocab added.

thinkbuddha, I do appreciate the offer, but I'm doing this for fun and the challenge. I'm just glad to see it's of worth to people!

Great. I'll download the new version. And if you are ever down Leicester way, I owe you a drink. Thanks for putting this together. It's going to be such a help!

Is there a OSX Simulator for Windows out there, by any chance?

From my quick google, it would seem not without a lot of fuss (eg http://www.online-tech-tips.com/mac-os-x/install-snow-leopard-on-pc ). Apparently it's mainly to do with Apple licensing issues. Sorry.

Updated with the popup fix, and other bug fixes...

Plan on redoing the summary for the next version. Is there anything wanted apart from frequency sort + adding the character to known items/Skritter? Also is there a definitive word frequency list I should use (there seem to be a few possibilities on google)?

thinkbuddha, no plans to visit Leicester, but I'm always around in London!

We have frequency lists we can provide. Nick knows the details for Chinese, I'll ping him about it.