Chinese Tools Introduction

On-line Chinese Tools

These pages hope to provide tools to assist people in learning and using the beautiful Chinese language. From the novice Chinese language student to the advanced programmer, I hope there is something here for everyone. Rather than being a Chinese language course, it provides tools to people who are already studying and using Chinese. Please check out the DimSum Chinese Reading Assistant, Character Flashcards, the Chinese/English dictionary, the Chinese Namer, and the Western/Chinese Calendar Converter.

Tools for Learning Chinese
Chinese Flashcards New, Improved Flashcards Study Chinese characters with Java flashcards	Add Pinyin to Files Add pinyin to any Chinese text file on your computer	Romanization Converter Pinyin, Yale, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Wade Giles, BoPoMoFo
Chinese Text Annotator Break a text into words and add links to dictionary entries.	Add Pinyin to Web Pages Add pinyin to any Chinese web page!	Learn to Draw Chinese Characters Links to character writing resources on the Web

Tools for Using Chinese
Character Dictionary Faster Unicode Version Beta Java Version Look up Chinese characters by English, pinyin, radical/stroke, and Cantonese.	Create Chinese GIFs On-line New Java Version Type in Big5, GB, or UTF-8 text and get back an equivalent GIF graphics file	Chinese Encoding Converter A Java applet that converts files between GB, GBK, Big5, UTF-8, UCS2, and CNS.
Chinese/English Dictionary Look up words in Chinese by pinyin or English	Repair Corrupted Chinese E-mails Many e-mail programs corrupt Chinese text. Use this program to restore the orignal.	Guess Chinese Encoding New Java Version Determine the most likely Chinese encoding (GB, HZ, Big5, UTF-8, or other) for a file.
Convert HTML Escapes to Bytes Convert a Chinese file saved with HTML ampersand escape sequences back into the original encoding.	Convert Web Documents between GB, Big5, Unicode, etc. Type in the web address of a page in any Chinese encoding (traditional or simplified characters) and have it come up in any other encoding.

China Reference Tools
Western-Chinese Calendar Converter Convert between Solar and Lunar Calendars	Get a Chinese Name Get a Chinese name inspired by your English name	Chinese Family Relationships Find out how to say "father's older brother's wife" in Chinese
Chinese Measurements Compare Chinese measurements with Metric and Imperial.	Chinese Numbers Description of Chinese number system and a converter from English numbers to Chinese numbers.	On-line Abacus Learn how to use the abacus.
Chinese Chess Learn the rules to Chinese chess	East Asian Currency Converter Convert between US Dollar amounts and 6 East Asian currencies

Computer Tools
DimSum: Chinese Tools for All The project to produce a stand-alone version of this web site's tools.	Chinese Encoding Detector Java Version Perl5 code to determine the most likely Chinese encoding for a given text string.	HTML Escapes to Byte Converter Convert the ampersand escape sequences that many HTML editors save GB and Big5 as back into GB or Big5 (or any other eight-bit encoding).
Word97 Chinese Input Macro A free macro to input Chinese into Word97 documents without a separate Chinese sytem.	Chinese Segmenter Breaks a Chinese text file into words.	Chinese Digit Counter A perl script that I wrote to create the counter below.
Zhuyin Macro A Word97 Macro that converts pinyin next to a character into Zhuyin (i.e. BoPoMoFo) or moves the pinyin underneath the character.	Java GB/Big5/Unicode Converter Stand-alone program to convert text documents between GB, HZ, Big5, Unicode, EUC-TW, etc. Needs Java.	Chinese GIF Collection Archive of 15,000 character GIFs indexed by their Unicode value.
CEDICT Chinese/English Dictionary Freely available Chinese to English dictionary.

Have suggestions for a tool you'd like to see here? Found a bug that needs fixing? You can reach me through my contact page. In your message, please include the type of operating system you are running (Windows 95, Macintosh, Unix, etc.), the browser you are using (Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, etc.), and the browser version (2, 3, 4 or 5).

For general Chinese resources, including information about reading and writing Chinese on computers, please visit my Chinese Links page or the frequently asked questions page.

Other Chinese/Java and Chinese Tools Links

Hanzi Quiz
Chinese Composition Tool: A web tool that allows you to compose Chinese without installing any input methods.

Credits and Sources

This page has drawn upon quite a few different public-domain Chinese resources and would not have been possible without them.

UNIHAN.TXT: A marvelous collection of Han character information available at the Unicode Consortium. Search UniHan
Create Chinese GIF's program from Ocrat.com. Used by the flashcard and character dictionary.
Data files from IFCSS's software data directory.
Frequency of Usage and Number of Strokes of Chinese Characters
CEDICT: A public-domain Chinese-English dictionary.

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to visit this site since October 1, 1996.