CharDic Homepage

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CharDic is a free Chinese Character Dictionary for MS Windows 9X, ME, 2000 and XP.
Release 1.1 is ready now with some new cool features like the pronunciation.
An on-line version of CharDic is now available on this site : http://radicode.site.voila.fr/index_en.html. This site allows to access to the Chinese characters with the "radicode system" which by far much faster than the other traditional methods based on stroke number calculation.

• What is CharDic ?
• What's new in CharDic 1.1 ?
• Download
• Installation
• Introduction to Chinese writing

What is CharDic ?

• CharDic is an assistant to make easier the recognition and identification of Chinese characters.
• It has been designed mainly to help the beginners to become acquainted with Chinese writing. It provides various information about each character: it is a learning tool.
• It is an off-line dictionary : a connection to Internet is not necessary.
• CharDic is easier to use than a "paper" dictionary and more powerful. It provides several search methods.
• It contains more than 8700 entries and accepts traditional or simplified characters.
• The pronunciation is available for most of the characters (with a sound card).
• And last but not least, it is a freeware.

And what is not CharDic...

• CharDic is not a word dictionary, it is a character dictionary (zidian).
• CharDic is not a translator.
• CharDic doesn't recognise characters automatically. It is not an OCR or something like that (for a free Chinese OCR see this link). It requires some knowledge from the user just as some knowledge is required to use a "paper" dictionary. In order to use it efficiently an Introduction to Chinese characters has been written. Thus if you are not acquainted with Chinese writing, please read first this introduction. It is necessary to use CharDic optimally.

To find the meaning of an unknown Chinese character, four methods are available :

• By radical : It is the most classical method which is usually used in Chinese dictionary. It consists to reduce the set of research in two steps : (1) find the radical, (2) count the number of remaining strokes (excluding those of the radical). For more details see the Introduction to Chinese characters.
• By stroke number : this method consists to count the total number of strokes. It is a brute-force method and should only been used if you cannot find the radical of the character.
• By Pinyin : Pinyin is a mean to write Chinese language with Latin alphabet. This method is useful if you know the pronunciation of the character you are looking for.
• By Cut & Paste : if you have a Chinese document on your computer (an MS-Word file or a web page for example) this method is the more direct one. With the operations "Cut" and "Paste" it is possible to import this document in CharDic and thus to have access to the meaning of all its Chinese characters.

Anyway the chosen method, when a character is selected various information is displayed about it : its English meaning, its alternate form whether it exists (traditional or simplified according the dictionary you are using), its pronunciation in Pinyin, its total number of strokes and its rank. Rank gives indication whether the character is current or not. Moreover a drawing of the radical and its meaning is displayed. It can help you to localise the radical in the character, so the next time you'll have to search a similar character you will be able to use search by radical which is the standard method.

What 's new in CharDic 1.1 ?

• The pronunciation is available for most of the characters (with a sound card).
• A new presentation of radicals for a faster access.
• A better integration of traditional and simplified radicals.
• Antialising of the Chinese fonts for a better readability.
• Some minor bugs have been removed.

And in CharDic 1.1.4 ?

• A possibility to copy directly several characters to the clipboard.
• Two new clipboard formats have been added : (1) a Unicode format to allow to paste Chinese characters in the search dialog box of MS-Word and (2) a bitmap format (useful for example to send e-mail to people without an installed Chinese font).
• A "copy" button in the search by "cut and paste".
• Some minor corrections.

Download

The English version of CharDic can be downloaded as a zip file: chardic_114en.zip

Installation

There is no installer program (not yet). If you load CharDic from the Internet, you normally receive a zipped archive file named chardic_114en.zip. Please unzip that file on your hard disk in a directory (for example C:/Program files/). Unzip will create a directory chardic_114en. You may want to create on your desktop a shortcut to the executable file CharDic.exe. CharDic is clean with your system: the registry is not modified. Only a small file (chardic.ini) is created in your Windows directory to store setup.

Critical part of the installation is the Chinese font installation. Chinese font is not bundled with CharDic package because of its size and copyright. Maybe you have already a suitable font on your system. If it is not the case CharDic will give you an error message at the beginning. The two recommended fonts are "PMingLiU" and "SimSun". Only one is necessary. If you have MS-WORD 2000 or later version you can install them by installing the Chinese language support. Alternatively you can download one of them on the web site : http://priede.bf.lu.lv/ftp/PUB/Win/TTF/UNICODE/lielie/. Be careful of huge size : PMINGLIU.TTF (or pmingliu.ttf) is 8.2 MB and SIMSUN.TTF (or simsun.ttf) is 10.0 MB. When you download a font you have still to install it by copying it with windows explorer in the directory C:/Windows/Fonts. (Maybe you have to replace C:/Windows by the right place where your system is located).

Another possible font is "Bitstream CyberCJK". Bitstream no longer offers the font but it is still available from : ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/extras/fonts/windows/CyberCJK.ZIP. You have to unzip the file before to perform installation as previously mentioned. Some characters of this font are ill-shaped.

As last resort you can install the "MS Song" font by installing GB2312 encoding (Chinese Simplified) in Internet Explorer (4.0 or latter). See Internet Explorer help. This font can give troubles in CharDic when pasting a Chinese web page in Unicode Search. Otherwise it gives good results. Its main advantage is its size : 2.5 MB.

Introduction to Chinese writing

If you are not acquainted with Chinese writing, please read carefully the CharDic help or this short introduction to Chinese writing.

For any feedback (bug report, mistakes, misspellings, suggestions...) please contact the author at
chardic@chardic.tk