Looking For A Programmer To Create Thai Reading Tool

[ThaiNotes]

Thanks for all the work on that. Would you ever consider releasing an offline installable version for use, in case the website ever went down?

Sorry. There's no easy way to make a version that will work offline. The application is designed from the ground up to be an Internet application.

[kriswillems]

The bulk lookup doesn't seem to work on either windows or linux here (chrome).

That's a bit of a surprise.

Could you be a bit more specific, please, so I can track down the problem? For example, does the Bulk Lookup tab load? Do you see the text area into which to paste? When you paste into the area, does anything happen? If so, what? Any sort of pop-up error message?

Have you tried doing a hard reload of the page (Ctrl + F5)?

You could also try clearing your local storage. This is best done by right-clicking on the page and selecting "Inspect Element", then clicking on "Resources", then "http://thai-notes.com" under "Local Storage". You'll then need to wait a few seconds and should see three entries - dict.en, dict.th and dict.version. (The latter should have the value 53.) Right click on one of the first two entries and selecting "delete". This will make the dictionary "broken", so next time you reload the page the dictionary should see an error message and be prompted to redownload the dictionary.

If this solves the problem I'd be particularly interested because it suggests that somehow inconsistent dictionary data are loaded, which is an area I've had problems reported before and I thought I'd fixed.

Sorry for my last post. I should have looked better. It works fine. I didn't realise that the translation would popup when you move the cursor over the words. I expected to see a translation and I didn't see it. I feel really stupid and apologize for the time you lost trying to solve this.

You made a very nice tool. We have ever worked on a project to put the FSI thai language course online and add Thai script. The system works in a wiki ( look for FSI thai language wiki in google). It's free, without advertisement and paid for by some of the volunteers. It would be nice if the transliterations would pop-up when you move your cursor over the Thai words. Our dictionary size is very small, the course contains very few words. Nobody of the volunteers working on the wiki managed to implement a system with popup transliterations. We are lacking web-programming skills. If you would be interested in helping or giving suggestions you can contact me or davidhouston.

Do you mean something like http://thai-notes.com/test/ThaiTips.html?

It was pretty trivial for me to produce a cut-down version of the Bulk Lookup functionality of my dictionary and to use it to go through a web page to add translation popups.

To implement it would need a single line of code to be added to each page - though I presume that your site uses templates, so the code could be added to the template(s) as required. And there are a few files that would need to be hosted on your server.

I've used a different technology for storing the dictionary locally, which means that the dictionary is deleted when the browser is closed. This allows the code to be simpler and hence smaller. The dictionary is small, so the performance hit when downloading it is negligible. (26 kB is enough for the vocab for the first 15 lessons.)

In Chrome there's an annoying flash of the text when the tooltips are added. Not sure if there's anything I can do about that. Firefox and Opera, however, don't seem to have the same problem.

If you're interested, PM me, or send me a message via the website, and I'll tidy up the code and email it to you along with installation instructions.

This is just fantastic! I've sent you a PM. The thing that's missing on the Thai language wiki are transliteration, of better phonetic script. We could use your system to make the phonetic script popup, maybe even the phonetic script together with the translations.

[leosmith]

FWIW, I've added "My Wordlist" functionality to the dictionary.

I've also made all functionality fully bi-directional. So, for example, hovering over an English word now brings up definitions in Thai.

I've made several hundred corrections to the LEXiTRON data (mostly for English words).

And I've fixed all known bugs (not that any was particularly significant IMO).

Anyway, that's it. I've done all I want to do with the application. Work over.

http://thai-notes.com/tools/predictionary.shtml

IMO, this is much better than Thai To English, mostly because the text appears like real Thai - without gaps. Also, it parses a little better.

I posted this in the bulk look-up:

Louis Vuitton ผุดไอเดียสร้างโรงแรมหรู 5 ดาวและร้านปลอดภาษีกลางกรุงปารีสเพื่อดึงดูดนักท่องเที่ยวชาวจีน

ไอเดีย didn't parse correctly

หรู definition was incorrect

Orange isn't the best reading color for me

I couldn't get the word list function to work

Clicking a word gave me an error, who's window was so big I couldn't close it, so i had to shut down Safari.

Do I have to reload the page for each bulk lookup?

Maybe this is a browser issue, but when I make the text big enough for me to read comfortably, there is no scroll bar, so I'm limited to whatever fits into one screen.

[ThaiNotes]

FWIW, I've added "My Wordlist" functionality to the dictionary.

I've also made all functionality fully bi-directional. So, for example, hovering over an English word now brings up definitions in Thai.

I've made several hundred corrections to the LEXiTRON data (mostly for English words).

And I've fixed all known bugs (not that any was particularly significant IMO).

Anyway, that's it. I've done all I want to do with the application. Work over.

http://thai-notes.com/tools/predictionary.shtml

IMO, this is much better than Thai To English, mostly because the text appears like real Thai - without gaps. Also, it parses a little better.

I posted this in the bulk look-up:

Louis Vuitton ผุดไอเดียสร้างโรงแรมหรู 5 ดาวและร้านปลอดภาษีกลางกรุงปารีสเพื่อดึงดูดนักท่องเที่ยวชาวจีน

ไอเดีย didn't parse correctly

หรู definition was incorrect

Orange isn't the best reading color for me

I couldn't get the word list function to work

Clicking a word gave me an error, who's window was so big I couldn't close it, so i had to shut down Safari.

Do I have to reload the page for each bulk lookup?

Maybe this is a browser issue, but when I make the text big enough for me to read comfortably, there is no scroll bar, so I'm limited to whatever fits into one screen.

Thanks again for the feedback.

To address your points. ไอเดีย isn't in the LEXiTRON 2.6 dictionary, so it won't be found. หรู's definition in the dictionary is "smart", which is what I presume you saw. Not the best of definitions, I agree, but I wouldn't call it incorrect. Fancy, or luxurious is probably closer.

Not sure what your difficulty with the personal word list functionality is. Perhaps you could PM me with details of what you do when you try to use it, and at which point you get an error message? (The message itself is, unfortunately, pretty meaningless.)

You don't need to reload to do a new Bulk Lookup - there's a "reset" button at the bottom of the looked-up text. Perhaps it's off the screen?

Now, to address the font size and font colour issues: I've added a settings button to the menu (three horizontal lines) so you can set your own default font size and colour theme from a choice of seven. I knocked this up very quickly, so there are a few problems. However, if you stick to the first two themes and avoid the largest font sizes if your monitor is small you shouldn't have any problems.

Known issues include:

(1) If you're on a help page when you change the settings, they won't be reflected until you reload the page.

(2) The "Browse Dictionary" buttons don't like being resized. You may need manually to drag the borders between the buttons to get them to fit nicely.

(3) For the typing game and flashcards the font sizes are fixed and don't follow your chosen settings.

(4) On certain pages the settings dialog gets broken up into pieces - though it's still usable.

(5) The readability of some text in some of the themes is in places very poor.

I'll try and address some of these issues when I have some more spare time.

Anyway, as usual, any and all feedback is much appreciated.

[leosmith]

Nice changes! Another thing I like about this tool is that I don't have to open both a bulk-lookup window and a dictionary on the side, which is what I had to do with Thai to English.

Font size & color - thanks very much! That really improves my reading experience.

Difficulty with the word list - I just don't know how to use it. If I do a bulk look-up, is it supposed to enter each word into the word list? I guess that's what I was expecting. If not, how does it get populated? It's blank for me now.

I found the reset button on bulk lookup. I had to "zoom out" twice to find it (safari setting). If I zoom out 3 times, and use your largest text size, I can read comfortably. Would you consider putting the reset button in an additional location, like a drop-down?

When I enter a lot of text, now the scroll bar appears. I'm not sure if you made a change, or if this is due to the fact I zoomed out or something, but thanks either way.

Now the pop-ups usually cover the next word; I think last time they were above, which was nicer imo.

The error pop-up is so long I can't click the close button - I can only see a little sliver of it. This time I got it after I entered a word in the word lookup, then clicked on the definition. I'm much more concerned about the fact I can't close the error window than I am about the actual error:)

[ThaiNotes]

Nice changes! Another thing I like about this tool is that I don't have to open both a bulk-lookup window and a dictionary on the side, which is what I had to do with Thai to English.

Font size & color - thanks very much! That really improves my reading experience.

Difficulty with the word list - I just don't know how to use it. If I do a bulk look-up, is it supposed to enter each word into the word list? I guess that's what I was expecting. If not, how does it get populated? It's blank for me now.

I found the reset button on bulk lookup. I had to "zoom out" twice to find it (safari setting). If I zoom out 3 times, and use your largest text size, I can read comfortably. Would you consider putting the reset button in an additional location, like a drop-down?

When I enter a lot of text, now the scroll bar appears. I'm not sure if you made a change, or if this is due to the fact I zoomed out or something, but thanks either way.

Now the pop-ups usually cover the next word; I think last time they were above, which was nicer imo.

The error pop-up is so long I can't click the close button - I can only see a little sliver of it. This time I got it after I entered a word in the word lookup, then clicked on the definition. I'm much more concerned about the fact I can't close the error window than I am about the actual error:)

The good news is that I was able to track down the Safari problem, so you now shouldn't get the error pop-up when you use the dictionary.

The bad (for me) is that I've discovered that Safari and Internet Explorer don't as clean installed support some of the characters I've used such as the settings character. I'm going to need to change something - not sure what yet.

For the personal Word List, you have explicitly to add individual words. To do this, once the word is on the right hand side of the screen in any of the Word Lookup/Bulk Lookup/Browse Dictionary tabs, click on the "+" button in the title bar for the word (next to the "x" close button). (This button will not appear for words already in your Word List.) I have a feeling, though, that you're going to find the button extremely small.

The default font size is 13 points, which is slightly larger than normal English text on the web (allowing for the fact that Thai typically needs to be in a larger font - particularly for beginners). The largest font size is 39 points, which is enormous. I really don't know why you need to zoom 3x on top of that.

I don't think I've changed the positioning of the popups, but you're right that above would be better - in fact, I think I might try above and to the right.

The scrollbar has always been there.

I'll also look into what I can do with the reset button - possibly keep it in a fixed position at the bottom of the screen and have the scrollable text above it.

[leosmith]

fyi - I was zooming out, making text 3X smaller, to allow me to see the reset button, then using your biggest font size to equalize the effect.

[leosmith]

I just noticed that the top line often cuts off the sara ii (please post the following to bulk lookup to see what I mean: ครั้งนี้)