Chinese Support 3

Chinese Support 3 is an Anki 23.10-compatible version of the original and the redux version Chinese Support add-on, although it should work with earlier versions as well. It offers a number of features that streamline the process of creating flashcards for learning Chinese. Some of the features had stopped working, and after taking my time to get these back going I thought that I might as well publish it for others to use.

Please note that the add-on is still in beta and is sometimes shipped in an unstable state. Please upgrade with each new release and report any issues on GitHub. The automated test suite is a work-in-progress, so I still rely heavily on user reports to supplement my own manual testing.

Important Notes

• If you find that a field is not filling at all, please check config.json for the complete list of valid field names. For those migrating from an older version of the add-on, you will need to rename any definition fields to English, German or French, depending on what you want.
• If tone colours are not showing, ensure that the styling section of the template contains the following CSS:

.tone1 {color: red;}
.tone2 {color: orange;}
.tone3 {color: green;}
.tone4 {color: blue;}
.tone5 {color: gray;}

Features

• Automatic field filling
  • Translation (from built-in dictionary; supports English, German and French)
  • Romanisation (supports Pīnyīn (拼音) and Cantonese Jyutping (粵拼))
  • Mandarin Audio (fetched from Google or Baidu)
  • Traditional (繁體字) and simplified (簡體字) characters
  • Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ), also known as Zhuyin (注音)
  • Rubies (small-print transcription placed above characters)
  • Frequency (from “very basic” to “obscure”) - based on anki-chinese-word-frequency
  • Usage Sentence Examples - Chinese/English sentence pairs from Tatoeba
• Automatic tone change of auto filled pinyin (hanzi field must be populated)
  • E.g. fen1kai1 -> Tab -> fēnkāi (won't replace existing tones)
• Tone colours (applied to characters, romanisation and Bopomofo)
• Built-in note types (Basic and Advanced)

Status

I do occasionally run into problems with the addon, but so far I have been able to solve all of them by at worst restarting Anki. For the time being I plan to only release minor maintenence updates, but I do have more features in mind when I have more time available.

The vast majority of features have been successfully ported, and the add-on is in a usable state, albeit with some definite rough edges.

The add-on is still in beta. By this I mean “it works, but I wouldn’t trust it with my children”. Expect occasional issues, and please make a back-up before trying it. I use it myself and haven't experienced data loss, but your mileage may vary.

Please report any issues here on GitHub. Feature requests are also welcome. Pull requests even more so.

If you are new to the Chinese Support add-on, the wiki from the previous version is still relevant (here).

Usage

The core feature of the add-on is the automatic field filling. To take advantage of this, you need to have an Anki note type with the appropriate fields (e.g., Hanzi, English, Pinyin, Sound). See config.json for a list of valid field names.

If you don't already have such a note type, the easiest approach is to use one of the built-in models. Two types are installed automatically: Basic and Advanced. The only important difference is that the Advanced model shows more information.

To use the field-filling features:

1. Add a new note to Anki (press a)
2. Select Chinese (Basic) or Chinese (Advanced) as the note type
3. Enable Chinese Support 3 for this note type (click 汉字)
4. Enter a word (e.g., 電話) into the Hanzi field (sentences will also work)
5. Press Tab
6. The remaining fields should then be populated automatically
   
   

Screenshots

Support

If you encounter any issues, the best way to have these addressed is to raise them on GitHub. Feature requests are welcome, with the caveat that all good things take time. Pull request to fix any issues are even more welcome.

Known Issues

Please see the bug tracker on GitHub.

Changelog

• Redux to 0.16.0:
  • Updated for Qt6
  • Fixed Google & Baidu TTS
  • Don't automatically create the model decks, still available as template.
  • Removed extra final new line from translations
  • Always fill color hanzi when bulk filling
  • Fixed error when certain special characters were in hanzi field
  • Added bulk fill frequency
  • Updated dictionaries
  • Reduced addon size by not shipping the dictionary backup
  • Back end tweaks