xinhua-zhaodao

Finds derived Simplified Mandarin characters and words from a given character.

General info

Radicals

The given character can be any Unicode character (like ⿕，加 or 丿).
Thus the input character might not be a Kangxi radical or even a Mandarin character

Note that it will look for the exact character that was passed in - it doesn't recognize alternative forms.
Therefore derivatives of an alternative form may not be found (水 has 36 results, but 氵 has 765).

Output

The derivatives are:

• Derived characters (with graphical composition, not etymological) which exist in the xinhua dictionary. Sorted in ascending order of stroke number.
• Derived words which exist in the xinhua dictionary. Includes proper nouns. Sorted in ascending order of characters number.

Database

The used database, hanyu.db, is an edited merge of a 新华字典(xinhua zidian) database, a decomposition database and a frequency list. (see >Thanks)
Note that some of the DB isn't used yet, but all tables have a purpose for next releases.

Dev Setup

Using Cargo and Tauri, it should work after cloning and installing Tauri and Trunk CLI tools:

git clone https://github.com/Coddeus/xinhua-zhaodao.git
cd xinhua-zhaodao
cargo install tauri-cli
cargo install trunk
cargo tauri dev

Default repo structure :

xinhua-zhaodao
├─ .github
│   └─ workflows
│       ├─ app-check.yml
│       └─ bin-release.yml
├─ .vscode
│   ├─ extensions.json
│   ├─ launch.json
│   └─ settings.json
├─ (dist)
├─ (fonts)
├─ (public)
├─ src
│   ├─ app.rs
│   └─ main.rs
├─ src-tauri
│   ├─ data
│   │   └─ hanyu.db
│   ├─ (icons)
│   ├─ src
│   │   └─ main.rs
│   ├─ build.rs
│   ├─ Cargo.toml
│   └─ tauri.conf.json
├─ (target)
├─ .gitignore
├─ .taurignore
├─ (Cargo.lock)
├─ Cargo.toml
├─ CHANGELOG.md
├─ index.html
├─ README.md
├─ styles.css
└─ Trunk.toml

Uses

This tool may be useful for:

• Those who want to discover new characters and words (and remember them) through radicals. (original purpose)
• Those who prefer scrolling thousands of Chinese characters (because it's beautiful) instead of social media content.

Thanks

Data for hanyu.db:

• Characters decomposition on Wikimedia Commons
• Computerized 新华字典(xinhua zidian) scraper on Github
• Characters frequency from Jun Da's website

License

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Coddeus
2023