“Blue/green” or “Orange” Poll

On the top right of this blog’s home page, there is currently a poll widget asking the question, “Which one is the better fit for most of your Chinese calls?” Please only answer the poll if you know exactly what it is referring to. If you think you know what it is referring to but want to make sure, email me, and I will let you know if you are on the right track. Also, please direct others to this post as well, perhaps using the new Share Buttons below. If enough people answer the poll, then it will provide some meaningful input for those who prepare 3-line and pinyin material.

If you have an idea for another question related to learning Chinese for the Chinese field that you think it would be good to have a poll for, please email me about it.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Cantonese Romanisation Poll Closed

Since it has been a long time since anyone submitted a vote for it, and since I want to post a new poll, I am closing the poll for the question, “Which Cantonese romanisation system do you prefer?”

Below are the final results for this poll:

Yes, this one was not even close—the Sidney Lau system was the clear favourite by far. So, those who produce material with Cantonese romanisation may want to take note if they are considering how they should focus their efforts.

More iOS Apps That Support PDF Annotation

Mobile devices running Apple’s iOS operating system have been selling very well lately. After the iPad became available, over 3 million of them were sold in under three months, so that device is going mainstream unusually quickly. Also, over 3 million units of the iPhone 4 were sold in the first 3 weeks following its recent introduction, making it Apple’s fastest selling product ever.

So, it comes as no surprise that the number of apps available in the App Store for iOS devices such as these continues to grow steadily, and among the new apps that have recently become available are several that support PDF annotation. Because of this, the PDF Annotation (Commenting) page has been updated to list several of these that I was able to find out about, up from the one app supporting PDF annotation that was previously listed. I expect this trend to continue, and I especially look forward to the time when GoodReader (available for iPhone/iPod touch and for iPad) will be enhanced with this feature.

Related links:

• 3-Line Material on the iPhone and the iPod touch


• Printing Extra Large Print 3-Line Material


• PDF Link Navigation

“My Follower” Bk. 3-Line XLP-iPhone-A5 Size LN-A Files For Ch. 9 Posted

3-line pinyin and Sidney Lau XLP-iPhone-A5 size files with LN-A (LinkNav and annotation (commenting)) for Chapter 9 of the “My Follower” book are now available for download from the “My Follower” Book (3-Line, XLP-iPhone-A5, LN-A) page.

Based on my recent experience with using these files on an iPad, the following sentence has been added to the “My Follower” Book (3-Line, XLP-iPhone-A5, LN-A) page:

When zoomed so that one page fills an entire screen, the material in these files also renders at a good size on the iPad and other devices with similarly sized screens.

The relevant folders at the 3lines.org site contain an HTML file with a link to the “My Follower” Book (3-Line, XLP-iPhone-A5, LN-A) page.

Related links:

• 3-Line Material on the iPhone and the iPod touch


• Printing Extra Large Print 3-Line Material


• PDF Link Navigation


• PDF Annotation (Commenting)

Referenced Theo. Expressions Updated to 2010-07-07 Version

The Referenced Theo. Expressions files, available for download from the Referenced Theo. Expressions (Chinese + Pinyin + English) and Referenced Theo. Expressions (Chinese + Cantonese Romanisation + English) pages, have been updated. These files are meant to be relatively extensive lists of theo. expressions as they have been found to be rendered in the Chinese publications. Versions sorted by English and versions sorted by romanisation are both available.

The current version is now dated 2010-07-07. It contains 7358 expressions, compared to the 7250 expressions that were in the previous version. A Mandarin Pleco version and a Mandarin Wenlin version are available in addition to the PDF files. Also, a password is not needed to access this resource.

Bookmarks have been added to the PDF files, and PDF annotation has been enabled on them, so “LN-A” (“Link Navigation-Annotation”) has been added to their filenames. See the PDF Link Navigation page and the PDF Annotation (Commenting) page for more information.

Note that the current version of Pleco for iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad now supports flashcards and user-created dictionaries. So, the RTE Pleco Instructions file now contains instructions for installing the RTE Pleco files in Pleco running on these devices.

Thanks go out to the one who helped to produce these files.