• 22 October 2021Small update today : improve Dictionary's "empty state"

    Today's small update improves the experience when Koohii's builtin Dictionary doesn't return results.

    Prior to the update the Dictionary (as seen in Study pages, or during Flashcard Reviews), would show a somewhat cryptic message: There are no common words using this character.

    This isn't a very good experience. There are no "next steps". We don't know what exactly are "common words", and maybe we'd still like to see where this kanji appears even if those are place names or rare words.

    Dictionary Lookup empty state screenshot

    Now when no "common words" are found for a given kanji:

    • display a helpful link to search words on external site(s) (currently jisho.org but we could add more)
    • provide a link to the relevant section of the Help page, which explains what "common words" exactly mean and gives more in depth information about the Dictionary's sources

    A simple example new RTK students will quickly run into is the kanji "companion" 朋 (Heisig index #19). This is an interesting example: on jisho.org you'll see that there is a "common word" shown, however it uses a different kanji. So when Koohii's dictionary says "there are no common words" it means it literally, because it's showing results for this particular kanji. In this case, the word 友 (とも) will appear in the dictionary results for the kanji "friend" 友.

    Feedback about this particular update is welcome in Feature/improve dictionary empty state #214 on Github.

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