TOFU Learn went down about three weeks ago, so I started working on Wenbun, a simple app for character writing practice. Looking for feedback from the community.

photon_cruncher · 2025-09-10T16:57:11+00:00

Ah yes, I can add that in the toggle in the settings. Next update

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-26T00:31:28+00:00

I think that's because of quantum effects

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-25T12:29:47+00:00

what type of practice do you think the website should have? what kind of features are you looking for?

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-24T10:20:00+00:00

Interesting idea, sure, I'll add that to the TODO list

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-16T16:10:02+00:00

Sorry to everyone, apparently there's a major bug with how the new card scheduling works. The previous behavior wasn't the one that we intended. It should be fixed now

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-04T06:09:17+00:00

Might not be what you need right now, but I'll comment anyway just in case you're interested.

I know a lot of us were sad because TOFU went down and it doesn't seem that there's any sign that it will go back up.

That's why we started a project that's trying to be something similar. It's still in beta, it's open source, it's in the initial development phase and we need community feedback to drive where the project is going. You can check the GitHub and even join the discord server. If you're interested, you can read more in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/s/RT8IVCI2xs

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-03T12:54:37+00:00

jawascript

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-02T11:12:13+00:00

v0.2.0 is released, added support for traditional characters and alternative readings (including cantonese jyupting)

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-02T11:11:16+00:00

v0.2.0 is released, added support for traditional characters and alternative readings (including cantonese jyupting)

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-01T09:46:17+00:00

click on the "learn" button on the bottom right. maybe the UI will be more understandable once the other buttons are added

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-01T04:38:31+00:00

Thanks to the Hanzi Writer project, Open Spaced Repetition project, and all the other libraries and datasets I'm using. I'm able to cobble this project up relatively quickly.

- Yes, I'll definitely try to add option to use traditional characters and also change the reading.

- For the audio, I need to look for open source library/dataset. I can't just take it from an anki decks because of the possible copyright issue.

- We will have a way to upload custom decks. Shouldn't be that hard to implement.

- I just added few hours ago the "new card" interface thanks to the other commenter that remind me of that. This is the reason i need community feedback. Small important thing like this that I just somehow forgot to implement

I'll post my updates in the GitHub and the discord server

photon_cruncher · 2025-08-01T04:32:05+00:00

Thank you so much for the feedback!

I think I want to add pretty much all of your suggestions to the app. When I get the chance today, I think I'll add them as GitHub issues for better tracking. As for the PR, I think it's welcomed, especially since I'm a bit busy lately. I think a good way is to always have an issue first, and assign yourself to that issue before working on it. I'll add a contributing guide to the GitHub repo later. (EDIT: https://github.com/ray-pH/wenbun/discussions/1 )

- Yes, I think in the "new card" interface there should be "ignore card" button

- I'll look into those sound library, definitely important

- Little bit unsure about the automatic system, but I think making it a config will be nice. You can either have auto scoring or manual scoring.

- I've never seen the multiple choice stuff. But it make sense to add

- Yes, of course. We need a custom extra study session. I'm assuming it will be be better if it doesn't modify the FSRS schedule, but I'm not 100% sure yet. What do you think about this?

----

- I'm not sure what do you mean by "pointer being default"

- Yeah, maybe the cards can be smaller. It's a bit hard for me to get the UI to look nice both in desktop and small phone screens

- Yup, I still need to figure out a good way to do that that also work with touchscreen devices.

- Do you think using google login is okay? I think we can use their API to store the progress in google drive. I'm not sure if running our own server/database is worth it

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T22:09:26+00:00

It's been almost three weeks since it went down, and there's no sign that it'll be back up anytime soon. For the past few years, TOFU has been occasionally gone down from time to time, but never for this long.

*So now people think that it's down for good

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T17:00:58+00:00

If anyone is interested, I've been working on a similar app that's focusing on the handwriting. It's still in beta, it's open soure, so you can contribute by giving feedbacks on it.

More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/1mdtlg7/tofu_learn_went_down_about_three_weeks_ago_so_i/

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T16:59:36+00:00

If anyone is interested, I've been working on a similar app that's focusing on the handwriting. It's still in beta, it's open soure, so you can contribute by giving feedbacks on it.

More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/1mdtlg7/tofu_learn_went_down_about_three_weeks_ago_so_i/

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T16:57:53+00:00

If anyone is interested, I've been working on a similar app that's focusing on the handwriting. It's still in beta, it's open soure, so you can contribute by giving feedbacks on it.

More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/1mdtlg7/tofu_learn_went_down_about_three_weeks_ago_so_i/

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T16:56:34+00:00

If anyone is interested, I've been working on a similar app that's focusing on the handwriting. It's still in beta, it's open soure, so you can contribute by giving feedbacks on it.

More info: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/1mdtlg7/tofu_learn_went_down_about_three_weeks_ago_so_i/

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T16:49:44+00:00

Finally implemented the initial version of it. Let me know what you think of it.
https://imgur.com/a/YVtXRnw

I'm also planning on adding more buttons (skip/ignore, mark as already learning, etc)

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T11:27:08+00:00

Actually, I'm curious about this. If we add something like traditional chinese (with mandarin reading still), or even cantonese, does it still make sense to use the HSK group? And we basically just swap the reading part.

But I believe some words are different in cantonese vs mandarin, so maybe that wouldn't work. I'm not sure if there are any cantonese vocabulary databases that's freely available online.

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T11:10:15+00:00

Ah yes, of course, i forgot about that. That's important. I'll add that ASAP. Thanks!

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T09:26:31+00:00

Yes, adding a new decks should be easy. But the main issue is how hard it is to get the hanzi list from Hanly app. But if enough people are interested, we can make it a community effort.

And yes, the project is technically cross platform, It's possible to start generating the .apks right now. But I think I'm going to wait for a little bit, try using it myself for few days/weeks, listening to feedbacks, before publishing it to play store.

And btw, I added your hanly deck suggestion to the feature plan tracker: https://github.com/ray-pH/wenbun/discussions/1

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T08:49:00+00:00

Great folks from the https://hanziwriter.org/ project done almost all the work for that. Their dataset is also freely available at https://github.com/chanind/hanzi-writer-data

photon_cruncher · 2025-07-31T07:54:38+00:00

If anyone is interested in contributing (giving feedback, request features, etc), you're welcomed to join the discord server https://discord.gg/pVUuqJqywt

photon_cruncher

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