Version 4.0, December 8, 2006

This version has involved a major re-write of our data handling; some serious problems involving data loss were discovered in the 4D database manager, and the original mirroring scheme was discovered to be difficult due to network issues. These problems have been resolved by a radical re-design of our data handling. 4D is still used to handle the necessary parts of requests, but now that we have Apache and Unix (Mac OS X), the handling of disk files routine requests are handled there. The new method of storing our files is optimised to allow distributed editing of the texts, and simplified mirroring.

A few bugs have been fixed, and some features enhanced.

• Pinyin can now be entered as text for searching.
• Pinyin words in English text also now have hyperlinks. Clicking on a word results in a list of Chinese characters having that pronuciation in the lexicon pane - one of those words can then be selected to see the lexicon entry.

Version 3.3, December 5, 2005

A few bugs have been fixed, and some features enhanced. This version includes major internal changes, necessitated by serious problems with the 4D database manager which runs the website.

• Lexicon data is now searchable.
• Footnotes are now searchable.
• English words in English text now have hyperlinks. Clicking on a word results in a list of corresponding Chinese characters in the lexicon pane - one of those words can then be selected to see the lexicon entry. The correspondence is based on single words, so do not expect this to substite for a dictionary - it is merely a convenience. This feature is new, has not been tested extensively and was added simply because other changes made it easy - it was not part of scheduled updates. Please report any issues with this feature.

Version 3.2, February 23, 2005

A few bugs have been fixed, and some features enhanced.

• When clicking on a Footnote link, the user is taken to the footnote. The label on that footnote now links the reader back to the text.
• The search results table had incorrect column widths.
• The formatting of the Grammar has been improved: the online pages now match the book.
• The context strings resulting from Grammar searches were sometimes garbled, this has been fixed.
• Search terms in the Grammar were never highlighted, this feature has been added.
• There were a number of capitalization errors in the pinyin, this has been fixed.

The following problems with texts have been addressed, but it will take some time before all affected texts are repaired.

• Due to a flaw in Internet Explorer, boxes appear between Chinese characters on that browser. (Firefox and Safari are both superior browsers.)
• Some English texts have formatting errors.
• Footnotes were incorrectly added to "Unpunctuated" editions.
• "Student (Simplified)" editions do not contain simplified characters.

Version 3.1, February 9, 2005

A few bugs have been fixed, and some features enhanced.

• The last search term is restored to the search window when a user logs in again.
• The Pinyin initials menu ("Begins") was inadvertently switched to natural sort order when the data was re-imported. English sort order has been restored.
• The "All Books" and "No Books" buttons in the search window were not working. The buttons have been replaced with functional menus having sensible options.
• The appearance of the search results window has been slightly improved so that more data is visible on each line.
• All known Firefox compatibility issues have been fixed. Some Internet Explorer issues have been fixed. (Unlike Firefox and Safari, Internet Explorer is not truly a Unicode browser.)
• Several internal changes have been made to enable future additions.

Version 3.0, January 12, 2005

We have made several changes in the last few days. As many of you know, out server, backup server, and recent backups were all destroyed in a major flood in early November. We now have a new server, a dual processor Mac G5 - much better than the original server.

We also have installed a new version of the Worktable, with several fixed or added features.

• Context strings shown in the search results have been enhanced.
• English searches are faster.
• Searches on common words in both languages are faster.
• Fixed a bug which cause the search to return an error or crash in certain cases involving very short documents.
• Chinese characters can now be searched for in English texts and the Grammar.
• Mixed language searches are now possible, although usually not at all practical.
• All complex searches now work in all areas of the site, not just the Chinese texts.
• Chinese characters in English text now have hyperlinks. Clicking on a Chinese character displays the lexicon entry, just as it always has in Chinese texts.
• Pinyin syllables in English text now have hyperlinks. Clicking on a Pinyin syllables puts a list of Chinese characters having that pronunciation in the lexicon pane - one of those words can then be selected to see the lexicon entry. This feature is new, and has not been tested extensively and was added simply because other changes made it easy - it was not part of scheduled updates. Please report any issues with this feature.

Several new Chinese texts have also been added, with more to come. These texts all have five versions, automatically generated from a master document. The versions differ in their inclusion of footnotes and punctuation.

Version 2.0

Version 2 contains the following updates and changes from 1.

• Texts - Chunqiu Zuozhuan deleted form title menu. All texts (Except Morals of Confucius) have complete Chinese study edition and complete Legge edition.
• Lexicon - Replace Unicode Consortium pinyin and modern definitions with those of ABC Dictionary. Add simplified versions of characters from ABC dictionary. Update Muller data from his html version to his xml version. Add to and proofread Chinese examples. Add links to Grammar according to Grammar index.
• Grammar - Proofread. Add MC reconstructions in image form. Add index to Lexicon.
• Search Engine - Add searching features: and, or, exclusion. Highlight queried term(s) in read in new window. Enhance results frame with statitistics, new window link, and excerpt from text.
• Login/Customization - Change timeout from 1/2 hour to 10.4 days.
• Throughout - Change encoding from mix of BIG-5, Unicode, and Roman to all system-sensitive display. For browsers not fully Unicode compatible, retain earlier mix. For fully-compatible Unicode browsers, change encoding to all Unicode.
• Shuhai Wenyuan now runs on 4D 2003 in Mac OS X.2.