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Show HN: An open-source Chinese ePub reader iOS app with pop-up dictionary

Hi HN!

I originally built this app for myself because, as an intermediate Chinese learner, I wanted a clean EPUB reader with fast, offline pop-up dictionary support.

As a small thank-you to the Chinese learning community, I decided to make it a free and open-source iOS app.

Main features: - Import your own EPUBs

- Long-press any Chinese text to get an inline dictionary definition

- Option to copy the word, sentence, or paragraph, or send text to Pleco / ChatGPT (if installed)

- Everything works fully offline and the app collects no data

I’m mainly trying to figure out whether this kind of pop-up dictionary EPUB reading workflow is actually useful for people who read Chinese regularly, so any honest feedback (good or bad) would be super helpful!

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/wen-reader/id6755988730

GitHub: https://github.com/oliverzh2000/wen-reader

Happy to answer questions or dive into implementation details.

Nice job. As both a student of Chinese and someone who has also developed their own language apps, I think the value prop is the hardest issue you’re going to face. Most apps that I've used on my iPad (Documents, Kindle Reader, and even Pleco itself) already support ePub out of the box.

Additionally they also all support long-press on words to bring up popups containing the Chinese/English definitions.

15 hours agoby vunderba