If you need to learn to read Chinese, this program was created for you. Chinese Toolbox 2012 is not merely a Chinese dictionary, or a Chinese reader program, or a Chinese reading assistant. It is software to help you really learn to read Chinese, and in learning to read Chinese, you are learning the language itself: radicals, characters, words, phrases, idioms, and how words & phrases contextually fit together. The more and better you’re able to read, the better you’ll be able to communicate verbally with others. Features are built in to the program to help you do more reading and less translating. Other Chinese reader programs may offer automatic lookup of word & character definitions, but no other program helps you to rely less on dictionaries through “Marking for Unassisted Reading”.

As you begin to read with Chinese Toolbox 2012, you mark characters and words you can recognize as Known, and they appear in the Reader differently from characters and words you don't know. Marking characters and words as Known enables Unassisted Reading, a feature designed to help you focus on what you haven't yet learned. As you come across characters or words in your reading that you previously marked as Known, the program doesn't automatically show the dictionary entries of those characters and words. By gradually weaning yourself from dictionary lookup, you begin to truly read in Chinese.

Chinese Toolbox 2012 supports three modes of operation: Trial, Reader, and Free modes. Features include: (1) a unique system for real learning; (2) Help Tips that shows help messages only for features you have not used; (3) document analysis; (4) multiple document integration; (5) dynamic & published character frequency lists; (6) customizable web links; (7) many configuration options; (8) two customizable dictionaries; (9) automatic timestamping; (10) data fully customizable; (11) extensive import & export; (12) offline use; (13) word parsing control; (14) many others.