It seems to me that no matter what our reasoning is, we come down to the same conclusion regarding our willingness to support the product in its current form.
EDIT: the contents before this edit are completely untrue. @reichter, thank you for pointing it out.
It appears that while most of us appear to be leaning toward not supporting the product, a few do wish to support it.
Theyâre not getting rid of mnemonics, contrary to what their Kickstarter page might have you believe. Rather, theyâre essentially proposing a new system of mnemonics that builds off of âfunctional componentsâ of the kanji. I think the best way to use it is as a companion resource to the SRS weâre already using.
@VegasVed, whatâs that conclusion? Iâm not sure about other people on this thread, but I did wind up backing them as an early bird.
Oh my bad! I completely misread you and then misrepresented you. My apologies. I shall edit my comment accordingly.
No worries! I was just surprised as I think Iâm the only backer in here right now 
It doesnât have to be super-comprehensive, but something like æč: ă»ă changed to ăŒă wouldnât be magical. Information like this:
http://www.imabi.net/onkun.htm
They are discussion phonetic components, in my opinion itâs okay for Chinese but there is not only one reading for them in Japanese in the end. In the examples on their page they discuss historical phonetic components like they had a Japanese reading, for me it doesnât add up. I would like to see the Chinese readings at the time as well, to see how it evolved in Japan (what I would understand as a phonetic etymology).
If they only add a few Kokuji and readings and a bit of vocab I will just get the Chinese dictionary for the same value.
I backed them at the previous campaign, but I am kinda glad it failed as I believe it saved me money. Unfortunately, the piggybacking on another app really ticks me off.
I do, however, understand the desire to back them. 
Totally reasonable. I havenât tried the app theyâre piggybacking off of â is there anything inherently wrong with it, or is it just that theyâre not creating their app as a standalone thatâs putting people off?
I wrote about it in the beginning, at the moment I donât like it. But it seems like they are developing something that needs a subscription, so maybe it will be greatly extended. But I wouldnât count on awesomeness.
Probably best if you give it a spin, actually 
I find it very underwhelming.
And they really should just create their own.
I guess my real question is whether the other app matters at all. I donât really have any intention of using the parent app, and the dictionary itself seems pretty clean and functional. Is there something Iâm missing?
I wanted to browse the included Outlier a bit (on iPad), which includes the first school grade. You can either search each kanji individually, which gives you half a screen to read, already not perfect, but OK. You can go to Reference > Kanji > Grade 1, and it just opens a tiny popup, I canât figure out how to see it bigger. (If you go via Radicals it seems best actually, why are are at least three ways to the same information?).
The real question is how the information will be interconnected, and as âtext inside entriesâ it will be hard to browse (at least the way Iâm using it). No question itâs functional to look up occasional stuff, but I also want to go through âall kanji with the same phonetic componentâ, etc., basically what they are advertising. Without good support from the app I see some problems.
Itâs just not easy to navigate, unfortunately. And really, if Iâm paying as much as Iâd be expected to, I would expect the sort of service that I cannot get while they depend on 3rd parties. I foresee too many âunfortunately we have no control over that scenariosâ. Maybe they actually really like the app themselves. In which case, I must admit, Iâm even more worried.
Thatâs a good point, and something Iâd thought about but forgot. Really I just want more of their instructional videos like the é video they demoâd on their website . . . Maybe we can get a kickstarter funded for that.
I suspect that it comes down to them being a pretty small team of academics who arenât equipped/donât have the time to handle distribution or troubleshooting of their app, so they partnered up with people who were willing to have them. This doesnât invalidate your points though, and I also wish theyâd applied a different solution.
Iâm a backer too. I donât mind them piggybacking on another app since building a good app is something that takes time, money, experience⊠Iâd rather have them focus on the content and integrate with an existing good application than building their own crappy one.
(That being said⊠I still would have preferred a web based version that I could view on my desktop; something super simple would have been good enough, even if it was just a pdf but that is not going to happen I bet).
I agree. That is what I would try to do if it became available.
The Chinese version uses a different dictionary app which offers paid dictionaries as add-ons already, so it makes sense to add it as another dictionary. The Japanese app looks more focused on learning, and the Outlier team seems to want to go that way as well, but at the same time they want to minimize the things they want to change.
Sure, they want to focus on their content. But as a product the content is only half of the deal 
Does anyone have a good resource for etymology or other good per-kanji info?
I mainly browse the NicoNico Pedia, the site is a bit obscure because it is a wiki and sometimes entries of very basic kanji are just walls of gifs or something, but most of the time there is good information.
JA Wiktionary is more complete (they cover really obscure stuff, also kanâon, goâon, âŠ), but usually very short.
You can look at lots of ancient script examples here: Chinese Etymology ćæș
I didnât really look at it, but you can browse the âfamily treesâ of hanzi here: http://zhongwen.com/
Somehow Iâm always interested in this, but I never come around to give it a try: Joy oâ Kanji. The main thing are huge essays with background information of Japanese usage, example sentences, ⊠Take a look at the free folding fan example. But in the end I think itâs quite expensive and I will never come around to read more than say 10 (and they also need a graphical designer ). It is much more Japanese oriented as well, instead of âhow can I repackage Chinese etymology for Japanese?â
Kanji portraits is also nice, the book The Key to Kanji is OK. But that site mainly taught me that just dumping lots of information in one place will capture my attention only shortly.
There was also a kickstarter for a book named âThe World of Kanji: A book to learn Japanese kanji through real etymologiesâ, which basically promises the same stuff as Outlier. It is finished now and only 2000„ for the e-book. Did anyone check it out?
Does anyone have good resources? I think something like https://thekanjimap.com/ but with more information would be great. Something like http://zhongwen.com/ above without the 90ties design.
http://nihongo.monash.edu/Etymological_Dictionary_of_Han_Chinese_Characters.pdf
This paper might interest you if you havenât seen it before.
Looking at this it appears that most the developers are relatively new to Japanese and fluent in other languages. I feel like some of their choices may be weak as a result but am not advanced enough to have opinions of any great value.
Incidentally I found it some time ago, thought â550 pages typed in Word without any layout, I will check it out laterâ. I would also like to the bone script character they are talking about, for example ⊠I will browse a bit ⊠later
There was a previous kickstarter that failed, one criticism was they didnât extend their team with Japanese experts. Thatâs why they pulled in Ulrich Apel (at least I have heard of him before). But Iâm not sure how much he will do, a âLexicographical Advisorâ doesnât sound very descriptive. From what I saw they pulled in the readings and kanji compounds, but I donât really see the point because there are already inside a dictionary that provides reading and compounds?
I checked out the Pleco app they use for Chinese, itâs looks very good. It is one of several high-quality dictionaries you can pull in, and it is quite full-featured. I wonder if Chinese learners just invest more money in their stuff while Japanese learners just go for the âfree but you get what you pay forâ apps so bad ones are actually the best you can find?
You mentioned the kickstarter project. I just checked it out and bought it from the author within the span of four minutes.
Do you have any specific questions about it?