Flash Card Program For Testing Vocabulary?, Flash card program? Options

[kurochka]

maybe I have missed something but it would be nice to have font size change button. As if you use only 1-2 kanji words it is fine, but it you use sentences or longer words it makes it harder to read, especially in portrait mode.

It's on the to-do list. You can find the to-do list here:

http://tomotko.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/...txt?view=markup

In addition, Frederic mentioned a couple of posts ago that he is going to implement the choice of fonts feature.

[kitkatneko]

maybe I have missed something but it would be nice to have font size change button. As if you use only 1-2 kanji words it is fine, but it you use sentences or longer words it makes it harder to read, especially in portrait mode.

It's on the to-do list. You can find the to-do list here:

http://tomotko.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/...txt?view=markup

In addition, Frederic mentioned a couple of posts ago that he is going to implement the choice of fonts feature.

this is great news!
thank you kurochka and frederic!

[Frederic Bergero...]

Just to let you know that I have updated the JLPT glossaries today. I think they are now error-free.

[kitkatneko]

thank you this is really useful!

[gojira]

Anyone built mnemosyne for the Z?

Or anki?

[rolf]

Anyone built mnemosyne for the Z?

Or anki?

I have attempted both, but so far failed in either case. I think anki is doable once python-pyqt4 compiles. mnemosyne seems to be very nice as a program but uses some insane compilation setup that does not lend itself to cross-compilation. The author is not willing to use anything else.

[Frederic Bergero...]

For those who are interested, I have released version 0.5.0 of toMOTko.

The two most important features are the font selection in the Preferences dialog and limited copy/paste functionality. The latter only works for words. It's not possible to copy/cut/paste folders or glossaries yet. It should be done in the next release.

For Kurochka: the font selection feature should allow you to see special characters like French and Spanish accents if you have a unicode font installed on your system.

Feedback is welcome.

[Frederic Bergero...]

I found a new FlashCard program today. I haven't tried it yet but it looks interesting.

http://jvlt.sourceforge.net

It's made in Java so it probably works on the Zaurus.

[Stubear]

I have attempted both, but so far failed in either case.  I think anki is doable once python-pyqt4 compiles.  mnemosyne seems to be very nice as a program but uses some insane compilation setup that does not lend itself to cross-compilation.  The author is not willing to use anything else.

mnemosyne is a python program - what insane compilation does your version do? Mine just copies python scripts to the python directory.

I'll try setting up python on my Z again and see if I can get ti to work - something to do on the train

Stu

[koan]

I think I know why.  The files are in UTF-8 with Signature (there is some sort of data/symbol at the beginning of the file).  toMOTko does not like that.  It can take UTF-8 *without* Signature.

I saw this post and realised that it could be the Unicode BOM (http://unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html).

koan

[kurochka]

For those who are interested, I have released version 0.5.0 of toMOTko.

The two most important features are the font selection in the Preferences dialog and limited copy/paste functionality.  The latter only works for words.  It's not possible to copy/cut/paste folders or glossaries yet.  It should be done in the next release. 

For Kurochka: the font selection feature should allow you to see special characters like French and Spanish accents if you have a unicode font installed on your system.

Feedback is welcome.

Thank you, Frederic. I'll check it out and report. Font selection is the most very much appreciated. I also hope that "(un)select all entries" has made it into the new release.

[Frederic Bergero...]

I'm looking forward to hear from you.

I've added two buttons in the Glossary Manager, one to select all the entries and another one to inverse the selection. To uncheck all the words, you check them all and inverse the selection.

Next release (0.6.0) will offer the following :
- Support other languages (Not just English and Japanese)
- Multilingual interface (French, English and maybe Spanish and Japanese). Other languages will be added if users are willing to contribute.
- Optimized data format (xml->binary) => smaller (instead of taking 4.6MB, my glossaries now take 2MB) and faster (instead of 70 secs, loading my glossaries now takes 12 secs)
- And maybe the completion of copy/cut/paste feature but it can probably wait till version 0.7.0.

[matthis]

Thanks for your great work on toMOTko.

A feature I would like to see is, actually having a text field to write the kanji.
The handwritting recognition which comes with the japanese rom would recognise it; and tomotko would compare to the correct answer and give you the result.

It would give the possibility to train at writing kanji.

Thanks

[Frederic Bergero...]

Hi Matthis,

Thank you for using toMOTko.

I have given some thought about your suggestion. I'm not very enthused by it.

Even though I like that we can input kanjis on the Zaurus, handwriting them on the screen (and it's pretty much why I bought a Zaurus in the first place), it's not something that I enjoy doing very much. It may be good to look up for a word in a dictionnary once in a while but I don't think I would like to use it to write lots of words. Of course, this is subjective.

I also think that the default pattern recognition input method is not the proper tool to learn writing kanjis as it's smart enough to recognize kanjis even when they are not written correctly. For example, try to write "right"(migi) and "left"(hidari). The stroke order for these two kanjis is particular but the Zaurus will not complain about it if you miss because it knows that most of the people (including Japanese) may write them wrong. I know, it's probably no big deal for most people but it's something I find odd for a tool like toMOTko that aims to assist the learning of a language.

If other people ask for it, I may implement it later though. Just don't hold your breath...

For now, I would recommend that you write the kanjis with a good old pencil and paper when using toMOTko. That's what I do every day and it feels a lot better that writing on the Z's screen.

[koan]

Hi

I made a simple flash card file for the Thai alphabet, it covers the 44 consonants. In Thai it is important to learn the class of a consonant so you can work out it's tone through a set of rules. When I first learnt Thai I used flash cards to go through the classes.

You can download the file here

Here is a screenshot

If you don't have a font with Thai glyphs, you can find one here, personally I prefer "Loma"

When I edited the XML file I changed the target language to "th" but after importing into toMOTko I couldn't see my text; so I had to change it back to "ja" even though this is wrong.

@Frederic: Maybe toMOTko could read the language from the XML and change the GUI to show which language it is ? "Japanese" should then become "Thai" and "Furigana" could become "meta explanation" or something. Also, choosing a suitable font for the language is good for us people learning more than one language.

I might do some Thai phrases/expressions later.

thanks!

P.S. Any random person listening, if you have any Kansai-ben or Osaka-ben; I'm quite interested in Japanese dialect. I can extract words and explanations from EDICT but it's no substitute for good examples.