Flash Card Program For Testing Vocabulary?

[Frederic Bergeron]

Unfortunately, the order of the words in Spanish and English differs so it's not as easy as I thought to generate the glossary files.    

Still, here are the lessons 6 and 7, in your format (with the comments field containing the Spanish translation).  I think it's better for me to concentrate on coding toMOTko instead.  I may spend some time converting other Shoho files but if I do, I will begin with the last lessons first, and proceed downward.  In other words, from lesson 34, then 33, 32, and so on.  This way, we can work together on this task without collisions.

[kurochka]

Deal.

I had to get the English portion from a number of sources, so it is not consistent with the Spanish one.  Sorry.
In any case, don't get sidetracked.  This is not a big deal.

[Frederic Bergeron]

Last week-end, I implemented a new feature on toMOTko which saves the quiz's state before exiting the application.  This way, it's possible to resume the previously started quiz when you restart the application.  This is useful when you have a lot of selected words to study.  For the moment, only the last quiz can be saved and resumed.  

I was wondering : Do you think it would be useful to be able to save more than the last quiz's state?  Like maybe save a quiz's state into a file so you can resume it later.  I think it would be useful, for example, if you're learning more than 1 language or if you're learning different sets of words.

In the same idea, I wonder if it would also be interesting to be able to save the selection of words.  I mean, the state of the checkboxes in the Glossary Manager.  Kurochka mentioned in a previous message to have a feature which would allow to remove words that seems well known (statistically like if you have 0 error for one word).  I think this could be implemented with loadable/savable selections.

I still have to think some more about it.  If you have some good ideas/suggestions about this, I would be welcome to hear from you.  I'm looking for solutions that do not make the interface too complicated.  I think it's already loaded enough.  I would like to keep things as simple as possible.

[kurochka]

State-save for the quiz is a useful feature.  However, personally I do not see a *need* for more than one.  It will complicate the interface (a separate menu item to select which save to resume, a save dialog window to choose the name for the save, etc.)  Study lists are usually of manageable size.  What would be the practical purpose of switching between quizzes back and forth?

However, I think keeping all sorts of statistics would be very useful (numerical, graphs?).  Seeing how well/bad you are doing creates psychological incentives, and helps you to identify the areas that need improvement.  For example, recently I wanted to know how many words I had learned so far in Japanese.  The only way I knew how to do it without counting words in each study list that I have learned was to select all these lists and go through the combined quiz.  At the end, there was a notice that I had learned four hundred something words.  However, I know that some words are 100% memorized but I have trouble with others.

[Frederic Bergeron]

State-save for the quiz is a useful feature.  However, personally I do not see a *need* for more than one.  It will complicate the interface (a separate menu item to select which save to resume, a save dialog window to choose the name for the save, etc.)  Study lists are usually of manageable size.  What would be the practical purpose of switching between quizzes back and forth?

In my case, this would be useful because I'm studying Japanese, Spanish, and German.  So let's say I start a very long quiz in Japanese on Monday.  Of course, I cannot complete it because the study list contains more than 300 words.  The next day, if I feel like learning German, I will lose the state of the Japanese quiz as soon as I start a new quiz.  I wish I could resume the Japanese quiz on Wednesday.  And why not, resume the German quiz on Thursday...  

That's the use case.  

I'm not sure the loading/saving the selection itself is useful, but loading/saving quizzes could be useful (at least, it would be, for me ) to satisfy this use case.

Actually, to make things simpler, maybe I could have one saved quiz state per language pair.  So if I start a quiz with fr_de (French -> German), and quit.  The quiz would be saved and resumable only if the language indicators are fr_de.  If I start a quiz in en_ja (English -> Japanese) and then later, select Resume Quiz, the latest quiz in en_ja would be restored.  That could be an interesting option that would not modify the interface at all and suits my short terms needs.  What I don't like about this is that the handling of saved quizzes is not explicit to the user.  This behavior will have to be explained in the documentation.  The advantage though is that it won't bother people that are learning just one language, and I suspect that this is the majority of toMOTko's users.  That seems like a good compromise.

EDIT: I implemented this option yesterday.  It works like a charm.  If you just learn one language, you will not even notice it's there.  And if you learn more than one language, you will be able the resume a quiz for each learnt language.

However, I think keeping all sorts of statistics would be very useful (numerical, graphs?).  Seeing how well/bad you are doing creates psychological incentives, and helps you to identify the areas that need improvement.  For example, recently I wanted to know how many words I had learned so far in Japanese.  The only way I knew how to do it without counting words in each study list that I have learned was to select all these lists and go through the combined quiz.  At the end, there was a notice that I had learned four hundred something words.  However, I know that some words are 100% memorized but I have trouble with others.

I began to address this a little bit.  I've introduced a Properties panel on which I display the count of words, glossaries and folders.  I will probably add other statistics in there in time.  If I can, I would like to use graphs as I think it could be fun to do and to see.  But to tell the truth, I have not given much thought about this aspect.

I think that if the algorithm that picks the next word to be asked was able to consider these statistics that I won't need to load/save the words selection so I probably don't need that.

[kurochka]

Good stuff.

Could you see if you could convert the following kanji list from Genki I to tomotko format?  If so, please break them up into separate lessons (from #3 to #12 as indicated in the file).  I think the tabbed examples should go to the comments section.

The info is taken from http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/sheaa/projects...kanji_main.html

I may do the same for lessons 13 through 23.

[Frederic Bergeron]

Could you see if you could convert the following kanji list from Genki I to tomotko format?  If so, please break them up into separate lessons (from #3 to #12 as indicated in the file).  I think the tabbed examples should go to the comments section.

Here you go.  If you see anything wrong, let me know.

I may do the same for lessons 13 through 23.

If you can provide me the data in the same format, I can run the same script I wrote for the previous lessons in a few minutes.

[ctop]

Hi there,

I just recently found tomotko and started using it to expand my vocabulary.  Now, what I would like to do is to build voc lists from things I look up in a dictionary.  While this kind of works with copy & paste, it is incredible tedious, since I have to go back and forth between the dictionary (zbedic or ztenv) and tomotko.  I wonder if there is a way to make this interaction better for what I think this should be quite a frequent use case, no?
How are you building up your glossaries?

Ctop

Zaurus user for 5 years -- B500 -> C860 -> C1000

[Frederic Bergeron]

Hi there,

I just recently found tomotko and started using it to expand my vocabulary.  Now, what I would like to do is to build voc lists from things I look up in a dictionary.  While this kind of works with copy & paste, it is incredible tedious, since I have to go back and forth between the dictionary (zbedic or ztenv) and tomotko.  I wonder if there is a way to make this interaction better for what I think this should be quite a frequent use case, no?
How are you building up your glossaries?

Ctop

Zaurus user for 5 years -- B500 -> C860 -> C1000

Hi Ctop,

So far, I either use copy-paste from Zten (most of the time), write new words myself (typing), or convert existing vocabularies found on the net.  I agree with you, I wish it would be less tedious.  This feature is on the todo list for quite a long time but other things have higher priority for the moment.

I think it would be possible to interoperate with other applications if they are programmed accordingly, using QCopChannel messages.  It's something I've never tried.  I don't know if Zten or Zbedic already support this.  I doubt so but I will check the code, just in case.

[kurochka]

Frederic,

Thanks for converting the Kanji study lists for Genki.  Here is the remainder if you don't mind.

Hi there,

I just recently found tomotko and started using it to expand my vocabulary.  Now, what I would like to do is to build voc lists from things I look up in a dictionary.  While this kind of works with copy & paste, it is incredible tedious, since I have to go back and forth between the dictionary (zbedic or ztenv) and tomotko.  I wonder if there is a way to make this interaction better for what I think this should be quite a frequent use case, no?
How are you building up your glossaries?

Ctop

Zaurus user for 5 years -- B500 -> C860 -> C1000

Hi Ctop,

So far, I either use copy-paste from Zten (most of the time), write new words myself (typing), or convert existing vocabularies found on the net.  I agree with you, I wish it would be less tedious.  This feature is on the todo list for quite a long time but other things have higher priority for the moment.

I think it would be possible to interoperate with other applications if they are programmed accordingly, using QCopChannel messages.  It's something I've never tried.  I don't know if Zten or Zbedic already support this.  I doubt so but I will check the code, just in case.

The Opie Reader has code to send words to zbedic, and it works like a charm.  I presume that there must be a way to do the reverse, i.e., send words from zbedic to an outside application.

As Frederic mentioned, if you are dealing with lots of words, it is easier to prepare your list in a text editor (I use simplified format) and then convert it to tomotko format with this tool.

[Frederic Bergeron]

Frederic,

Thanks for converting the Kanji study lists for Genki.  Here is the remainder if you don't mind.

Voila!

[ctop]

Frederic, kurochka,

Thanks for your answers.  

The Opie Reader has code to send words to zbedic, and it works like a charm.  I presume that there must be a way to do the reverse, i.e., send words from zbedic to an outside application.

Right, Opie Reader and also FBreader do this.  I think it has to be in the sending application, so it probably has to come from the dictionary.  Or is there some kind of general scripting available for the Zaurus?  I have to look into that, maybe.

As Frederic mentioned, if you are dealing with lots of words, it is easier to prepare your list in a text editor (I use simplified format) and then convert it to tomotko format with this tool.

Thanks.  Yes, I guess for larger lists this is the way to go.  But it would be handy to pick things up as you go.  

best,

Ctop

[kurochka]

Frederic,

I have my next top feature request.    

Could you please make hotkeys (selectable or fixed - up and down on the joystick) for scrolling the comment window?
As you've seen I've put lots of examples of kanji words into the comment section, and I need to scroll up and down all the time.  The new feature of maximizing the comment section will help when you release the new version of tomotko; however, scroll hotkeys will still be very useful.

[Frederic Bergeron]

Frederic,

I have my next top feature request.    

Could you please make hotkeys (selectable or fixed - up and down on the joystick) for scrolling the comment window?
As you've seen I've put lots of examples of kanji words into the comment section, and I need to scroll up and down all the time.  The new feature of maximizing the comment section will help when you release the new version of tomotko; however, scroll hotkeys will still be very useful.

It's funny because I had a similar idea but with left - right key to scroll the 3 top fields (term, alt, and term).  Ok, I will try to implement it.  Hopefully, it will be in the next release, that is planned for Christmas, by the way.

[kurochka]

Can't wait for the upcoming release!  Yey!

Do you think it is possible to allow for integration of kanji animations from the following project?

http://www.kanjicafe.com/using_soder.htm

The license is unique; however, it does allow for use of the diagrams in free electronic (not paper) projects.

It could be that outright integration would complicate things (attribution, etc.); however, I do not think creating conditions for users to add diagrams on their own would require attribution, linking to the authors' site and inclusion of the license.