Experimental fix for Palm v1-v2 Converter

[mikelove]

Is at:

(see below for newer fix)

The heap corruption bug we found yesterday in 2.0 turned out to have a cousin living in the 1.0-2.0 converter utility, in one of the few areas that wasn't carried over from the PD1.0 exporter, so we fixed it and are now releasing this to see if the fix worked. So if the converter keeps crashing on you, try this and see if it helps matters any.

 

[mikelove]

Anyone tried this yet? We haven't ever managed to reproduce the converter crashing issue here, so the only way we'll know if it's fixed is if you guys tell us it is

 

[weight]

Mike,

I deleted the old converter using the App/delete menu option and installed the new converter, but still no dice. Are there other programs/files I should try deleting or reinstalling?

Anyone tried this yet? We haven't ever managed to reproduce the converter crashing issue here, so the only way we'll know if it's fixed is if you guys tell us it is

 

[weight]

Mike,

I deleted the old converter using the App/delete menu option and installed the new converter, but still no dice. Are there other files/programs I should try deleting or reinstalling that might get the converter working?

Anyone tried this yet? We haven't ever managed to reproduce the converter crashing issue here, so the only way we'll know if it's fixed is if you guys tell us it is

 

[radioman]

Mike,

My comment is that I tried it out of the gate. It crashed after going through a few thousand cards. But everything I have done with version 2 on my palm has been invariably unstable.

So, with my current state of movement from version 1 Palm to windows mobile, I just gave up. After v7, if the core yields stable operation, I can re-exercise the converter.

Ed.

 

[mikelove]

Hmm... oh well, we'll keep working on it. Might be something event-related, it still doesn't use a normal Palm OS event loop (the importer didn't either but we fixed that in Beta 6) - kind of a tricky switchover programming-wise, though, so it'd be nice if we could actually reproduce this problem here first so we'd know if we were improving matters. Thanks for the follow-up.

 

[mikelove]

Here's another test fix:

http://www.pleco.com/beta/pd2b6converter-palmfixed2.zip

Does this help matters any?

 

[radioman]

Is this latest update the one you used on my deck? If so, from what I can tell, it "fixed" the problem with the repeat/unmapped categories. I am still looking at it but everything appears to be in the right place. I will come back with further comments after I exercise the converted deck some more but I am optimistic.

 

[mikelove]

It's mostly the same, but we also fixed something that could cause crashes, so people who've had crashing issues might have better luck with this one. (turned out we didn't fix all of the instances of that earlier bug the first time) If this doesn't help about all we can do is either rewrite the thing completely from scratch or widely publicize the option of sending us your 1.0 flashcard file and letting us convert it for you.

 

[radioman]

The last file you sent me (which I believe was the output generated from this conversion program you have posted here) worked, sorting out categories, etc. As I consider the problem now solved, I am not planning on running it again (mostly because I am delighted things are working now).

I think it is worth having people try the latest, and if it does not work, provide the conversion service. Even if it does work, I figure there are less tech savvy people that would prefer to avoid doing this type of conversion activity. I hack around a bit myself, but would prefer the service if it was available, where the cards are flushed, tested against the new version, confirmed for compatibility, etc. Once the betas get flushed out, maybe it will all be easier. (... or sticking the import module directly into pleco 2 so people do not even have to deal with separate files, sliding files around, compatibilty, etc. - takes it out of their hands and keeps it out of yours from a support perspective).

 

[mikelove]

We'd only be exporting the files to XML, it would still be up to them to import them - checking / cleaning up / disambiguating people's flashcard imports would be way too time-consuming, but dumping the file to XML if it crashes when they try to do so is easy since we can just stick the file on a Palm here and hit Export.