Import user dictionary entries (fill in missing fields)

gnalck

Member
I've imported a collection of flashcards as a user dictionary. Afterwards I added the flashcards themselves and preferred my already-imported user dictionary as the source if I did not already have the same card in another category.


However, I notice that in my dictionary search, these entries are often not grouped with others for the same word. I think this is because they only have the Simplified Headword field filled in from this user dictionary import process (even though the list above uses traditional characters), instead of having both the Simplified and Traditional Headword fields filled in correctly.

Is there a way for me to automatically fill in both fields during the import process?

I'm looking for a way to rectify this without having to go and fix all the entries manually.

Any ideas?
 

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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yes - if you go into Organize / Edit / Batch there's an option in there to automatically generate traditional character versions for words that lack them.
 

gnalck

Member
Thanks for the prompt reply!

Forgive me if I am missing something, but that functionality appears to be for flashcards and not dictionaries.

Maybe if I populate the dictionary _through_ the flashcard import "store in user dictionary" option I will have more success. I'll try that with a single entry and see if that produces better results.

At first I thought this was mainly a cosmetic issue, but now I realize that because my user dictionary has a different simplified/traditional headword pair, it is considered unique from the properly set up dictionary entries, which is not great for flashcards.
 

gnalck

Member
I tried the following:

1. Delete the existing flashcard I have above
2. Delete the associated user dictionary entry that has incorrect/incomplete headword pair
3. Go to flashcard import, do "store in user dict", and then run

However, even with this method, the user dictionary entry is still incomplete and only has Simplified Headword filled in (with traditional characters no less). Same as the way I did before where I imported from the Manage Dictionaries area.

Maybe I need to create the manual flashcard, do batch editing to make sure all the headwords are correct, then batch convert into a user dict. I'll try that next.
 

gnalck

Member
OK, if I do this method things work as I want.

1. Import cards, "prefer file", DONT store in user dictionary
2. Afterwards, do batch editing, use "Convert all custom to user dict"

Then my user dictionary is formatted correctly and has the two headwords filled in and so is paired with other dictionary entries in search. Which is also important for flashcard uniqueness/duplicates considerations.

So it seems that during flashcard import, the "fill in missing" option does what I want. It would be nice to have that for dictionary import, too. But I have this workaround. Let me know if I'm misunderstanding anything :)
 

gnalck

Member
For posterity, this is what I did to both import these new definitions.

1. Create new user dictionary, in this case, CC2
2. Import the flashcards into a new category (needed to edit the flashcard file), allowing duplicates, preferring file, NOT storing in user dict
3. Go to Organize, search, filter for all cards in this category, Batch edit them to store into user dictionary
4. Delete the duplicate cards that were added

Then I did this to point my existing flashcards over to the new dictionary

1. Go to Organize, do Search, and search for this category. Additionally search for cards that used the old dictionary (as some of the cards I later edited to use a better dictionary entry)
2. Select all, Batch, remap to my new dictionary CC2, click Remap now
3. Since the new dictionary and old dictionary do not have matching headword pair, you will need to confirm and then select "dont ask again"

Lastly, I locked my CC2 dictionary so that adding new entries and the like would default to my normal user dictionary.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
So it seems that during flashcard import, the "fill in missing" option does what I want. It would be nice to have that for dictionary import, too. But I have this workaround.

Yes - that's intentional, the thinking was that with a dictionary it's actually something people are looking to as an authoritative reference and so we shouldn't automatically populate missing fields in it willy-nilly. But we've done some extremely complex re-plumbing for 4.0 to make it possible for people who are not interested in traditional to have entries merge / duplicate check / etc exclusively on simplified. (this is dicier than you might think because among other things we now have to support a single flashcard linking to + showing combined definitions from multiple dictionary entries)
 
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