Makedict questions

[baitou]

I'm trying to take an Excel spreadsheet (~1500 entries) and turn it into an OXCD custom dictionary. Is there a relatively painless "by the numbers" way of making that happen?

I've tried saving the Excel spreadsheet as a unicode document, converting the unicode doc to GB encoding (with Twinbridge), and then running Makedict, but Makedict keeps complaining about not being able to access the GB file. I'm working on a WinXP machine.

I understand that the current Makedict code is considered to be flaky and I'm looking forward to the customizing capabilities of the new software release. but if there's any way to make my own dictionary before then I'd appreciate it.

 

[gandq]

export your spreadsheet as tab-delimited text. open the text file and safe it again, choosing UTF-8 encoding. use TiBR converter to create a pdb file. sync and import.

other encodings might work as well, but this is the safest method and works well.

@ mike:

i am still testing the new beta, not many greater bugs encountered yet. but with regard to this topic, i would pledge for plecodict to use the filename of the imported file as name for the new list. i imported all my vocabulary and it was quite annoying to enter a name for each list by hand.


my other findings so far:

i tried to add a "// list name" tag, but i could not get it to work properly, it was just imported as a custom entry. my guess is an encoding problem, as export and reimport from plecodict will give me correct list names and i can see some gibberish in front of the // when i open my pdbs with a document reader. if i delete the gibberish and safe the file, the whole import does not work anymore.

got a crash with data loss when i tried to copy all entries of one list to another (ca. 660 entries). it crashed with the following message: "error PlecoDB.cpp, Line:1085, Can't switch working record". after that, plecodict freezed each time i entered the manage list or session screen. i had to delete the whole flashcard file. this didn't happen each time i made a similar action, though. i haven't found any repeatable crashes yet.

i also got some crashes when switching from another application directly to plecodict (via a hardware button). again, not repeatable. don't know the reason, but it did never happen with beta 1.

i would love to asign the resident to a hardware button, but i cannot find the option in the preferences panel. there is an empty line only.

i'd love to have repetition spacing and fixed number of cards combinable. and think about a 'cards not yet reviewed' option (setting a date in 2004) doesn't work.

more as i go along with testing and using.

greetings,



jo.

 

[mikelove]

Actually UTF-8 won't work with MakeDict, only GB will. The new MakeDict for PlecoDict (which won't be ready with 1.0 - sorry, we've had our hands full just getting the main program out) will likely work best with "normal" UTF-16 Unicode. I'm not sure why you'd be having the problems you're having with the current MakeDict - if you have Excel then I assume you also have Word, it actually has a pretty good built-in text encoding converter, so if you open the Unicode text file exported by Excel in Word, "save as" encoded text, and select the GB-2312 encoding, that should hopefully give you a format which MakeDict can understand.

jo - Are you sure you put a space after the slashes in the list name? It's very picky about that. The gibberish may be a byte order mark tag - some Unicode text editors add these to Unicode files, PlecoDict should be able to skip over them but it's not quite 100%. (handling every possible variety of text file is very difficult, as you might guess)

The copy all feature was a last-minute addition, but it uses the same mechanism as the single-card copy so I'm surprised it's giving you problems - we'll investigate this.

I'm surprised that setting an earlier date isn't working for finding cards not reviewed yet, but we absolutely positively are not adding any new functionality at this point, so I'm afraid a "not reviewed yet" option will have to wait for 1.1. I'm sorry, but we just can't afford to keep delaying 1.0 to add features, and the flashcard system is already the main reason why we're so many months behind schedule.

The instant access button setting line should only be empty on Palm OS 4 devices (which unfortunately don't support the feature that allows us to easily trap button presses) - on your Clie it should work. We'll have to add a note in the instruction manual (which we're in the process of completely rewriting) about this...

 

[gandq]

mike,

forgot to mention this in today's mail:

- a sorting feature for the import list screen would be nice. i have a lot of pdbs on my palm and it would be easier to find the ones one wants to import if the list was sorted alphabetically.


cheers,



jo.

 

[mikelove]

True, I guess people do use PalmDoc for other things besides flashcard lists... another good 1.1 change.