MakePlecoDict - Questions...

[IronPhantom]

I am working on setting up my personal dictionary. I have a few questions:

1) Hypothetical: Say, I make the dictionary with only 1 term. My new flash card list has 5 terms.

When I upload my flashcard onto the palm after it searches my new dictionary (with one term) and finds a match, will it go to the other dictionary to find matches for the other 4 terms?


2) Can I make the dictionary list with the following format:

門(S门) <tabbed> m?n (c: m?hn) <tabbed> door

The first section is the chinese character, then I have the (S门) for the simplified version of the character.

After the tab, I have the pinyin pronunciation and then in parentheses I have the cantonese pronuncation.

After the second tab I have the definition.


Will MakePlecoDict be able to recognize and accept that?


Thank you for your help.

 

[mikelove]

1) Yes, it does search through other dictionaries to find matches if it can't find one in the dictionary it starts with. Though we haven't actually tested this particular scenario, I can't think of a reason why there'd be a specific bug related to 1-entry dictionaries.

2) You'd actually want to put the simplified character first, then the traditional character in square brackets [] (without an S or T) - that way it'll be properly recognized/managed by PlecoDict. And it would be best to put the Cantonese pronunciation in the definition instead - that way it'll index the Mandarin pronunciation correctly. The word and Pinyin fields have to stick to a pretty rigid format in order to avoid problems with PlecoDict's indexer, the definition is more flexible and you can put other information in there without worry.

 

[IronPhantom]

Will there be an update for makepleco dictionary soon?

The 0.1 version is a 'little' rough! hehe

Any possibility to make is such that MakePlecoDict will accept pinyin as say zǔ instead of zu3? I had made my entire dictionary database with the accents on top instead of numeric indicators.

 

[mikelove]

It's doubtful we'll make any changes to it, actually - it's based on the most current version of our internal database encoder program, and that program is already as refined as we need it to be. However, at some point in (hopefully) 2006 we'll be launching our new desktop flashcard manager / dictionary editor utility, and that will replace MakePlecoDict completely and give you lots more features like a nice friendly interface and the ability to edit and add single entries within the software.

We may be making some changes to the database format then that will render old MakePD databases obsolete, actually, so make sure you keep the source data around for any databases you do convert, so that you can reconvert them with the new software later on.