[quote=“canucktyuktuk”]After actually reading this thread again, I think I kind of have it figured out. (My settings were all screwy and in Chinese so I couldn’t set it up properly, duh.) So, If I want to enter a character into a new card (supermemo) I have to use the bupumu pop up keyboard (and can attempt to write in the graffiti area under it), right? Are there any other ways? How can I make the character VERY big? Why is the resolution so crappy? Is this normal? I just made a couple of cards for simple characters that I know. Seems to work.
if I could use notepad to write big characters and then paste them into the supermemo question field that would be cool. I just don’t like the look of those blocky looking characters. Maybe a setting?[/quote]I can tell you the settings I have but my Treo (600) is lo-res. Is the Palm TX lo-res or hi-res? If the latter I can’t help you.
[quote=“canucktyuktuk”]It’s Hi-res. 320 x 480, I believe. Maybe I’m expecting to much? I have the settings that I know set for large and bold.[/quote]OK, so I can’t help you specifically. But do play about with the combinations in CJKOS. I’m using “Support CJK boldFont”, but not “Support CJK largeBoldFont”. My settings work the best for me. The large bold font looked terrible.
I think you’re always going to get some blockiness, though.
One more thing – you are using the new Supermemo with hi-res support, aren’t you?
I have a Chinese OS on my PalmOS PDA, and I have no problems performing a hotsync with my computer. My PDA also comes with a flash memory card that I use to make extra backups (call me paranoid). If you have a flash memory card in your PDA, use it until you can figure out how to hotsync. You definitely need to find some way to backup if you wish to seriously use your PDA as a study tool.
The Supermemo online manual is very good now, and I’d highly recommend spending an hour or so reading through it. It should answer a lot of your questions.
There is a Supermemo Converter .exe file that you can download. What I do to create a database is use Excel. I use 4 columns to provide fields for Chinese, Pinyin, English meaning, and category name. Then I copy all of the rows of data that I typed into Notepad, and save it as a text file. Then I drag the text file onto the Converter.exe program and it creates the Palm database for me. You then have to tell your Palm Desktop on your computer to install that new database the next time you hotsync.
I hope that helps. I don’t have a whole lot of time right now to explain in great detail.
Thanks scomargo, joesax and everyone else. Yes, I have CJKOS running and installed. I figured it out with your help. The problem was that the preferences were in Chinese at first and I couldn’t figure out which box to check. Now I know. When I need to write in chinese I pull down edit/ keyboard/ and fiddle with the chinese keyboard or try to write the character until I get or can select what I want. It gets easier all the time.
I know I better just sit down and read the darn manuals. I’m short on time these days but that’s my only excuse.
I’m using a mac running OSx tiger. I don’t have excel at the moment, but that’s the least of my worries…I bought my mac in Canada and I need to get a usb keyboard with characters on it as well…or buy a new one…I don’t really need a new computer yet…yet…
I need:
missingsync
Pay for pleco
Pay for supermemo
Get office working…
Probably other stuff I need to pay for
I hope my school will use their credit card for me cause I don’t have one.
I can hotsync fine using isync but this does not work with all of the software I use, only adressbook and ical. I haven’t been using the Palmdesktop, even though it syncs fine as well.
I’m going to figure out how to use the flash card for backups. That’s a good idea! it might be a really good idea, even for the long run, as I’m not sure how I’m going to use the mac for input.
I guess I’ve finally found a reason to be annoyed with Mac!
This is quite a pile of new stuff I have to learn and I haven’t even really been studying chinese yet!!Arg!
Don’t get too caught up in the technologicalness and forget to study . You don’t NEED excel to do the databases, just anything that can save the file as a “tab delimated (sp?)” thing (or whatever).
Yes, what Miltownkid said is true. Tab delimited format is all you need, and you shouldn’t need to pay money for that.
I would tell you to start studying Chinese first, and slowly figure out the technical stuff. Supermemo gets increasingly useful the more characters you know, so early on it may not help you as much as it will later. The main thing is to start studying as early and often as you can and not delay it because of computer issues.
Well, I’ve been doing the LE thing in between work all summer long, and trying my hand at writing in the last 3 weeks. My basic conversation is OK but I have a hard time with the character recognition. I start at Shida on September 1st, and frankly, I’m a bit worried. I’ve never been a good student, and I’ll be working about 25hours a week as well. I’m setting my day up as: all morning school and study, afternoon workout, and evening work. I don’t really know how to study anything. I coasted through college. I understand that there’s no “coasting” option at Shida. From what I hear, it’s fast paced, sink or swim. I’m basically devoting my “free time” lately to getting ready, mentally and physically. I want to avoid making a dog’s breakfast of my educational plans. And I’m cashing in on all the summer work I can get. I want to use the Palm and the computer in order to avoid too much paper. I generate stacks of paper and it’s a problem. Also, I want to have study tools available wherever I am, in one or maybe two easy formats. From my experience, I learn very well from actually making the flashcards. The problem is, I don’t use them optimally.
I know technology isn’t going to do the work for me, but I think it will be a useful tool. I’ve heard excellent things about supermemo for years now, many people. I think I’ll have everything working by Sunday.
Thanks for all the advice. It’s all working out nicely. Open Office is quite the thing, isn’t it?
SuperMemo is also useful for flashcards without characters, at the early stages of Chinese learning. Although it is highly advisable to have the “sound” already in your head before you rely on reading the Pinyin, so that you don’t develop a really heavy foreigner accent.
So I’ve got my new Palm TX with CJKOS, Supermemo and Pleco. When my characters are small in supermemo, I can read them OK – they’re not what I would have considered “high-resolution” to look like, but they’re ok. But when I view larger characters in supermemo, they’re basically illegible…you know, that really big blocky look?
They’re so blocky that I can’t read them. I’ve installed tons of different fonts and played around with the settings in CJKOS…any suggestions? I went all out on my PDA so I could enjoy this high-resolution I’ve been hearing about, only to suffer through low-resolution =)
Welcome to my personal nightmare, Tianfu. I’ve followed the directions outlined here and on the supermemo sight as well. Big characters look like legos. I have a feeling it’s supermemo, and not the palm itself.
I still can’t seem to make supermemo files on my pc and convert them to useable PDA files. My PDA is a pocket pc not a palm. I’ve tried all of the suggestions, including using that converter file available on the supermemo website (is that just for palm?) and sometimes i manage to get a useable supermemo file but it’s empty. Anyway, i’m content enough at the moment, to blunder on inputting my info directly onto the PDA (i can back the files up now hurrah!)
I wanted to ask:
Right now I have about 350 character f/cards on the PDA and i’m learning fast (I think the PDA was an excellent purchase even if i only use it for supermemo). Do you think it’s a good idea to create seperate databases as i continue to study or just create one huge database with thousands of characters?
canuctyuktuk, this sucks! there has to be an explanation for this – everyone here (and on other forums) has been so happy about the new hi-res capabilities of the new supermemo, but I have to drill characters that look like legos (i like that description a lot). i’m hoping miltownkid or someone else can give us some hope, here.
jacktorrence, i’m only making an educated guess, but I think that converter is for palm only. and i use pleco all the time, it has so many senses for each word along with example sentences – today I was able to look up how to ask someone to copy a key for me: the example sentence was exactly what I needed. I purchased the full version for $120 – the cheaper versions might work well for other people, but I do classical chinese stuff and didn’t want to be left hanging.
Edit: I solved my hi-resolution problem…I just turned off the bold fonts in CJKOS, and the characters are more defined now and look much better. =)
That Google Spreadsheet thing is out now too. If anyone was interested we could also work together to make new databases as a group (we’d just need to choose a topic.)
i could only watch the first minute or so of the video, looks awesome though. miltownkid, i know you’ve posted about the google database stuff before, maybe you can refresh my memory.
would we just make databases as usual, save em in tab delimited format, and upload them to this google database? I definitely want to start working on Taiwan Today and Integrated Chinese 1 and 2 (many universities in the US use integrated Chinese, great book). I was planning on doing ShiDa 2 下 unless you’ve already made it. and then whatever else.
There it be. We could work on them all at the same time (example: with 2 people one person could do odd chapters of a book, the other even.) A person could either work on it directly inside the Google GUI, or do work in Excel (or whatever) then copy and paste. I’ll have to do a test run to make sure I can get through the whole process (make one on google, save and download, then covert to palm), but I can’t see why it wouldn’t work.
Thanks. That was just for fun, but I think I’ve been inspired to make more (and more organized) videos. I’ll make some about making new databases, making templates and stuff like that. Should be fun.
The spreadsheet project sounds pretty good. I have some Chinese vocabulary that I can contribute. Hopefully I could get some useful vocabulary out of this project from others as well.
Perhaps we need to make this a separate thread?
There’s two minor problems that I can see this project having:
we need somebody in charge to manage the list of people that have read/edit access to the file.
It’d be nice if we could have people contribute something before they get access so as to encourage people to work together. However, people would also need to know what is already there, so that they could know if there’s something they could contribute. I don’t know how this could be done, though.
I heard Truant say that even though he’d asked for donations for the flashcards that he made available for free, only a paltry number of people actually donated money (or beer). It’d be nice if we could have a way to encourage people to contribute some vocabulary without just leaching what is already there.
. You don’t NEED excel to do the databases, just anything that can save the file as a “tab delimated (sp?)” thing (or whatever).