Messages

1

Stackz - New Feature Requests / Track failures

« on: October 09, 2007, 12:33:49 AM »

The website "Reviewing the Kanji" has a very cool feature:

You can Test your cards as long as you want, and naturally you'll fail some and pass some.  The cool thing is, when you quit, you get a screen that shows you all of the cards that you missed, so you can review them.  It would be cool if this would be implemented in Stackz.

It would essentially require tracking of your failures during a given test.  At the end of the test, you could choose to automatically highlight those missed cards for Learning.

When the number of cards in your Stack grows so large (my vocabulary now passes 6000) a cool feedback system like this would be invaluable.

Thanks!
Brett

2

General Discussion / Re: How many new words a day do you study?

« on: September 10, 2007, 10:21:27 PM »

I try for 30 words a day, 4 times a week.  Each day, I review the words I've learned new in the past 4 days, then on Friday I do a full review of my whole list.  My Japanese vocabulary is at about 3500 right now, and I'm hoping to get up to about 5000-6000 by December so I can pass the JLPT level 2.

I tried about 50 a day before, but my brain just couldn't handle it, so I had to step down to 30.

3

Stackz - New Feature Requests / More options for example sentences

« on: August 29, 2007, 10:32:14 PM »

Hi,

I really find the new Example Sentence feature to be great!  I have some suggestions on expanding its functionality.

Copy - It would be cool to copy an example sentence to the clipboard to paste it somewhere else.

Add to selectedstack - In addition to my "Vocab" and "Characters" Stackz files, I have a "Grammar" file which is Japanese - English.  It contains all of the sentence pairs I've found in practice tests, textbooks, etc.  It would be great to be able to copy example sentences directly in here, like you can with words in the dictionary.

Thanks!
Brett

4

Stackz - New Feature Requests / Re: New features

« on: July 12, 2007, 05:05:19 PM »

I already posted this before, but it was in "bug reports" and may have been overlooked as a feature request.

I'd like the dictionary search to be slightly more flexible.  Right now it's great, but sometimes you can't find what you're looking for, especially when searching for multiple word entries in English.
(PS, I did rebuild my index as suggested, and that fixed some problems, but these problems persist...)

Example:

Say I want to look up "same day"
The target word is 同日 [どうじつ] the same day

However, when I type in the search box "same day," there are no words found.

I have to type in exactly "the same day."  Then I get two search results:
同日 [どうじつ] the same day
ダブる [ダブる] to coincide (fall on the same day); to have two of something; to repeat a school year after failing

Note that in neither of these cases is this entry found:
その日 [そのひ] that day; the very same day

In order to find that, I have to type in exactly "the very same day."

It seems to me that when I type in "same day" I should get all three results:
同日 [どうじつ] the same day
ダブる [ダブる] to coincide (fall on the same day); to have two of something; to repeat a school year after failing
その日 [そのひ] that day; the very same day

I'm sure there's plenty of other definitions containing the words "same day" that I'm missing out on because I didn't type in the definition exactly as it's listed.

In the same vein, I should be able to type in "day same" and get the same results.  In other words, each word in the search box should be treated individually, and the dictionary should search for entries containing all of the individual words.

In this way it will function like a search engine on the internet.

I hope this suggestion is easy to implement.  I use Stackz as my primary dictionary for my Japanese studies!!!   

5

Stackz - New Feature Requests / Re: Being able to remove focus from the Edit window.

« on: June 21, 2007, 05:09:13 AM »

Thanks I just tried out this feature and it works great.

6

Stackz - New Feature Requests / Re: Kanji style screen saver for repetitive reinforcement?

« on: June 21, 2007, 05:07:20 AM »

Well I still use Stackz as my primary learning tool.  I import my lists of already learned entries into KanjiGold and then run it in the background at work.  I glance at it every so often, and it reinforces what I know, and reminds me of what I don't know.  Since it shows you question and answer at the same time, you're not really testing yourself, just refreshing your memory.  So Stackz and KanjiGold are very different in that regard.

7

PocketStackz / Re: System Requirements Listing??

« on: June 20, 2007, 10:01:39 PM »

Thanks for the tip! 

8

Stackz - New Feature Requests / Being able to remove focus from the Edit window.

« on: June 13, 2007, 10:40:59 PM »

The way I use Stackz is to have a set number of words to learn in a given time period, and then put them in my Review stack, which I test several times a week.  So, when I have long lists of words to learn (for example, for JLPT2) I first randomize them and break them up into weekly "lessons."  Then I learn one lesson per week (usually 100 words or so) and at the end of the week I copy-paste that entire lesson into the Unknown bin of my Review stack.

The problem is, what happens when I want to go back and add more cards to those lessons?  For example, right now I have a certain number of weeks until JLPT2.  So, I broke up all of the words I need to learn into that number of lessons.  But, occasionally I'll find a nice wordlist online, for example the onomatopoeia list, and I want to distribute that evenly among my current lessons.

It would be a simple matter of copy and paste, but the problem is, Stackz doesn't let you remove focus from the Edit window when you're in it.

So, instead of: Highlight words in the onomatopoeia list, Ctrl+C, selecting a lesson stack, Ctrl+V...repeat...

I have to: Edit list, Highlight words, Ctrl+C, Save, Close edit window, Select Lesson Stack, Ctrl+V, Select new list...repeat

I know it doesn't sound that annoying, but it is!!! 

Anyways, it would be nice to be able to select another stack while having the edit window open.

9

The Stackz Wordlists / Re: How to key in TSU and Yoons half size?

« on: June 08, 2007, 06:48:44 PM »

You can also type an "l" (lower-case L) preceding the small kana.  Soooo....

la = ぁ
li = ぃ
lu = ぅ
le =ぇ
lo = ぉ
ltsu = っ
lka = ヵ
lke = ヶ

And for small katakana vowels you just press spacebar twice.

la = ァ
li = ィ
lu = ゥ
le = ェ
lo = ォ

This is assuming you're using the standard input method.

10

Stackz - New Feature Requests / Re: Kanji style screen saver for repetitive reinforcement?

« on: June 06, 2007, 08:29:08 PM »

There is a great freeware program called KanjiGold that does exactly what you're talking about.  The feature is called PopKanji or PopVocabulary.  It runs consistently in the background and can display either Kanji or Vocab.  You can choose to show the question, answer, or both in seperate windows, and you can position the windows however you want.  I put the question at the top of the screen and the answer on the bottom, so my eyes can't look at both at the same time.

11

PocketStackz / System Requirements Listing??

« on: June 06, 2007, 08:25:09 PM »

Hi everyone,

I've been thinking of buying PocketStackz (and obviously a PocketPC to run it).  Since this is the ONLY thing I'll use the PocketPC for, I want to get the cheapest one possible.  Of course, I don't want to buy one so cheap that the software won't run!  Is there a listing anywhere of the minimum system requirements?  I couldn't find one anywhere on the website.  Thanks!

P.S.  I found a version of the HP Jornada 525 on the cheap: http://www.pocketpcmag.com/_archives/Jul01/jornada525.stm
Was thinking of buying it but don't know if it will run the software!

12

The Stackz Wordlists / Re: How to key in TSU and Yoons half size?

« on: June 04, 2007, 06:03:01 PM »

If you use the microsoft IME you should be able to just type in the word romanized and hit spacebar.

Example:  "hakkiri" -> はっきり

Type it in exactly how you would romanize it and the small っ should appear.  Same with katakana:

Example (my first name):  "buretto" -> ブレット

Also with the Youons, just type in normal romanization:

Example:  "shusha" -> しゅしゃ -> 取捨