Flashcard (As In Language Learning) Software Working On Pandora?

[cuetzpalin]

Hello,

I've been looking for a flashcard program to learn vocabulary that works on the Pandora. Tried Anki and Mnemosyne for linux with no luck. Does anybody here knows of such a software already?

Thanks

 

[Drack]

I'm in the process of porting Anki to Pandora.

I'm a very heavy Anki user studying Japanese (30 new cards/day, 300-400 reps/day) so I really want this on Pandora.

I'll post a PND when it's ready.

 

[Caine]

Thank you. Looking forward to it.

 

[Hitnrun]

I am too studying Japanese, I am looking for good software to compile for the Pandora, I compiled tagaini-jisho but the screen doesn't fit too well on the Pandora screen, still looking for another one.

Now in antecipation for Anki

 

[cuetzpalin]

I'm in the process of porting Anki to Pandora.

I'm a very heavy Anki user studying Japanese (30 new cards/day, 300-400 reps/day) so I really want this on Pandora.

I'll post a PND when it's ready.

Oh, that's just awesome... I forgot to mention that my plan was to study korean, as some apps I've seen doesn't support asian languages. Anki is definitely one of the best and I want to thank you in advance for working on this port.

This is really one of the things that make the Pandora so cool... a lot of users are porting and programming for it and thus Pandora software library will be HUGE very soon.

Thanks a lot, again!

 

[Drack]

One possible concern with foreign languages is Input Method software on the Pandora. On Linux in general I have had bad experiences with scim and good experiences with ibus. Without the ability to type Asian characters on the Pandora, functionality of the program will be reduced quite a bit if your language of choice uses them. If anyone has already tried to get Input Method software working, let me know what you've found.

Anki is written in Python (built-in for Pandora) and uses PyQT, sqlalchemy and simplejson (all 3 are already in Angstrom repository). It shouldn't be difficult to get running and packaged. I'll be working on it this weekend.

 

[Drack]

Update: Built libanki on the pandora.

The Anki UI is going to take a bit more effort. It uses a few things that aren't in the angstrom repositories that depend on other things also not in the repository (It looks like QT and PyQT in the repository are missing a few bits that anki uses). I'm also running out of NAND space and every time I've tried to boot from SDCard, wifi doesn't work, so I need to sort that out too if I run out of space before I gather all the necessary bits to build the Anki UI.

Also, since a lof of things it uses are pretty big libraries that aren't built into the Pandora (loads of python modules, QT, etc.) it's going to end up as a large PND file. Can't say how large yet though, I'm still trying to get all the dependencies ready.

 

[Eniko]

This would be great, I'm going to major in Japanese starting next month.

 

[Mqark]

Brilliant!
Just when I was thinking of buying some cards, this comes along - perfect! Thanks, I can't wait to try your port. Thanks again

 

[Hitnrun]

There are lots of flashcard / japanese dictionaries with sources, if someone has any suggestion of a good one please tell us so we compile it for you.

 

[Drack]

Quick update: IT WORKS.

I spent pretty much the whole weekend working on this. I had to compile Qt from source, which took 29 hours on the Pandora at 800Mhz ... If anyone else needs "real" Qt instead of OpenEmbedded's Qt I can put it on the web to save you the trouble.

Anyway, I have gotten the Anki GUI to work!

-Downloading plugins works.

-The Japanese plugin does not include mecab (which provides readings for kanji) and mecab is also not in angstrom repositories. Another dependency I need to compile from src.

-Syncing will crash the application.

-Graphs work.

== EDIT ==

Pics or it didn't happen: Welcome screen - Graphs (I told you I was a heavy Anki user!)

Sorry for blurry pics, my good camera's SDCard got corrupted and I'm not about to rob my Pandora of its SDCard!

 

[second exodous]

Not that this will really be relevant to the Pandora but the only language learning method I've found that works, well, besides moving to the country and speaking the language daily with native speakers, is Pimsleur. I've never tried to learn a non Latin based language so maybe it isn't the best to learn to read Japanese but I'm sure that it would be good to learn to speak Japanese. How my brain works I do better with solely audio, visual screws me up a little. WARNING!: You'll look like a dork saying random phrases that no one around you understands(but I think it is worth it).

 

[zapman]

I'm also running out of NAND space and every time I've tried to boot from SDCard, wifi doesn't work, so I need to sort that out too if I run out of space before I gather all the necessary bits to build the Anki UI.

The reason why you don't have any wifi when booting from SD is that the wifi-script was missing in the os files from http://openpandora.org/firmware/pandora-rootfs.tar.bz2 . I reported that as a bug and ED should have fixed it by now (see http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=10237 if you can speak German).

You can still enable wifi by typing

sudo /etc/init.d/wl1251-init start

into the terminal though

About porting Anki: great job!! My girlfriend is looking forward to this! Thanks a lot!

 

[Drack]

Forgot to mention earlier. I fixed the wifi problem by copying my nand to SD (using cp -a and excluding contents of proc sys media) instead of using an image. SD booted fine and had wifi.

 

[Eniko]

Great news, keep up the good work! Also wow, 29 hours to compile on the Pandora...

 

[Drack]

Another pic: Japanese support working. (Holy cow, 13:43 hours left on 78% battery?)

Still todo:

-Fix syncing crash.

-Make it into a PND.

-Change write location from NAND (~/.anki) to appdata.

 

[Caine]

Not that this will really be relevant to the Pandora but the only language learning method I've found that works, well, besides moving to the country and speaking the language daily with native speakers, is Pimsleur.

I've actually used Pimsleur Japanese for a while. I thought it was a bit too one-sided. Some sentences which sounded a bit odd to me became much clearer once I saw the words written out. Nevertheless, it's a reasonable way to practice some sentences.

 

[Hitnrun]

I spent pretty much the whole weekend working on this. I had to compile Qt from source, which took 29 hours on the Pandora at 800Mhz ... If anyone else needs "real" Qt instead of OpenEmbedded's Qt I can put it on the web to save you the trouble.

Care to share what problems you had with OE's QT? I compiled some QT programs with it and they all seemed to work fine.

 

[Drack]

I spent pretty much the whole weekend working on this. I had to compile Qt from source, which took 29 hours on the Pandora at 800Mhz ... If anyone else needs "real" Qt instead of OpenEmbedded's Qt I can put it on the web to save you the trouble.

Care to share what problems you had with OE's QT? I compiled some QT programs with it and they all seemed to work fine.

Qmake didn't work, even after specifying a QMAKESPEC. Also, PyQt seemed to be missing the pyuic executable. You can probably use OE's Qt to run anki, just not to build PyQt (I needed pyuic for anki, and needed qmake to build PyQt).

 

[cuetzpalin]

Drack,

Thanks a lot for all your hard work.