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

[sebt3]

[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).

Hum, qmake on pandora should work with the linux-g++ spec (aka the default one). That said I never compiled on the pandora. But I'm surprise that it didn't work.

 

[Hitnrun]

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).

Hmm ok, all qt things I compiled didn't used qmake, so I did not had this problem then.

 

[Drack]

Well, I'm very new to software development on Linux (I develop software for Windows as my full time job) so I maybe I was doing something completely retarded that caused Qmake to fail for whatever reason. Speaking of my job, progress will be slower during the week, because, well, I have to work

Update:

I have some files organized into a build ready to PND, but the question of file size is really getting to me. Anki is 8MB and has about 32MB of dependencies split pretty evenly between Qt stuff and Python modules. Looks like 40+MB on top of that for graph support (matplotlib python module is huge), and another 40+MB for Japanese support (mecab ipadic is huge).

I can probably make the graph stuff optional via an optional install into the PND's appdata folder ... not sure about the Japanese stuff, haven't gotten around to putting that in the PND'able build.

If these sizes seem scary huge, they will probably compress down a bit using squashfs for packaging the PND. I also may be able to remove the need for the 16 MB of Qt dependencies if I can rebuild PyQt against the OpenEmbedded Qt instead of the full Qt I built from source. The Hotfix 4 beta includes some python modules; if there's some duplication between that and the python modules anki needs I can slim it down some more. Mininum PND size seems to be 24MB before compression if I can remove everything I said I could, unless I find more removable junk in what's left like documentation and example code.

The PND'able build does not write to NAND. I haven't looked into the sync crash yet.


Edit: Forgot to mention, I've been using my Pandora Anki build (the non-PND'able one) for my daily 300+ flashcard reps studying Japanese ... Aside from there being no way to type Japanese on the Pandora and no syncing, it's working beautifully.

 

[sebt3]

If these sizes seem scary huge, they will probably compress down a bit using squashfs for packaging the PND.

There are already package way larger than that

I also may be able to remove the need for the 16 MB of Qt dependencies if I can rebuild PyQt against the OpenEmbedded Qt instead of the full Qt I built from source.

The qt in your pandora is nearly the same the one you're building manually (here are the patches) So you should be able to do that

Mininum PND size seems to be 24MB before compression if I can remove everything I said I could, unless I find more removable junk in what's left like documentation and example code.

Audacious is 21M uncompressed and the PND is 8M.

 

[cuetzpalin]

Would it work as-is with non-latin languages i.e. Korean, Greek, Chinese... besides Japanese?

 

[Drack]

Try it and let me know! It should have basic functionality with any character set the Pandora can input and display.

EDIT: PND link removed. It didn't work.

This is an early buggy first attempt at packaging it. No graphs, no syncing, no Japanese plugin compatibility, and it includes wasteful custom Qt libs.

If you don't feel like beta testing, wait for a better PND.

 

[cuetzpalin]

Can't get it to work, It tries to load, though. Probaly I lack some libraries?

 

[cuetzpalin]

Also, I tried to open some korean websites and it seems Pandora cannot display korean... what should I do to include korean support?

 

[Drack]

Interesting that you couldn't get the PND to run. I tested that PND running it on a fresh bootable SDCard using the current rootfs tarball (does that use hotfix 3 or 4 beta?). I'll have a new PND or .tar.bz2 up for download later today if you want to help me debug why you couldn't run the PND.

As for languages that work with Anki - Anki is capable of displaying whatever the fonts on the system can. The Japanese font built into the Pandora is missing a lot of kanji and many of the characters appear in the Chinese style rather than the Japanese style, so what I did was download a Japanese TTF font into /usr/share/fonts/truetype and set Anki's "Fonts and Colors" settings to use it for my flashcard fields that contained Japanese. Everything worked. I think you could do the same thing with a Korean font, or a font for whatever language you want to study. Other apps can use the fonts too, if they have that configuration option. I'm not planning on including fonts inside the PND, but I will include a link to a quality, free software Japanese font in my post when I have a good PND ready for the beta testing forum.

Typing in foreign languages is a different problem entirely. Anki isn't terribly useful if you can't make your own cards. To type a foreign language on a Pandora, you'd need Input Method software. Guess what my next project will be after the Anki port is done?

 

[Drack]

Ok, Cuetzpalin (or anyone else the PND I posted isn't working for). You can help me fix it! I don't think I can do it on my own since the PND works fine for me booting from a freshly formatted SDCard with just the rootfs and the PND on it. There must be something in that rootfs anki uses that's not there on standard Pandora installations.

If you want to help:

Download this tarball file to anywhere on your Pandora SDCard: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8938380/anki.tar.bz2
Then open a Terminal window and type this:

cd /path/to/the/tarball
tar -xvjf anki.tar.bz2
cd pndcontents
./anki.sh

And let me know what error you get!

Note that the tarball contains exactly the same files that are inside the PND.

 

[Hitnrun]

Ok, Cuetzpalin (or anyone else the PND I posted isn't working for). You can help me fix it! I don't think I can do it on my own since the PND works fine for me booting from a freshly formatted SDCard with just the rootfs and the PND on it. There must be something in that rootfs anki uses that's not there on standard Pandora installations.

If you want to help:

Download this tarball file to anywhere on your Pandora SDCard: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8938380/anki.tar.bz2
Then open a Terminal window and type this:

cd /path/to/the/tarball
tar -xvjf anki.tar.bz2
cd pndcontents
./anki.sh

And let me know what error you get!

Note that the tarball contains exactly the same files that are inside the PND.

Or they can paste the contents of their "/tmp/pndrunanki.out", which should be the same thing.

 

[cuetzpalin]

File "./ankiqt/anki", line 19, in <module>
import ankiqt
ImportError: No module named ankiqt

 

[cuetzpalin]

Or they can paste the contents of their "/tmp/pndrunanki.out", which should be the same thing.

in fork!
PND ++ /media/mmcblk0p1/pandora/menu//anki.pnd
mountpoint: /media/mmcblk0p1
Basename: anki
mkdir: cannot create directory `/mnt/pnd/anki': Read-only file system
mkdir -p /mnt/pnd/anki
mkdir: cannot create directory `/mnt/utmp/anki': Read-only file system
/mnt/utmp/anki
/usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh: line 124: [: !: integer expression expected
not mounted on loop yet, doing so
Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...
Try `grep --help' for more information.
Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...
Try `grep --help' for more information.
LoopMountedon:
/dev/loop2
Filetype is Squashfs
sudo mount -t squashfs /dev/loop2
mount: mount point /mnt/pnd/anki does not exist
mounting union!
Filesystem is vfat
/sbin/mount.aufs:mount.aufs.c:194: /mnt/utmp/anki: No such file or directory
/usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh: line 198: cd: /mnt/utmp/anki: No such file or directory
/usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh: line 200: ././anki.sh: No such file or directory
app exited
rmdir: failed to remove `/mnt/utmp/anki': No such file or directory
rm: cannot remove `/mnt/utmp/anki': No such file or directory
umount: /mnt/utmp/anki: not found
umount failed, didnt clean up



This are the contents of the file.

Thanks for your help and support!

 

[Drack]

Thanks. When the script in the tarball ran, it couldn't find the Anki GUI module so I relocated it to the same location as the other modules for future builds.

From the PND log ... It looks like libpnd couldn't make the mount point for the PND contents (due to not having write permissions?), so my code never got executed in the first place .. no idea how to fix that.

I am currently testing a new PND on my own Pandora with the module fix, and also with graph support. Also, a new Anki version was just released so my port taunts me with a notification of it every time I run it. Think I'll try to get the new PND out today and update to the new version over the weekend ... maybe it won't have sync problems like this one even if it does, getting this port to a releasable state is my main goal for this weekend.

 

[Drack]

EDIT: PND link removed. It didn't work.

 

[Pleng]

Hey just wanted to say a big thanks for this. Haven't had a chance to try this out yet, but as soon as I get my second batch Pandora I'm going to give it a go. A lot of GP2X's were sold as language learning tools and the controls absolutely sucked on them!

If enough good language learning/translation software gets ported over, and custom keymats become a possibility (what was the minimum order for a custom set of keymats again? like 1000?) there could be a (yet another!) whole new market emerging for Pandora.

 

[Lorkile]

I hope someone else has a bit better information to provide, but I couldn't get the first .pnd to load and I can't get this one to either. Seems pretty clear that it's accessing my memory stick for a few seconds before it just quits. Thanks so much though for working on this, it's definitely something I'm looking forward to getting to fiddle with.

 

[Pleng]

I couldn't get the first .pnd to load and I can't get this one to either. Seems pretty clear that it's accessing my memory stick for a few seconds before it just quits

have you tried running from an SD card?

 

[Drack]

EDIT: I'm an idiot, fixed PND coming soon

 

[Drack]

I have a new PND working on my pandora:

-Updated to Anki 1.0.1
-Sync works! - This was actually an Anki bug, updating to the latest version fixed it.
-Graph support in the PND itself
-Japanese support now works, just download the plugin from within the app and it will all work.
-Even with all that, PND file only grew to 25MB with squashfs compression enabled.

Since people have been having problems with the last 2 PNDs I uploaded, I'm going to reflash my NAND, install only hotfix 3, then try the PND on a FAT32 formatted SDCard before I upload it. If it works, and I can get one more person who isn't me to confirm that it works, I will continue this thread in the Beta Testing forum.

EDIT: It works on a fresh rootfs'd bootable SDCard but it's NOT working on a fresh reflashed NAND using a FAT32 formatted SDCard. I'm gonna take my time on this PND and make sure it works everywhere before I release it. Sorry for teasing you like this.