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

[Lorkile]

Sorry for taking so long to reply, I had no access to the forums for a good while there (thought they were down). I was running from SD card, should have mentioned that as I haven't tested from NAND (hadn't thought to test from NAND, just assumed all testing should be done from SD card).

 

[Drack]

I have good news and bad news.

Bad news first: My LCD is dying. It still works fine when it's open all the way, but I fear that this glitch could spread to all screen angles soon and I'll have to send my Pandora back. Getting Anki working for everyone is my primary goal before the screen dies. Seems all my tech is breaking T_T

Good news: Here's the new PND (25MB download). Be sure to delete old PNDs (anki.pnd) as the filename for this one is different. You may also want to clear out the pandora/appdata/anki folder if you used the old ones.

This PND works on my Pandora when it's freshly reflashed and on a FAT32 formatted SDCard with nothing on it but the PND. I'm fairly confident it will work for you too

Uses the latest Anki version, 1.0.1

Graph support included in the PND.

Syncing works, but you will need to reset your timezone and date. When syncing, Anki told me my clock was off by some 34 thousand seconds (9 hours) and canceled the sync. I live in America's Eastern time zone (GMT-5) and I had to set my /etc/localtime symlink from GMT-5 to New_York then reset the date to get Anki to start syncing. This is a problem with the Pandora's first-run wizard. Your /etc/localtime symlink should point to a CITY in your time zone, not to its GMT+/-# value.

To set the clock properly for syncing:

Spoiler

First, see what timezones are available

cd /usr/share/zoneinfo
ls

Find your continent in that list, then cd to it and see available cities.

cd America
ls

Find a city in your timezone. Now replace the localtime symlink with the city you found.

sudo ln -sf New_York /etc/localtime

Sometimes this setting doesn't stick. To make it permanent for sure, set the TZ environment variable add it to bashrc:

export TZ=America/New_York
echo "export TZ=America/New_York" >>~/.bashrc

Your timezone is now set properly, but now you have to reset the date. To do this, use the "date" command. The parameter must be in MMDDHHMMYYYY format

sudo date 082322342010

Now restart your Pandora. Anki should not complain about your clock anymore when you sync.

Make sure you download your current anki deck (if any) using the sync feature instead of transferring the .anki file directly. I did the latter and it didn't sync properly, ended up downloading from a 4-day-old backup and now everything syncs fine.

Japanese learners:

Spoiler

Japanese support works, just download the plugin from within the app.

The Japanese font that comes with the Pandora is poor. It's missing a lot of kanji and shows a lot of the kanji it does have in the Chinese style. If you use kanji in your deck, you really ought to download a better font.

To add a font to the Pandora, download a TrueType (.ttf) font and add it to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ Yes, this is on your NAND if you aren't booting from SDCard. I haven't figured out a way to get anki to search for fonts inside appdata yet. Anyway, quality Japanese unicode fonts are freely and legally available here.

My favorite among that bunch is EPSON 教科書体 (epkyouka.ttf, "Epson Textbook"). This font is very good for those studying how to write characters because it shows them how they are properly written, not like a block font you'd get out of a computer. It also scales down to small sizes extremely well and is the easiest to read Japanese font I've encountered for kanji. It's available from that site (via epson.jp), but it comes in a self extracting .exe so I rehosted it here (4MB download)

After you add a Japanese font to your /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ folder, you can make anki use it using the settings -> Fonts and Colors menu.

Anki is free software licensed under GPLv3. Everything inside that PND has source code available from their respective websites. I would know, I had to compile it.

 

[Lorkile]

Got it to load, can't get my Pandora to connect to the web right now but I don't expect more problems.

 

[Eniko]

Thanks so much for all the hard work, Drack! I'll definitely be trying this later today. Sorry to hear about your LCD dying though, that's a real bummer.

 

[peca]

Thanks You a lot Drack!

 

[zapman]

thx Drack!

I could download and run a "2000+ chinese sentences" package without any problems!

On my girlfriend pandora, there is a problem though: after downloading a package via anki there is an error message about some mounting thing. It occurs with all packages that are available. Will post a screenshot with the exact error message soon, my girlfriend is not at home atm :/

Is hotfix4 a requirement for your anki pnd?

Thx for all your hard work!

 

[Drack]

thx Drack!

I could download and run a "2000+ chinese sentences" package without any problems!

On my girlfriend pandora, there is a problem though: after downloading a package via anki there is an error message about some mounting thing. It occurs with all packages that are available. Will post a screenshot with the exact error message soon, my girlfriend is not at home atm :/

Is hotfix4 a requirement for your anki pnd?

Thx for all your hard work!

Thanks for the confirmation of Anki working for you.

For your girlfriend's error, was the error message "File is corrupt or not an Anki database" at the top, with "Operation not permitted" messages at the bottom referencing /mnt/utmp if you scroll down? I ran into that during the course of building the port, and I think it has to do with file permissions. Thought I fixed it, but if anyone is getting that message I think I know what to do to get rid of it.

I tested this PND on Hotfix 3 and Hotfix 4, either should work. It definitely won't work without Hotfix 1.

 

[zapman]

thx Drack!

I could download and run a "2000+ chinese sentences" package without any problems!

On my girlfriend pandora, there is a problem though: after downloading a package via anki there is an error message about some mounting thing. It occurs with all packages that are available. Will post a screenshot with the exact error message soon, my girlfriend is not at home atm :/

Is hotfix4 a requirement for your anki pnd?

Thx for all your hard work!

Thanks for the confirmation of Anki working for you.

For your girlfriend's error, was the error message "File is corrupt or not an Anki database" at the top, with "Operation not permitted" messages at the bottom referencing /mnt/utmp if you scroll down? I ran into that during the course of building the port, and I think it has to do with file permissions. Thought I fixed it, but if anyone is getting that message I think I know what to do to get rid of it.

I tested this PND on Hotfix 3 and Hotfix 4, either should work. It definitely won't work without Hotfix 1.

yes, that was definately the error she got. Thx for looking into it

 

[zapman]

thx Drack!

I could download and run a "2000+ chinese sentences" package without any problems!

On my girlfriend pandora, there is a problem though: after downloading a package via anki there is an error message about some mounting thing. It occurs with all packages that are available. Will post a screenshot with the exact error message soon, my girlfriend is not at home atm :/

Is hotfix4 a requirement for your anki pnd?

Thx for all your hard work!

Thanks for the confirmation of Anki working for you.

For your girlfriend's error, was the error message "File is corrupt or not an Anki database" at the top, with "Operation not permitted" messages at the bottom referencing /mnt/utmp if you scroll down? I ran into that during the course of building the port, and I think it has to do with file permissions. Thought I fixed it, but if anyone is getting that message I think I know what to do to get rid of it.

I tested this PND on Hotfix 3 and Hotfix 4, either should work. It definitely won't work without Hotfix 1.

yes, that was definately the error she got. Thx for looking into it

here comes the screenshot:

 

[Drack]

OK, have your girlfriend try this PND. It's the same as the last one except that the file and directory permissions have been made as permissive as possible (chmod 777).

If this fixes your girlfriend's error, I'll start a thread in the Beta Testing forum with this PND and continue discussion there.

 

[zapman]

OK, have your girlfriend try this PND. It's the same as the last one except that the file and directory permissions have been made as permissive as possible (chmod 777).

If this fixes your girlfriend's error, I'll start a thread in the Beta Testing forum with this PND and continue discussion there.

I just tested it. I'm sorry to tell you that the problems remains. I checked quite some files/folders in the appdata folder, everyone has read&write access... even the packages that we tried to download seem to be there. Do you have any idea what else could cause the problem or what we could try?

Some more infos: if I use my SD card (16GB ext2 formatted) with the working copy of anki on her pandora, downloading packages works flawlessly (I once did a chmod 777 on the whole pandora folder on the SD card).
Her SD card is a FAT formatted 32GB card.

 

[Drack]

I think I found the problem. The app itself is trying to chmod a file inside the appdata folder, but you can't do that on a FAT32 card because the FAT32 filesystem does not support permissions.

I think the true fix will be to patch the application so that whenever it fails to do a permissions mod, it ignores the problem and keeps going instead of bombing out with an error. Going to work on this today.

 

[WizardStan]

I think the true fix will be to patch the application so that whenever it fails to do a permissions mod, it ignores the problem and keeps going instead of bombing out with an error. Going to work on this today.

Wouldn't a better fix be to check the permissions first before trying to alter them? You can't change the permissions, but if you read them back, FAT32 always responds 777, so it works. If you don't get back the minimum permissions, then you can't be on a FAT32 so you're safe (and required) to set them.

 

[Drack]

I think the true fix will be to patch the application so that whenever it fails to do a permissions mod, it ignores the problem and keeps going instead of bombing out with an error. Going to work on this today.

Wouldn't a better fix be to check the permissions first before trying to alter them? You can't change the permissions, but if you read them back, FAT32 always responds 777, so it works. If you don't get back the minimum permissions, then you can't be on a FAT32 so you're safe (and required) to set them.

I'm not the author of Anki, and I barely know any Python (language Anki is written in), so I want my Pandora patches to be as minimal as possible. I'll see if an "if" or a "try-catch" makes more sense when the code's in front of me.

I will submit a bug report, however, and I hope Damien Elmes (Anki's author) will implement a proper fix into the main Anki source.

 

[Drack]

New PND posted to the Beta Testing forum: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/56293-anki-friendly-intelligent-flashcards/

Also posted to Craig's forum: http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/34-anki-friendly-intelligent-flashcards/

I'm not taking sides in the forum war. I will watch both threads until one forum "wins" over the other.

Discussion of my Anki port should continue in the beta testing threads.