tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat May 12 08:00:00 2001
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RE: Palm mu'ghom
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Trimboli [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 4:20 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Palm mu'ghom
>
>
> From: "d'Armond Speers" <[email protected]>
> > Yup, I use SuperMemo on my Palm V.
>
>
> Speaking of which, I've got a Palm V that I carry around simply because
> we've got an extra one, and it helps me figure out other people's Palm
> problems. I'd really like to be able to impressively whip out my Palm and
> look up an obscure Klingon word. For those people who have created a
> Klingon dictionary for use on a Palm, what software did you use, and what
> formatting did you do? Please tell me how I might go about
> building a Palm
> Klingon dictionary; I'm not a heavy Palm user and don't know the best way.
>
> Note: I'm not going to spend any money on software! Freeware solutions
> would be nice! And it's got to work with Palm OS 3.1.1.
My first Palm-based Klingon dictionary was all done in Memo Pad. That's
free. Basically, I created a category named Klingon and I started a separate
memo for words starting with each letter of the alphabet. Some of these grew
to exceed the size limit for memos, so I split them so that the list of
memos looked like:
'
b
ch
Da
Do
gha
ghI
H
j
etc.
In other words, the first line of the memo was the letter those words began
with and if Memo Pad stopped me in the middle of an entry, I'd usually go
back to the first entry in that list that had this newest second letter. If
I was stopped on a word that started "mo", I'd cut all the words starting
with "mo" and paste them into the next memo and put "mo" in the first line
of that memo.
I'd use the Palm's generic search feature to find words. You can look up in
English or Klingon and if you are in Memo Pad when you do the search, that
starts the search by looking through all the memo pad items first.
This works, but it is rather free-form and depends upon your personal
discipline to remain consistent in terms of listing a word, its part of
speech, its source, its definition, and any other notes you care to take
about words. I HIGHLY recommend that you consistently record the source of a
word. This is your only insurance against data corruption via spelling
errors, etc.
This has the advantage that you can do the data entry on your PC if you
want, saving you a LOT of Graphiti practice, though I actually entered the
entire thing via Graphiti, which explains why I'm as good at Graphiti now as
I am.
Eventually, I spent a little money and got JFile. It is an excellent
flat-file database application for Palm OS. Everything fits in one file. The
data structure helps me remain consistent in the information I keep for each
word. I also put in binary fields for minor points of interest, like if a
word is a discovered pun, etc. My fields are:
Klingon word (string)
definition (string)
part_of_speech (popup, single entry)
grammar_note (popup, single entry)
source (popup, multiple entry)
reviewed (date)
canon (string)
related_words (string)
pun (boolean)
needs_attention (boolean)
derivative (boolean)
New_Words_List (boolean)
comment (string)
modified (modification date - automatic)
created (creation date - automatic)
This is actually the word list upon which I base everything else. I have
another Dictionary program (that costs money) for quicker lookup,
recommended by ghunchu'wI'. I use JTutor for flash card quizzes with an
edited version of the same word list. On the PC platform, I have a couple
more versions of the dictionary, some more up to date than others. My Access
database is a boat anchor I keep updating, though I'm not sure why, since I
never use it. I keep thinking I'll get around to doing something with it I
can't do with JFile, but nothing useful has come out of this fantasy yet. I
have d'Armond's pojwI' 1.7 that I've updated the word list for to make it
current and I use that most of the time I'm online for fast lookup. I have
not deleted my old Word file, though it is the least up-to-date, since it
involves the most work for data entry, since I need to do English-to-Klingon
as well as Klingon-to-English. I've pretty much given up on that one. Then I
maintain the New Words List at the KLI Web site as well.
It's somewhat of a hobby out of control, but once you start one of these
things, maintaining it is so much less work than building it up from
scratch.
> Thanks!
>
>
> SuStel
> Stardate 1360.3
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