JBDRILL 1.0

Welcome to JBDrill, Jim Breen's simple Japanese Flashcard program.

I wrote JBDrill for my own use, but feedback from a couple of people who
have seen it has induced me to release it.


    Installation

First, you must have a working version of Tcl/Tk 8.0 or later on your
computer.

    * almost all Linux versions have this already;
    * Windows and Macintosh users will probably have to download and
      install it, e.g. from http://aspn.activestate.com/
      <http://aspn.activestate.com/> or http://www.tcl.tk/
      <http://www.tcl.tk/>

JBDrill comes in a ZIP archive file: jbdrill.zip, containing:

    jbdrill.tcl /(the program)/
    jbdrill_doc.txt /this information file (text version)./
jbdrill_doc.html /this information file (HTML version)./

Simply unzip this archive into a suitable location:

    * *Windows:* I suggest you create a folder under "Program Files"
    * *Linux:* Anywhere you like. Creating a "jbdrill" directory would
      be a good idea.
    * *Macintosh:* no idea. Sorry.


    Starting JBDrill

*Linux*

Under Linux, JBDrill may well start simply by typing

./jbdrill.tcl

in the directory where it was unpacked. If your copy of "wish" (the TCL
interpreter) is not in /usr/bin, either edit the first line of the
program, or start it with

wish jbdrill.tcl

I use the Gnome window manager, and have created a JBDrill applet on the
Task Bar. It depends on your system how you do this.

*Windows*

Under Windows you have to run "wish" (the TCL interpreter) and give it
the program file to interpret. An easy way to do this is to set up a
Shortcut. I have a Shortcut with the following Target line:

C:\Tcl\bin\wish.exe C:\kanji\jbdrill\jbdrill.tcl

Obviously you would have to make it match where you have Tcl/Tk and
JBDrill installed.


    Flashcard files

JBDrill uses flashcard files, which are simple text files in the
*EUC-JP* coding. They can be prepared by almost any word-processor,
however you may need to take care that the files are saved in the
correct coding.

Each "card" is a single line of text in the following format:

KANJI (sep) KANA (sep) English-1 (sep) English-2 (sep) etc.

where the (sep) can be a TAB character, a "/", a ";", a "[" or a "]".
Thus the common EDICT format of:

KANJI [KANA] /English-1/English-2/

will be fine. If the word you are using is only written in kana, you
will need to repeat the kana in the "KANJI" field.

Files can be of any name you like, but JBDrill will detect files with
extensions of "vcb" or "jfc".


    Using JBDrill

When started, JBDrill displays the following panel:

jbdsamp1.gif

    * the *Select File* button allows you to select the next vocabulary
      file to use. It must be pressed at least once in a run.

    * the *Select Font* button allows you to change the default font to
      any of the fonts available to Tcl/Tk on your computer. It may be a
      good idea to experiment to see what suits you best.

    * the 熟語, 読み方 and Meaning buttons will result in a random
      "card" being selected from the current file and the selected field
      displayed in a popup panel.

      Here is an example resulting from pressing the 熟語 button:

      jbdsamp2.gif

    * on the panel which has just popped up, clicking on the two *Show
      ....* buttons will reveal the other fields of the card.

    * clicking on the *OK* button makes the panel vanish, however this
      is not necessary as the next card can be selected simply by
      pressing one of the 熟語, 読み方 or Meaning buttons.

      Here are the panels after pressing those two buttons:

      jbdsamp3.gif

      jbdsamp4.gif

    * clicking on the *Delete* button will cause that card to be removed
      until the end of the run. Thus you can refine the set of cards to
      the ones you wish to study.

    * another file can be selected, or the same file repeated at any
      time by clicking on the *Select File* button.


    Future Improvements

If I ever get around to adding to JBDrill, it might be such things as:

    * the ability to save a stripped-down file back to disk;
    * the feature of marking cards according to difficulty and weighting
      the selection accordingly;
    * being able to save and restore the font, etc. configuration.


    Acknowledgements

Most of my Tcl/Tk has been learned from the book: "Graphical
Applications with Tcl & Tk" by Eric Foster-Johnson. The font-selection
window routine (which makes up over half the lines of code in JBDrill)
came from his book.

I would also like to acknowledge Jeff Hobbs at ActiveTcl, who is always
very helpful, and who has played such a significant part in the
internationalization of Tcl/Tk.


    Copyright

Oh yes, copyright.

As far as I am concerned anyone can do whatever they like with this
program. It really is too trivial to try and protect in any way.

*HOWEVER,* you use this program at your own risk. It is not warranted in
any way, either as to performance, or as to being safe to operate on
your computer.

Jim Breen
jwb@csse.monash.edu.au
September 2002