NDS: DSZhongwen v1.0b

[rrc2soft]

Via rrc2soft (author).
rrc2soft has just released a new version of DSZhongwen (v1.0b), his application for learning (a bit of) chinese using the nintendo DS.

v1.0b (August 04, 2007)
- New exam added: "Meaning". Check if you know the correct hanzi associated with a certain meaning.
- Minor bugs fixed.
- All ideograms from my elemental chinese class have been added.

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[andwan0]

Does anyone know whether this is a bug. I cannot seem to create any new grammar lessons. I copied lesson folder 1 as 2 and incremented the num.txt file to indicate that there's 2 lessons now. But lesson 2 doesn't show up within game. So I edited lesson 1 phrase.txt file to different characters just to see if it works and yes it works, I can see the different characters in the lesson.... but only in lesson 1. Is it a bug it won't show more than 1 grammar lesson?

[andwan0]

Yes. The developers didn't even implement the function l_gram_getLessons() in file ct_l_gram.c -

int l_gram_getLessons()
{
   return 1;
}

It always returns 1!!! Hmm, looks like I'll have to fix this and rebuild my own port. Now, how do we build such NDS programs??

[andwan0]

How to make good use out of DSZhongen for NDS

First you need to gradually collect/gather vocabulary on a weekly basis. Not too much otherwise you will overload your brain. If you follow a text book then usually they have about 10-20 new words per chapter that you can follow. Or if you follow a taught class then the teacher might give new set of vocabulary out each week.

For this example am going to assume you are attending a taught class where the teacher hands out new vocabulary each week. Also in class the teacher might mention new words not part of the vocabulary. Note them down. Also, some of the exercises and homework given to us requires us to look up unknown unfamiliar words. Note them down.

Immediately after class each week, you need to compile/build your vocabulary in some database on your computer for easy look up and printout. I use ZDT (http://zdt.sourceforge.net/) to categorise and store my vocabulary, divided by class/lesson/chapter. In ZDT, create a new category for your new lesson or chapter.

Now look up your chinese word in the bottom pane dictionary. Once you have found the definition, click & drag that word into your folder/category for this week's class/chapter. If you can't find the word, try searching by "Contains" or "Begins With". Remember using the ZDT dictionary, typing in pinyin with tone numbers should be able to find that word (ie. ren2 or zhong1wen2). The only funny quirk is that some chinese words have a dropped tone on the 2nd character (ie. ren4shi but normally the shi character is shi2) so you need to get the tones correct. Otherwise you can look up by English definition. Or you can try typing in Chinese characters itself to find your word.

You can stop here if you don't have a Nintendo DS with DSZhongwen program. With ZDT you can use the Flashcards feature to test yourself with the current vocabulary set. Remember you need to know pinyin and writing out the tones in numbers (1, 2, 3, 4). If you have a Nintendo DS with DSZhongwen program then you can read more below.

Once you have finished building up a vocabulary list, remember to save. Now right-click on your folder in the top-left pane and chose Export. Double-check the export category is the one you want to export. Note the file name and location. Click Finish.

Now you need Microsoft Excel or some spreadsheet program (ie. Google Spreadsheet). Open the new text file (from wherever it was exported to). Select All and copy it. Paste it into your empty spreadsheet (cell A1 will do). Now select column B (assuming this is simplified character column) and ensure all the characters in column B is highlighted. Copy. Paste back into the text file you just or had opened. Save it (we don't need the English definitions or pinyin since our next program knows how to translate the characters).

Rename this text file to "phrase.txt" (without the double-quotes). In your DSZhongwen\lgram sub-folder create a new folder. DSZhongwen automatically comes with some sample lesson folders but I usually delete them all (the folders named 1, 2, 3, etc) and start from scratch. So my folder 1 would correspond to the textbook chapter 1 or lesson 1 from class.

Lets pretend this is chapter 1 or class 1. I have created a new folder called 1 within DSZhongwen\lgram folder. Copy phrase.txt to this new folder called 1. Also ensure that phrase.txt is saved with encoding "Unicode big endian" (which you can see in Notepad). Now you need 3 more plain text files called "intro_eng.txt", "text_eng.txt" and "title.txt". They should contain the following format:

intro_eng.txt
LESSON 1
TITLE FOR LESSON 1

text_eng.txt
6 Some words about the first 6 chinese words you need to learn
6 Some words about the second 6 chinese words you need to learn
6 Some words about the third 6 chinese words you need to learn

title.txt
TITLE FOR LESSON 1

And that's it. You should now be able to use Grammar feature within the game/program.

What about Ideograms (the lhanzi folder)? Okay, Ideograms only allow one character words. This is meant to practice words broken down into single characters. We can do this but with a little more preparation work. Let's do it!

Make a copy of the DSZhongwen\lgram\1 folder (or whatever number). Assuming you cleared/deleted all the numbered folders in DSZhongwen\lhanzi then you can copy/paste the folder from lgram into lhanzi... otherwise if you already have a number allocated in lhanzi then you'll need to use some other number (unless you don't mind overwriting the existing lhanzi one). I suggest keeping the lessons similar... so that Grammar lesson 1 is all about full words (with more than 1 character, etc).... while Ideogram (lhanzi folder) lesson 1 contains single character words that were broken up from the long words from the Grammar lesson 1.

We need to change the format of the phrase.txt in lhanzi folder. Open the phrase.txt file in Notepad. Go through each line and put a space in between each Chinese word (ie. for 2 character words, put a space in between the characters, for 3 character words, put a space in between each character). We need another program called DimSum (http://www.mandarintools.com/dimsum.html). From the opened phrase.txt file Select All and copy. Paste into DimSum. Goto Tools menu, Append Definitions, Sort by pinyin. DimSum will just add a tabulated definition list to the bottom of the text file. What we want to copy is just that tabulated data (and not the existing old list at the top). Paste into a new blank spreadsheet (ie. A1). Now copy just column A on all the characters. Paste it back into phrase.txt overwriting everything that was previously in it. Now we have a list of single characters without duplications. Just one more clean up. You need to put ALL the characters into one single line (line 1), each separated by a space. Just press END, DELETE, SPACE and repeat. NB: for each lhanzi (Ideograms) lesson, don't go more than 50. I have lessons around 46 single characters and they are fine. If you have too big then it'll crash when you try to access that lesson in game.