しあわせ

Finally.
I’ve cleaned up the display as best I can for Windows. I don’t know whether it is just that I am am used to the display on the Mac, but I’m not 100% happy with how it looks on Windows XP. Maybe it looks better on a more recent release.
I’ve changed the colour to blue for the interface elements. Windows requires the Meiryo font or rather will probably look best with Meiryo. Unfortunately I cannot manage to resolve the display of the Chuta dictionary from within FileMaker, which cuts down the amount that is automated for a Windows user. Mac and Windows use the same base file and I just detect which platform it is running on and the changes happen automatically (more or less!). From the next version (whenever that might be) I hope to have a simultaneous release through more checking as I go along.

The downloads are here and I have a movie demonstrating Kanji Sieve instead of help files.

––update 01Aug10––
And already I have an update. When I was setting conditional formatting for Windows I inadvertently removed the record highlighting from the list view. Version 0.3.2 adds this back. I haven’t uploaded full packages for this just the Kanji Sieve Data.usr file. Replace the .usr file in v0.3.1 with this file. Unfortunately I haven’t implemented import of records yet, so any records you have will have to be re-entered.

I may have more time again to develop my little application Kanji Sieve.
While I still can’t solve my display problem on the PC to allow use of the Chuta dictionary, I can parse returns from Chuta so text can be broken down into words. Therefore for the time being (maybe longer. sorry) I’ve bypassed this feature and PC Users will have to use another dictionary and do searches manually. Once I’ve gotten the cleanup done for PC (and maybe toned down the colour for perhaps my only user!) I’ll post Kanji Sieve 0.3 for Windows within the next week or two.

In related news, FileMaker have released Filemaker Go. This is an app for iOS4 to allow you to run FileMaker databases on iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. I think this is potentially exciting. It’s at the more expensive end of the app price scale (£13, $20) but it looks fantastic and can open runtime solutions. It certainly had none of the issues I had going from Mac to PC. I tried Kanji Notebook on it and was surprised at how it looked and behaved. Mostly it behaves and looks exactly as it does on my MacBook, although because of the screen size you need to zoom around like in the iPhone version of Safari. The transfer was quick and easy, and according to the manuals the unsupported features are quite few. Lack of support for plugins though means that Kanji Sieve wouldn’t work as I really on external grep functions and Internet routines. On a more standard solution initially the bigger drawbacks are the lack of support for top to bottom Japanese text and a speed issue in running some scripts. But with a bit of thought and design specifically for an iPhone I might be able to make some useful and portable applications.

Kanji Sieve for Mac v0.3 is ready. Unfortunately due to pressing matters elsewhere this is about as far as I can go for now.
Unavoidably that means it could be a few months before a Windows version appears.
Rather than sit on the Mac version which is functional, now that I have permissions for the Chuta dictionary and Flashcard Deluxe features I decided to upload it.
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Coming soon. I had hoped to release v0.3 of Kanji Sieve in May, but it will now be mid-June. It required a lot of work. I’ve been cleaning up the behind the scenes scripting etc. and learning a lot as I go along. All the features I want for v0.3 are in place and working (hopefully without any bugs). What I am now mostly doing is sorting out the fonts on Windows. I also have to make some decisions about Kanji Notebook. I am using some data from it but there’s at least a month’s worth of work before the file is usable as a notebook. It possibly needs to be truncated and definitely needs to be locked away from the user in this release.

Some screen shots after the jump.
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Now with added Kanji Sieve. Or rather the way Kanji Sieve has evolved means I’ll be incorporating my Kanji NoteBook project with it.
Unfortunately I think the direction I’m heading in means an awful lot of work on the interface. And a lot of time I don’t have to spare at the moment, but I am working on it and am excited about the way it’s progressing.
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I finally bought myself an iPod Touch about a month ago. I wanted something to allow me to use electronic flashcards on the move. On the train I can use my DS and Kakitorikun but it’s impossible to use pen input properly on the bounce around tube journey. With the Touch I’ve more than doubled the amount of time I can study on the otherwise mostly unproductive daily commute, although I read a bit less as a consequence. I also find myself using it at other spare moments, a couple of minutes here and there going through flashcards. Read the rest of this entry »