Archive for November, 2005
Havn’t posted since the last release. I’ve been busy working on other projects. However, I’m still working on ideas for the next version of zdt. I’m very interested in improving the flashcard features. Two oft requested ones that I’m currently looking into are: Navigation - being able to go back to previously tested words in a flashcard session. The other is keeping track of what words were missed in a session, and keeping track of problem words in a category is another requested feature.
I also implemented a first pass at giving the tables sorting functionality. Unfortunately the version of Eclipse (3.1) that I ship with the zdt doesn’t support the nice sort indicators (at least out of the box). The latest 3.2 M3 release has this capability. I’d like to figure out if there’s a way to update the Eclipse RCP libraries easily using the update site. Otherwise no update capability for the next version of the zdt if I chose to migrate to the latest Eclipse libraries. And do I want to do this just for the little up and down arrows??
November 23rd, 2005
Less than one week after version 0.4.0 is released, a new version is out. 
This new version fixes two major bugs. You can now switch databases properly and you can now have search queries that consist of multiple words (ie. ‘post office’).
‘Early adopters’ can update their copy of the app using the instructions found here. Also, if you had previously downloaded the Adso database, please re-download it again. Somehow, I had forgot to insert the default categories into the old one.
November 2nd, 2005
I got an email from Stephan Hodges today and among one of his many comments, he mentions that the switching database function doesn’t work.
“What? I know I tested that!” I said to myself. I install from the latest installer and sure enough, switching the database doesn’t seem to work. “Crap!” I know I did a test so I tried again, but this time from within Eclipse. Of course that works. “What the?!?”
I spend a couple of hours trying to figure what went wrong. I know it’s gotta be a stupid mistake. I see the database preference has been persisted to the preference file, but the stupid app isn’t loading that value when deployed. I’m having no luck with everything I try and I’m extremely frustrated. Somehow I think to myself, “maybe I should search the Eclipse newsgroups”. So I type in “preferencestore & default” and *ding ding ding*, I hit this thread which describes my exact problem: http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/m91921544.html which also points to this bug report:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=86750
The fix is actually quite easy and it wasn’t my fault! Well, except for the crappy testing. I want to make a 0.4.1 release very soon. But I also want to include a fix for the dictionary search bug where you can’t search for definitions that contain more than one word. I hope to get something out over the next few days. Until then, you’ll need to stick with the default Cedict dictionary. Sorry.
November 1st, 2005