0.4.8 New and Noteworthy
After receiving some good feedback, zdt 0.4.8 is finally out. Unfortunately there is no update download for this release so you’ll have to download the whole thing. Also, Mac people will have to keep waiting for me to save up my money for a Mac Mini. I have a mac build available for testing but it looks like it has issues which I’ll need to debug myself.
Everyone can download the new release from here.
The change log contains a list of all bugs/feature requests fixed in this release.
Highlights
Writing sheets. Ever wanted to learn how to write chinese characters? No??? Well maybe your teacher does. Now the zdt can generate practice writing sheets in pdf format from your categories. These practice writing sheets are based off the PThis functionality is available by using the Export categories function and choosing the ‘writing’ format. You can configure how many boxes you want on your sheet, whether to show simplified/traditional, and other things as well. Please play around with it and give me feedback. Note, you’ll need to make sure you have the chinese fonts installed in your PDF reader. Adobe Acrobat should handle that automatically for you.
Backup/Restore User Data Wizards. Like their name sounds, makes it easy to create backups of your categories and then easily restore them later. Especially useful if you want to share your categories with multiple zdt installs or even with different people. These two functions are available from the File menu.
Font handling improvements. When you change the default font in the preferences, the zdt will now respect the font size you choose. You can also increase/decrease the text size dynamically using the Ctrl + and Ctrl - keys or from the Edit > Text Size menu. This is similar to the same functionality that Firefox offers for adjusting the text size on a webpage.
Context Sensitive Help. If you have any trouble figuring out what something does, try pressing the help key to bring up the help for the view or dialog you are currently in. In Windows, the help key is F1. On Linux it’s Ctrl F1 and on Mac it’s really the ‘Help’ key.
Help additions. Help is still currently a work in progress andn zdt 0.4.8, you’ll see I actually made some progress. 
There’s actually content in there now, some of it useful.
More keyboard accessible flashcards. Especially on the definition test, you’ll find it’s easy to go through the test using just the keyboard. Use the number keys (1,2,3,4) to choose your definition and press ‘Enter’ to go to the next card. Check out the ‘Keyboard Shortcuts‘ section in the help for a list of all the shortcuts.
Add comment May 6th, 2006