Custom Import Wizard Take 2
January 19th, 2007
Based on people’s comments, my first attempt at a custom import page seemed to be too limited in the types of files it could handle. So here’s a screenshot of my second attempt.
You can now more directly specify your file format in the ‘Import Format’ area. The letters S, T, P, D represent the four different elements (simplified chars, traditional chars, pinyin, and definition). Since its essentially a freeform text field, you can re-arrange their order, leave particular elements off, and add special delimiters. It’s a little more work to handle validation, but a lot more flexible. So what do you think? When you first look at the screen can you figure out how its supposed to be used? Please let me know.
Entry Filed under: ZDT
11 Comments Add your own
1. Lee | February 7th, 2007 at 3:18 am
This looks like a good start, the one thing I don’t see is specifying the pinyin handling – i.e. is it tone markers or numbers? The other thing is handling ü, I’ve seen this represented a variety of ways, from the actual U with an umlaut to the full pinyin w/ tone marker, represented as ‘v’, or u:3, which is what Chinesepod export uses.
Of course automatic handling of all the above would be very cool.
In fact I see you have a drop-down – do you plan to put some popular formats there so people don’t have to create them from scratch, or is this only to remember past inputs?
2. Chris | February 7th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Hi Lee,
Yeah currently it automatically handles both pinyin with tone marks and tone numbers. Thanks for reminding me about the umlaut. I’ll have to get it to handle the ‘v’ case. Do you think you can send me a Chinesepod exported file to test with?
I will add some popular formats to the dropdown by default and it will automatically remember past inputs as well.
Chris
3. drahnier | February 10th, 2007 at 4:54 am
looks very clean and straightforward now. when can we expect a new version of zdt?
4. Chris | February 10th, 2007 at 8:34 am
I’m going to shoot for sometime in the next couple weeks to get a beta build out.
Chris
5. Stephan | March 4th, 2007 at 6:21 am
Looks somewhat easy to use. Does it handle just saying “whitespace” (which would mean any # of blanks, tabs) between elements? Sometimes I have 1 tab, sometimes 2, sometimes a space and a tab, etc. I can’t tell by looking
Second, is there a “preview” of the importing, or a table of the imported data BEFORE committing it to the category, etc?
6. Chris | March 6th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Hi Stephan,
Yeah, it should handle all your variable whitespace.
No preview of the entire importing yet. Are there examples of applications that do something like that?
Chris
7. thph2006 | March 11th, 2007 at 9:01 am
It looks great to me. What I’d really like to see along with it is the ability to have Pinyin syllable strings with spaces, capitalization and punctuation marks in the imported entries that survive the import:
Ke3 yi3, mei2 wen4 ti2. –> Ke3 yi3, mei2 wen4 ti2. –> Good
Ke3 yi3, mei2 wen4 ti2. –> Ke3yi3mei2wen4ti2 –> Not Good
The sound feature should also work properly with the formatted pinyin. It seems sensitive to it now.
thanks, tom
8. Chris | March 11th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Hi Tom,
I saw your recent bug report on Sourceforge. Is the list you’ve attached there representative of the file you want to be able to import in? Also, thanks for pointing out the sound feature not working quite right. I’ll have to take a look into it.
Chris
9. david3249 | March 14th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Hi Chris,
A few days ago I posted and then sent you two example import files. I was wondering if you received them or if you had any feed back?
Oh, also, I created a dictionary.txt file with about 20,000 words. It is also in the same format as the example files I sent. Is there any chance Zdt can be modified so that I can use my dictionary.txt file to match it up with my personal flashcard lists?
Thank you very much for your help. Awesome job on the program!
10. Stephan | March 14th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Re: Samples of previews… Word does that if you’re reading in a file with an unknown format. Also, Excel has an interesting way of previewing when importing data, etc.
11. J | April 27th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
When will this import wizard be available? I really need the ability to import large lists from .xls files.
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