9 Comments Add your own

• 1. Ruben  |  January 2nd, 2007 at 2:05 pm

  I think this function would be a helpful improvement! Currently I have files where some elements have a start and end delimeter/tag. For example:
  [hao3]
  In this case the start tag is [ and the end tag is ].
  Maybe you could add an option to define if an element has a start and/or an end “tag”.
  But even without this extra option I think it would still be good functionality.

• 2. Chris  |  January 2nd, 2007 at 2:11 pm

  Hi Ruben,

  Do you think you could send me one of your files so I can do some testing with it? Just send to my email, fongcn@gmail.com

  Thanks

  Chris

• 3. drahnier  |  January 4th, 2007 at 9:38 am

  would be great if the importing tool would allow missing elements, that is, e. g. no definition given, no long character given and zdt would try to substitue the missing elements from it’s database.

  also it would be nice to have some kind of feedback from the import, so that errors can be traced (e. g. invalid syntax in input file detected, or a list of not imported items).

  id also like to see import tolerates special characters such as “…”, or “_”, so that someting like 除了_以外 can be successfully imported.

• 4. Chris  |  January 4th, 2007 at 10:30 am

  Hi Drahnier,

  That’s kind of what the checkboxes are there for, but more for a list based context, not an individual entry missing an element. I agree with you for the need of some kind of import log. That will definately be included. Including special characters has been requested by several people, but I’ll have to do more investigation to see what implications that would have. Should it allow just a couple of special characters or be entirely freeform? Do you care about validating the pinyin in entries?

  Chris

• 5. drahnier  |  January 4th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

  Chris, I can only speak for myself, so
  (a) allowing just “…”, and “_” would do the trick for me.
  (b) I definitely welcome the log feature.
  (c) validating pinyin is a nice thing IMHO. at least a warning message in the log might be a good idea.

  Somehow related: Could you try to carefully select where zdt generates it’s (log)files. I’m running this on Windows Vista and have some problems with file/directory permissions when not running zdt as administrator (despite of Vista’s folder vitalization). IMHO, it’s bad to let zdt create/modify files under “Program Files\…”. On most systems ordinary (restricted) user’s don’t have write/modify access to these folders on properly secured Windows boxes.

• 6. drahnier  |  January 4th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

  Chirs,
  I’ll give you a few examples of what I’d like zdt to parse sucessfully:

  一_就_ 一_就_ yi1_jiu4_

• 7. drahnier  |  January 4th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

  (sorry for this attempt – second try:)
  一_就_ 一_就_ yi1_jiu4_
  “_” in Chinese char and pinyin
  玩儿 玩儿 wan2r
  “r” instead of “er” for compounds
  _极了 _极了 _ji2le
  trailing “_”
  从而 从而 cong2′er2
  “‘” in pinyin

• 8. Stephan  |  January 4th, 2007 at 8:35 pm

  I’d suggest also that you allow users to SAVE different import configurations, with both a name and a description field, so that people could select a preexisting configuration.

  I think you should also allow a regular expression option, for advanced users. While not many people will define their own sets, it allows people to create them and offer them for download on your site, etc. That might be a good way to get this out quickly too.

  As you know, I want zdt to fill in missing data fields from dictionary where possible.

  Another useful item (slightly related) is to allow merging of two different categories, and then prompt user when “duplicates” arise to see if both should be allowed. The reason this is related, is that I could always import a list into a new category (that will be an option I hope — create category in one step) and then choose to merge with an existing category. That way, if there were import problems, I wouldn’t have messed up my existing category. Sort of a poor man’s “trial import”.

  I’ll try and send some samples soon. Email is very slow right now because of Taiwan earthquake a week ago…

• 9. Stephan  |  January 4th, 2007 at 8:39 pm

  One more thing … Perhaps an enhancement to importing, but not the first round…

  I sometimes have multiple definitions within the same word. I’d like to be able to specify that delimeter also. Currently, for example, I generally use a semi-colon for multiple definitions. This will set things up for testing a single definition, etc.

  Be sure you handle the case where there are multiple pronunciations of the same character (hanzi) in the same import file. I have a lot of those, because I like to study them together. (example: de, dei)

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