Great PocketPC / Palm Kanji tool

[PeteS]

http://www.gakusoft.com/

I use this on the tram to work every day and have found it really useful. It includes lessons for JLPT, and a few popular text books. It's free for 30 days.

[Satsujin]

I use the same program. It is really useful if you have the texts like Basic Kanji 1&2. Really good for review but not great on its own. However, KingKanji in combination with PAdict and Dokusha is a really powerful combination of learning tools for palm pilot owners learning Japanese.

PAdict: http://padict.sourceforge.net/
dokusha: http://www.geocities.com/andrew_brault/dokusha/

PAdict and dokusha will let you look up kanji compounds of kanji you come across in Kingkanji that you haven't seen before and also let you make flash-cards and specialized categorized vocab lists for review.

Oh yeah...they are free too!

[Satsujin]

Oh and with the newer Palm pilots (mine is a Tungsten E) you can listen to MP3 as well. So you can listen to your Japanese 101 podcast and practice kanji and look up words in the PAdict.

The Kanji look-up feature on PAdict for the palm is great. All you have to do is write in the kanji (with proper stroke order of course).

[PeteS]

Nice, I'll give those a go on my PocketPC with Styletap and see how it goes.

[schwing]

Oh and with the newer Palm pilots (mine is a Tungsten E) you can listen to MP3 as well.

Which Palm software do you use to listen to the MP3s with? I have a Tungsten C.

Thanks!

-ken

[Satsujin]

I use realplayer. The software came installed with the palm (which has an headphone out jack and also plays on a internal speaker). I don't know if the earlier models support this but if you check out palm's homepage you should be able to find out.

[mmbb80]

hi!

im looking for some palm application to help me to study japanese, and ive downloaded the dokusha and padict, but i dont really know which one ill keep in the main memory... thats only about 25 MB, and each program takes about 11 MB. Ill leave the other program in the card, but it will make it very slower than the one in the main memory.

So, what id like to know is wich program is likely to be used more frequently, and wich one is better to things like dictionary lookup, flashcard, etc... can someone help me?

and sorry for any grammar mystake... my primary language is portuguese, and i dont speak english very well

Mauricio

[Psy]

Your English is quite good, mmbb80. I think PAdict is a better program for beginners because of its handwriting recognition and easy search functions. However, its internal dictionary isn't that large (it doesn't contain names or the more difficult/rare words), the kanji-by-radical search is a bit clunky, and the handwriting recognition only extends a little ways outside the jyouyou kanji set. This is no problem for beginners, but students intermediate-level and above will probably prefer Dokusha for its large dictionary, multiple methods to search kanji, and fast Japanese word search. Both programs are great though, and you should definitely try them out.

Just my 2 cents.

[mmbb80]

Well, ive tried them out

My first day impressions:

APDict has a better interface, and at least in my palm (E2, everything in main memory) is a LOT faster than dokusha (for the dictionary lookup part). But the apdict dictionary is really smaller... Actually, i dont need the better dictionary right now (as im still in a very basic japanese level), so apdict is fine, at least for now.

One thing i found interesting in dokusha (but i really dont know how much its useful) is the kanji explorer... I think its nice to learn some new words, but for now im still struggling with grammar concepts

Theres one thing in your post that i think is strange... "Dokusha (...) fast Japanese word search.". As i said, in my palm apdict is faster. in fact, dokusha is slow. TOO slow. its annoying to wait 15, 20 secs to lookup a word, when in apdict it takes less than 1 sec. I guess im doing something very wrong.

But i found out a page with tips and programns that can (maybe) wipe out the apdict dictionary disadvantages:

http://www.peterrivard.com/Pages/WDIC.html

the main concept is to use wdic as a dictionary. you can lookup words from apdict, from INSIDE apdict. Takes less than 1 sec to do a serch, and look the dictionary size (excerpt from the page):

* Edict* (J<>E, ~400,000 entries, heavily modified for WDIC by me, ~23 MB)
* Enamdict* (Proper names in Japanese, 761,000 entries, lightly modified for WDIC, 34 MB)
* Kanjidic* (6353 kanji, lightly modified for WDIC, 2.6 MB)
* Conjugations* (key to grammar codes in Edict, created from Edict documentation, 17 KB)
* Webster's Unabridged, 1913 edition (optional, comes in self-extracting EXE, 17 MB--not part of the Japanese dictionary, and definitions can be a bit "quaint," but if you need a free English dictionary....)

(now, thats me again lol)

Thats all for free But theres one dictionary (used as part of wdic) that i didnt see, because its paid and i need to subscribe to some kind of japanese pay pall to buy that (the page is just... awfull). I just cant find my way there. The dictionary is the Eijiro and Waeiji.

theres some setup involved, like installing japanese support in the palm, what was a terrible experience to me, as i tried the free alternatives first, and in the end just installed j-os because nothing else works as expected. if you can afford it, just go with j-os. it works out of the box.

But whatever. The question is: with the apdict "wdic ability", what is the benefit from keeping dokusha?

Thanx in advance,
Mauricio

[Psy]

As i said, in my palm apdict is faster. in fact, dokusha is slow. TOO slow. its annoying to wait 15, 20 secs to lookup a word, when in apdict it takes less than 1 sec. I guess im doing something very wrong.

Ah! Forgot to mention that. You're not doing anything wrong, as the English->Japanese word search is horribly slow. I should have mentioned that it was the Japanese->English search that is lightning-fast.

But whatever. The question is: with the apdict "wdic ability", what is the benefit from keeping dokusha?

Dokusha is free with a large dictionary, whereas to use wdic you basically need to buy J-OS to use it decently. Word searching takes a bit longer too, seeing as in J-OS you have to input romaji (instead of just clicking the kana) in order to search a word. I had a lot of problems with wdic crashing on my Tungsten T5 as well.

[mmbb80]

Ah! Forgot to mention that. You're not doing anything wrong, as the English->Japanese word search is horribly slow. I should have mentioned that it was the Japanese->English search that is lightning-fast.

yes, i got your point now. and its really fast

Dokusha is free with a large dictionary, whereas to use wdic you basically need to buy J-OS to use it decently. Word searching takes a bit longer too, seeing as in J-OS you have to input romaji (instead of just clicking the kana) in order to search a word.

Actually you can use the apdict (or whatever app where you can highlight the search string). What im doing is: input kana or romaji from apdict, or even draw some kanjis in there. then you click in the romaji version of the string, and use wdicDA (one more click ) to lookup the word in wdic without even leave apdict. To me, in the apdict interface you can input the search string quickly. And with 2 cliks you open up the wdic definition. So at least for now, as a begginer im quite happy with this setup. Ill buy the ejiro dic (about U$ 10-15), as it has MUCH more words than any other dictionary ive seen around...

obviously, as a free solution dokusha seems to be the best option, but i think it worths the few bucks ill have to spend to put the ejiro and j-os together with apdict.

BTW, i moved all the apdict pdbs to the card, as im not using its dictionary anymore, and now im with apdict, dokusha, wdic and anki (its very simple, but i like its flashcards). Ill keep them around for a while until i can see whats being more useful to me.

I had a lot of problems with wdic crashing on my Tungsten T5 as well.

Luck you! Id like to have this problems + bigger screen package too But someday ill put my hands in a better palm, for now my E2 is good enough to help me to study and to play a little with other things.

And thanks for your help!

Mauricio