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+--- Thread: Beyond RTK1 using Twinkle? (/thread-694.html)
Beyond RTK1 using Twinkle? - jreaves - 2007-08-01
I've been using the Palm program Twinkle for RTK1, and I've found that it works great. It has been stable, is portable, and does a nice job of spacing my repetitions. Now that I'm approaching the last few hundred kanji in RTK1, I've started experimenting with Twinkle databases using Japanese sentences, which have required more editing on the PC (or Mac, in my case), and Twinkle doesn't seem so stable. My sentence database became corrupted after I deleted several rows in Twinkedit, and now the database won't open in Twinkedit. I posted a bug on the project web site.
After a flurry of activity late last year, the Twinkle project site seems to have become a ghost town. I don't want to build a huge database only to lose it to a file corruption, and not have a developer and/or user community to help out. (Granted, frequent backups would mitigate this risk this somewhat!)
- Has anyone else had similar problems with the stability of Twinkle?
- laxxy, you posted a similar bug on the Twinkle forum a few months ago. Was the problem ever resolved?
- Anki looks promising, but, like Twinkle, appears to be somewhat unstable at the moment.
Beyond RTK1 using Twinkle? - synewave - 2007-08-01
On the whole, Twinkle seems pretty good.
I don't know why, but sometimes, if I have X cards in a particular deck's 'Drill' box, when I go to study them, on the reviewing section I have Y cards to review, i.e. the amount of cards I really have in a particular stack doesn't tally with what's on the splash screen.
Also, I am a bit worried as to what will happen if I ever loose my Palm. My understanding is that review data is only stored on the Palm. So if the nightmare scenario did actually occur, (using a RevTK analogy) I'd have to start again with everything in the blue stack.
jgreaves Wrote:My sentence database became corrupted after I deleted several rows in Twinkedit, and now the database won't open in Twinkedit. I posted a bug on the project web site.I feel a lot happier about things when I can import a complete database in a 1er. It's a bit long winded, but what I usually do is (on my work PC) enter my data to Excel; periodically copy this to a plain text file; email it home (to my Mac with Twinkedit); as soon as it gets on to my Mac, I save it as EUC encoding.
If it's a "complete" file that I won't have to alter, then great. If not, rather than work with only one file, I import file 1 to Twinkle. Then if I ever want to add anything to that file, I import it as file 2 and then do a merge.
Previously, I've altered stuff within Twinkedit for existing files, but never deleted any rows.
One other issue I've noticed is when you have Japanese and English text in the same field. Using Japanese fonts/encoding sometimes makes my English text appear off the right hand side of the screen. I usually only loose a letter or 2 per line, so I can still make things out though.
Beyond RTK1 using Twinkle? - jreaves - 2007-08-01
I'll have to try the merge thing. I've been opening my backup copy of the pdb in TwinkEdit, importing new cards, and then reinstalling the resulting pdb to the Palm, overwriting the previous version. Merging makes more sense though. I'll have to try it.
The review data should be stored on your Mac (as well as on your Palm) if you have your backup conduit turned on when you Hotsynch. If you were to lose your Palm, the data would be on your PC and you could re-install the pdb on a new Palm. This is essentially what I do whenever I import new cards into my database.
The problem arises when the pdb becomes corrupt, for instance, by deleting some rows in Twinkedit. Then, you can't re-open the database in Twinkedit, though, it might still be possible to merge in new cards...
I don't even try to include Japanese and English in the same field. It looks awful. I have separate fields for the reading, Japanese meaning, and English meaning. Not being able to mix them in the same field hasn't been a big limitation for me so far.
Beyond RTK1 using Twinkle? - synewave - 2007-08-02
jreaves Wrote:The review data should be stored on your Mac (as well as on your Palm) if you have your backup conduit turned on when you Hotsynch. If you were to lose your Palm, the data would be on your PC and you could re-install the pdb on a new Palm. This is essentially what I do whenever I import new cards into my database.This is what I originally thought but then for some reason started to have doubts. Thanks for clearing it up!
'Merge' works well as far as Twinkle is concerned but you end up with loads of little .pdb files which seems a bit messy to me.
My plan for when I finish a deck (e.g. JLPTX grammar nuggets, or whatever) is to import the whole lot into Twinkedit to create just one .pdb file. This to me seems a bit tidier.