Hello everyone!

Finally, I got an Excel file containing all the Heisig Keywords in GERMAN with the Kanji.
But now, believe it or not, I'm too dumb to create a file that works in Mnemosyne. If I import a TXT, it doesn't import any Kanji. Does anyone have a solution to that problem??

Sorry man, I don't know anything about that software, but I use JFC and love it, people have a few problems with it, but it's very powerful and good overall, I'd be willing to format your file into JFC format if you wanted to.

One thing you might want to try is saving your text file in UTF-8 format and then trying to import it. Do you get any error messages?

I use Mnemosyne, it turns out (this is on the doc page of the website, I think) that you can't import UTF-8 format files from a .txt file, you have to save it in their .xml format.

What I did is add a couple of simple cards into Mnemosyne and export them as XML to learn the format (which is pretty straightforward). Then I wrote a perl script to turn my Supermemo style Q&A files into XML files that Mnemosyne could read.

Thanks you both!

For I really want to learn with Mnemosyne,... could you possibly convert my file to an appropriate format or send me the Pearl Script?

That would be great!

(P.s.: If you're good at pearl, can you write a script to copy and save all the stories of this page? That would be pretty helpful! Especially viewing on my PDA)

Thanks in advance!

Ben

I too need some Mnemosyne help...I'm not really a computer person so getting it to run is my problem! The install seems okay but when I try to start the App I get the error:

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Traceback (most recent call last):
File "mnemosyne", line 43, in ?
File "mnemosyne\core\mnemosyne_core.pyc", line 61, in initialise
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '~\\.mnemosyne'

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Running Japanese Win 98
mnemosyne 0.9.7

On the site http://mnemosyne-proj.sourceforge.net/faq.php it tells me:

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When I start the program under Windows, I get a message about a missing '~\\.mnemosyne' directory

In your system settings, add HOMEPATH=%USERPROFILE$ to your environment variables.

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I tried that but it doesn't help...anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

EDIT: This is my autoexec.bat

I don't know anything about this specific case, but "HOMEPATH=%USERPROFILE$" definitely looks wrong to me. Are you sure it's not supposed to be "HOMEPATH=%USERPROFILE%"?

Edit: I can see on that FAQ page that they have $ at the end, but I'm pretty sure that that's wrong. It makes no sense.

Thanks for the suggestion JimmySeal but unfortunately it didn't work.

Same error reported.

Have tried:

%USERPROFILE$
%USER PROFILE$
%USER PROFILE%
%USERPROFILE%

Any other ideas?

Use HOME instead.

In autoexec.bat:
set HOME=C:\blah

...or any other directory that already exists...

That will put all of Mnemosyne's information into that folder in a folder called ".mnemosyne". If you delete it, you lose your flashcards and your progress. You may want to put it somewhere else like C:\My Documents\ or something you're more likely to keep safe.

Don't forget to reboot!

Did you remember to reboot after each of those tries?
Pretty sure %USERPROFILE% (no space) would be the correct one.

If you want to try different things without rebooting, open the command line (Start -> Run -> "command" -> OK) and just type the set command out manually

set HOMEPATH=%USERPROFILE%
set HOME=%USERPROFILE%
etc.

aircawn - as we say in Scotland "Ya f$%kin' dancer!" - that has sorted it out nicely. Currently HOME is simply C:\

Presumably if I change that, I can just move the .mnemosyne file to the new directory I specify?

Thanks!

Just to clarify, if there are any others out there who have this problem on Win 98, run msconfig and add this to your Autoexec.bat

set HOME=C:\blah

'blah' being where you want to keep all your precious mnemosyne info.

aircawn is the MAN (or WOMAN)!

synewave Wrote:as we say in Scotland "Ya f$%kin' dancer!"

I'll remember that one.

Yeah, to move your data that would work. To be on the safe side though I'd...
change HOME,
reboot,
run Mnemosyne then quit,
overwrite the new .mnemosyne with the old,
rerun mnemosyne and check your data is there.

As for: set HOMEPATH=%USERPROFILE$

That does... well, nothing. %USERPROFILE% doesn't exist in Win98, it's more of a 2000/XP thing. Their FAQ needs updating.

Sorry for being lazy...but I'd rather be spending my time studying than working out the best way to do this...

I've got an Excel sheet, on that sheet I have 2 columns that I'd like to use as Mnemosyne Q and A. Q is kaji, A is the reading (hiragana).

I know I can import them...it's a question of how. I tried to do what ergerg said re: checking out the format of the .xml files from a Mnemosyne export but this machine I'm using is a disgrace...when I try to open the .xml file it hangs. So I can't see the file format which is a bit irritating.

So I tried saving my excel sheet using 'save as', 'tab delimited (txt)' but I couldn't import this file to Mnemosyne. I assume coz it had kanji and katakana. The Menmosyne website states "Excel's unicode text format is not the standard UTF-8, so this only works for latin characters."

Any good advice?

Cheers,

EDIT: I've had a look for a macro that would do the job but haven't found one yet. I'm running Excel 2000.

I'm not entirely sure you can save from Excel to 'plain text' formats like CSV and also in UTF-8. I just gave it a go here and I don't see the option, all it does is complain that you're going to lose some formatting...

Also I had a look at the XML format of an export file, here's an excerpt...

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mnemosyne core_version="1" time_of_start="1161711000" >
<category active="1">
<name><![CDATA[Verbs]]></name>
</category>
<item id="21ed1f0b" gr="2" e="2.500" ac_rp="1" rt_rp="0" lps="0" ac_rp_l="1" rt_rp_l="0" l_rp="0" n_rp="2">
<cat><![CDATA[Verbs]]></cat>
<Q><![CDATA[Run]]></Q>
<A><![CDATA[はしる]]></A>
</item>
<item id="98eb1f87" gr="2" e="2.500" ac_rp="1" rt_rp="0" lps="0" ac_rp_l="1" rt_rp_l="0" l_rp="0" n_rp="1">
<cat><![CDATA[Verbs]]></cat>
<Q><![CDATA[Walk]]></Q>
<A><![CDATA[あるく]]></A>
</item>
</mnemosyne>

It looks like there is extra information there that keeps track of your success rate with remembering items, which wouldn't exist in any XML file you create from Excel. Maybe you can omit most of it but I don't know how the program will behave.

Unless your Excel file is huge, I'd re-input the data. :/

Thanks for the advice. Yeah, re-inputting the data shouldn't been too much of a bother as I'm only adding 10-15 words a day. I was just looking for the lazy man's option!

Cheers,

[ファブリス]

I'm experimenting with the "learn sentences" approach.

Editing the sentences in Mnemosyne is slow, plus I want to keep a copy so I've tried entering the sentences in OpenOffice "Spreadsheet".

First column is Q, and second column is A. I use CTRL-Enter for multiple lines in the A part. Then I have to export it to CSV format, {Tab}, no delimiters, UTF-8. Then I have to a regexp in UltraEdit to replace the newline's in "A" with "<br>" that Mnemosyne likes, but leave the "\r\n" alone as these separate the items (ie. "[^\r]\n" > "\1<br>"). After that I can import the data and it looks like Mnemosyne ignores the existing ones (duplicates), and remembers the review status of those sentences that were already added, phew.

The problem is, if you edit any of the existing items, Mnemosyne doesn't understand it's the same during import and you loose the review status of the existing un-edited item.

concerning excel export:
perhaps one could try copying and pasting from Excel into smth like JWPce and saving from there?
I've never used Mnemosyne though, just a thought.

[ファブリス]

synewave Wrote:So I tried saving my excel sheet using 'save as', 'tab delimited (txt)' but I couldn't import this file to Mnemosyne. I assume coz it had kanji and katakana. The Menmosyne website states "Excel's unicode text format is not the standard UTF-8, so this only works for latin characters."

Download a trial version of UltraEdit if you haven't got it already. Then export your excel CSV file, tab delimited. It will be in unicode something from what I gather in this thread. Then load it up in UltraEdit and use File > Conversion > Unicode to UTF8 or one of the several options that convert to UTF8. In UltraEdit you can see the fileformat at the bottom of the window for example it might say "U8-UNIX". (U8 is UTF8).

Mind, the Q/A must be on a single line, and the only "newline" character allowed is between items. So if you have a Q or A with any carriage returns in it, Mnemosyne gives the very useful and informative error message "File does not seem to be in the correct format" or something like that.

Yes, it's an old thread, but no one gave a good answer. So here goes:

To export to mnemosyne from an Excel spreadsheet. First, organize the tabs in the same format as the Q and A. Next, copy the cells and paste them over on MS Word. It should paste as a table, so select the tables (select all under EDIT can work), then under TABLE options, pick "Convert", then "Table to Text". Select TAB as your seperator.

Ok, you should now have two columns of text. Now, "Save As" a .txt, and select UTF-8 encoding. That now can be imported by Mnemosyne.

Trust me, I found this out trying to get Rosetta Stone images and audio into mnemosyne. I also spent a bit of last night figuring out how to mine "Kanji Can" program for its stories, which I succeeded in doing (I paid the 20 bucks to register the program so it's justified).

Hope this helps whoever later reads the thread.

[ファブリス]

NukeMarine : just in case, if you use the Study area, please make sure not to publicly share Mark Donaghue / KanjiCan's stories. Those stories are part of the KanjiCan "package", and should not be copied. This happened once before and Mark contacted me about it. Thanks.

Of course. Any program or book I mined I do not share publicly unless it's with another that has a similar reference but lacking in ability to mine it. All the stories I've shared have had personal attention applied by myself, usually as a result of missing the kanji and needing a better story to imbed it in memory. I was just adding an anecdote to explain why I knew how to use Excel for purposes of mnemosyne, nothing more (well, maybe to give a free plug to KanjiCan as I did like his stories).