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Move schedule data from RevTK to Anki-cool new anki plugin!

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Robert_Rauther New member

From: Germany Registered: 2008-02-19 Posts: 4

Hi guys,

what's all the fuss about?

The license agreement that comes with KanjiGym Light clearly states that no-one is allowed to decrypt, hack or "un-obfuscate" the program's database(s).

Not too difficult to read, if you ask me.

And that's exactly the point: Why doesn't anybody ASK before they do stuff like that? Chances are, if you don't hurt the books' sales, you'll get a friendly reply. Heck, you'll ALWAYS get a friendly reply. It might be "no", though.

And why might it be "no"? Well, c'mon guys, you're not 16-year-olds anymore.

Any publisher who prints 2,000 or more copies of any book NEEDS to sell those copies. Because there are actually people out there making a living by printing, advertising and distributing books. Let alone the booksellers, those people standing in bookstores, handing us the copies and operating the cash registers.

There's always a risk of not selling a book that has been printed. It's the publishers's risk, and it happens more often than not. Now, if you do something that might endanger further sales of the (few) books that actually make it out there in the market, you are doing your part in bringing down the book market.

If you want to deprive those people of their regular income, true enough, at first there's no-one to stop you, except for your own decency. Just don't whine if one day the state attorney knocks at your door. I won't pity you. I hope you won't pity yourselves, either.

So why are the "German friends" all "sweaty" about this? Because the German books are NEW. If you help killing them off before they've even had a chance to amortize themselves... well, do the math yourselves.

I, being a menial author in all this, have not even earnt the costs for the flights and the stays in Japan yet. You know, the actual investments needed for editing and typesetting the German books. Let alone received a single cent for the actual WORK of translating and writing them.

C'mon, people, you are intelligent and reasonable. All this is not rocket science:

Please do ask before doing anything that infringes other people's copyrights.

And do read the friggin' license agreement.

(Pardon my French, but I'm a bit peeved by the comments that have been made in this thread already.)

Let the publisher decide what to do with their data, OK?

After all, you don't even know who owns the rights for DIGITAL distribution, do you? Maybe you're infringing the rights of people you don't know at all, and maybe there are projects in the making by people who rightfully don't want you messing with their plans. Because their plans just might involve people who, again, get paid for doing what they do. Whose daily income is based on being able to do that. Sorry, guys, that's the way an economy works. Good for all of us. Gives us a chance to actually make a living out there.

That's why it is not up to you to decide how to use data that aren't yours. (Just in case I haven't been able to make my point by now.)

So, by all means, ASK BEFORE doing what you want to do, OK?

Robert Rauther

(editing: typos)

Last edited by Robert_Rauther (2008 February 20, 3:37 am)

woelpad Member

From: Chiba Registered: 2006-11-07 Posts: 425

Quite an honor to have Robert Rauther on the forums. And quite a storm those few remarks generated.

For the record, after posting my intention to look at the program, I first went to Robert's website and read his take on copyright (it's in German, but it's not too difficult to get the drift). I then downloaded the PC program, read the license, launched the program, verified that I could obtain any keyword in any of the available languages and left it at that.

I had used the Palm version in the past, in combination with this site, and thought it a great tool, for which I want to thank Lars and Robert (our German friends, but that's gotten a negative connotation).

So yes, KanjiGym Light makes it possible to find out all the keywords for free, just not in a handy list (staying within the terms of the license). The distinction is not mine. As far as prior art is concerned, this is the only authorized free on-line source I'm aware off. As such, publishing such a list still requires getting the author's/copyright holder's permission.

On a positive note, I have received a positive reply from Marc Bernabe, one of the Spanish translators, to include the list of Spanish keywords in my Greasemonkey script. Yves Maniette and Robert can expect a similar request shortly. And Robert, I hope it won't get axed before I ask.

Last edited by woelpad (2008 February 20, 4:04 am)

Robert_Rauther New member

From: Germany Registered: 2008-02-19 Posts: 4

No, no axing. I might typo the living daylights out of you, though.

Just kidding.

The honor is all mine, since I'm impressed by and really like these forums (edited).

On the other hand, I have the feeling that there's still a misunderstanding. While, of course, anybody could go to a library and simply type off the keywords out of the books within six straight hours or so, the cracked database also relates the kanji in UTF-8 to the keywords in all four languages. That, as you might agree, is something entirely else.

Guys, don't deliberately dishonor the license agreement and/or statutory law. Or, quite simply, common decency.

What do you think you're causing?

The next spin-off of KanjiGym Light, which would probably have included 3,000 Chinese characters, is now likely to be AES-encrypted and only be usable in the basement of a highly guarded military compound in Northern Sweden.

Just kidding.

It will, much rather, probably not be created at all.

Believe me, you can scare any publisher to death by passing around files containing copyrighted data. Or, much worse, incorporating them in your own projects without permission (now, that's clearly totally illegal).

Why are they scared? As I said: They have people on their payroll who actually have to make a living!

So what do you think they are going to do next? They're not likely to agree to creating another generous freeware and expect that to be honored by the users, of course.

Furthermore, most publishing houses have quite an agile legal department for self-defense these days. They don't like it, either. But as you can see, it sadly comes in quite handy rather often.

So, to all you data-hijackers out there: Don't be proud of yourselves, be ashamed. You're not making the world a prettier place. It only gets uglier by alienating the ones who actually CREATED the stuff you are illegally appropriating for yourselves.

(That, by the way, is not only "my take" on copyright law, but my conviction when it comes to all human relationships.)

By the way, if anyone is interested in legally using the data from the German books, please inquire with the German publisher, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

They are very nice people, and if they object to a suggestion you might have, they have a good reason to do so. It is not within MY humble legal power to grant sub-licenses.

For those of you still "interested" in "using" the data illegally, make sure you have enough money in your bank accounts first. That kind of stuff can get quite expensive. Grow up, guys. This is the information age.

Finally, if I've still not been able to drive my point home: Learners of Japanese, of all people, should adhere at least to the most basic rules of politeness, respect and civility.

(For those who just can't, there IS legal measures around the corner, believe in it or not.)

To those fair people out there playing by the rules: Have fun with the software, and let's have fun with the kanji!

Cheers.

Robert Rauther

(editing: more typos)
(editing: corrected a misunderstanding on my part)

Last edited by Robert_Rauther (2008 April 20, 7:11 am)

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xaarg Member

From: Neverland Registered: 2007-07-13 Posts: 160

Robert_Rauther wrote:
On the other hand, I have the feeling that there's still a misunderstanding. While, of course, anybody could go to a library and simply type off the keywords out of the books within six straight hours or so, the cracked database also relates the kanji in UTF-8 to the keywords in all four languages. That, as you might agree, is something entirely else.

Since when is how you copy information important? Is copying your keywords only illegal if it is easy? Actually I don't believe most people would extract keywords out of Kanjigym. It is much easier for 99% of the users to scan the book using the proper OCR software. Some handle kanji quite well.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
Guys, don't deliberately dishonor [...] common decency.

Is it indecent to distribute copyrighted material that can only be used with the books you sell? Or do you claim that you book is superfluous for owners of the keyword list? Then you charge quite a lot for a simple word list.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
What do you think you're causing?

I can tell you, what we are not causing. Your book is actually useful and I can not imagine, anybody would try this method without only because he found a list of words and kanji.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
The next spin-off of KanjiGym Light,[...]It will, much rather, probably not be created at all.

That's a good thing. It's a really useless software. It's missing quite a few stroke order diagrams and the method it uses to repeat kanji by lesson is quite silly. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Next time just supply a list of keywords for common SRS programs.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
Or, much worse, incorporating them in your own projects without permission (now, that's clearly totally illegal).

The list of offical use kanji which Heisig used as the main base for his book is copyrighted. Did he get a written permission from the Japanese Government or is Heisig just another copy cat? Well, it's not like there are cases where you can use copyrighted stuff without permission, right? It's always illegal. That means you are a criminal as well, because you share the "translation" of illegally copied information. I will call this the Robert-Rauther-wants-to-make-big-bucks-interpretation of copyright law. Doesn't seem to be a widespread interpretation.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
So what do you think they are going to do next? They're not likely to agree to creating another generous freeware and expect that to be honored by the users, of course.

No problem for anybody. We just use the books and for software we will look somewhere else. Anki and this website comes to mind, but there are a lot of other nice products, which can be used to make use of your book.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
So, to all you data-hijackers out there: Don't be proud of yourselves, be ashamed. You're not making the world a prettier place. It only gets uglier by alienating the ones who actually CREATED the stuff you are illegally appropriating for yourselves.

I see how you suffer each night, because people can learn easier with your book and don't need to copy a list of over 2000 words and kanji by hand.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
(That, by the way, is not only "my take" on copyright law, but my conviction when it comes to all human relationships.)

So your take on human relationships is "profit first"?

Robert_Rauther wrote:
For those of you still "interested" in "using" the data illegally, make sure you have enough money in your bank accounts first. That kind of stuff can get quite expensive. Grow up, guys. This is the information age.

There seems to be a misunderstanding on your part. The information age is not about making threats to people to stop them from sharing information.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
Finally, if I've still not been able to drive my point home: Learners of Japanese, of all people, should adhere at least to the most basic rules of politeness, respect and civility.

It is a sign of respect to you, when people force themselves to enter a huge list of words by hand? Aren't you insulting people by making their live harder than it needs to be?

Robert_Rauther wrote:
The license agreement that comes with KanjiGym Light clearly states that no-one is allowed to decrypt, hack or "un-obfuscate" the program's database(s).

It does not. It only says that you are not allowed to modify or disassemble the program. I am not sure that this included extracting the database, because disassembling has a specific meaning when it comes to computer programs. Well, I can't say more, but you don't need to disassemble or modify the program to get the plain text of the database.

Also as you don't need to accept the license before you download the software that license is probably not enforceable anyway, because you don't need a license for a software you already legally obtained (which you did by downloading it from an authorized website). Most people won't even notice that a LICENSE.TXT is included and they don't need to. You must make them read it.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
There's always a risk of not selling a book that has been printed. It's the publishers's risk, and it happens more often than not. Now, if you do something that might endanger further sales of the (few) books that actually make it out there in the market, you are doing your part in bringing down the book market.

This kind of market can be replaced by ebooks and print on demand. Amazon might make it possible in a few decades with stuff like this: http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wi … 000FI73MA/. It's like the music industry whining about the stagnating sales of conventional music CDs. There way of business might be outdated and will be replaced like a lot of others have been before. It's just natural. The times are always changing.

Last edited by xaarg (2008 February 22, 10:02 pm)

Robert_Rauther New member

From: Germany Registered: 2008-02-19 Posts: 4

Xaarg,

I think your tone is rather outrageous, especially for someone hiding behind a forum alias.

But I am, briefly, going to reply to what is right and what is wrong about your post.

You are right in pointing out that my previous post might have been a little unclear. Let me clarify: If you typed off the keywords out of the book and then used them in your own privately written software on your own private computer, without sharing them, that would probably constitute "fair use" (I'm only guessing, though).

What you're entirely failing to grasp is the concept of copyright. The English word pretty much gives it away: "Copyright" is the right to copy information created by human beings. If you don't hold the copyright, you must not copy and/or distribute that information without prior permission by the copyright holder, no matter by what technical means.

It's really that simple.

The copyright holder may charge you for copying the information or not, that's his/her choice. (Pretty much the same way you are free to decide who you lend/give your car/jacket/cigarettes/PC/whatever to.)

You need to educate yourself on this topic, especially before insulting other people in public.

If you want to share a qualified opinion on copyright with the public, please do so in an appropriate way. I'll always be happy to discuss it.

But I think your post is severely lacking in both style and content. I find it rather disappointing that such an unqualified comment is made on this forum.

When I say "it's the information age", I mean exactly that: Go out and study what copyright actually means, what you're allowed to do and what not. That is your responsibility.

Unless you happen to live in a dictatorship, the copyright laws of your country have been made by democratically elected lawmakers. Live by them.

As for the "big bucks": You seem to not have read my previous posts. Besides, if you ask for permission for a non-commercial project with the publisher, they are not likely to want to charge you anything. But they DO want to decide whether they give their consent or not. That's entirely legitimate.

As for the license agreement: Anyone installing the software is required to agree with it. Go check for yourself. Read point 5. in particular.

I am sure that if you take the effort to study what copyright means, you'll find that it makes a lot of sense.

If you feel the need to reply to me personally again, please do soften your tone.

Robert Rauther

(editing: corrected omission)

Last edited by Robert_Rauther (2008 February 24, 7:40 am)

gdaxeman Member

From: Brazil Registered: 2007-06-19 Posts: 278 Website

Robert_Rauther wrote:
The license agreement that comes with KanjiGym Light clearly states that no-one is allowed to decrypt, hack or "un-obfuscate" the program's database(s). [...] While, of course, anybody could go to a library and simply type off the keywords out of the books within six straight hours or so, the cracked database also relates the kanji in UTF-8 to the keywords in all four languages. [...] Now, if you do something that might endanger further sales of the (few) books that actually make it out there in the market, you are doing your part in bringing down the book market.

Actually, as xaarg said, the license of KanjiGym Light is very vague and unclear. But that's an interesting point: the keywords are already properly authorized to be used in this freeware, right? Anyone can download it and see the keywords without buying the book, and copy them by hand into another software of their choice. KanjiGym license aside, I can see that someone taking these keywords and making it easy to put into another SRS that works better for them (i.e., Anki) would endanger the use of their software, but why it would make any difference for the book sales?

xaarg wrote:
Next time just supply a list of keywords for common SRS programs.

That would be great. Since reviewing is one of the most important parts of the method, why they want to make it so difficult for the ones who bought the book to review the cards using a SRS of their choice? It's not easy typing specific kanji in a computer when you are a beginner, as is the case of many people who are using the book. Actually, it is not even possible using only the book - they have to copy the kanji from another place or, at most, try to draw them with the IME Pad.

Robert_Rauther New member

From: Germany Registered: 2008-02-19 Posts: 4

Gdaxeman,

the publisher's distributing "KanjiGym Light" does not make it legal for anyone else to distribute the content otherwise - the same way that their distributing the book doesn't entitle anyone else to copy its content, either.

As I've been re-iterating: If you want to use the keywords with any other project, please ask the publisher before doing so. You can write to them in German or English.

They certainly don't want to make it difficult for the readers (and, of course, neither do I). What they want is to keep an overview and reserve the right to assent to the way the data are being used.

Go ahead and try it. As I've said, I can't give permission. (Not that I have been asked, anyhow.)

Robert Rauther

brucegaston New member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-27 Posts: 8

Bringing this thread back to its original topic, is anyone else finding the 'move schedule data' plug-in doesn't work with the new version of Anki (0.9.4)?

Specifically, no menu item called "Plugins" appears and when I close the program I get an error message advising me to check the logfile (below).

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "ankiqt\ui\main.pyc", line 1144, in loadUserCustomisations
File "C:\Documents and Settings\Bruce\.anki\plugins\kanji_koohii_com.py", line 18, in <module>
ImportError: cannot import name sched
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "ankiqt\ui\main.pyc", line 1144, in loadUserCustomisations
File "C:\Documents and Settings\Bruce\.anki\plugins\kanji_koohii_com.py", line 18, in <module>
ImportError: cannot import name sched
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "ankiqt\ui\main.pyc", line 1144, in loadUserCustomisations
File "C:\Documents and Settings\Bruce\.anki\plugins\kanji_koohii_com.py", line 18, in <module>
ImportError: cannot import name sched
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "ankiqt\ui\main.pyc", line 1144, in loadUserCustomisations
File "C:\Documents and Settings\Bruce\.anki\plugins\kanji_koohii_com.py", line 18, in <module>
ImportError: cannot import name sched

misha Member

From: Sydney Registered: 2007-04-05 Posts: 99

Yeah, there are a couple of things that changed when Anki was upgraded from 0.3 to 0.9. They are pretty trivial to fix. I'm working on something different at the moment, but if I get a spare couple of minutes to have a look at it, I will release an update.

brucegaston New member

From: japan Registered: 2007-08-27 Posts: 8

Cool. Thanks.

woelpad Member

From: Chiba Registered: 2006-11-07 Posts: 425

Robert, I wrote you an e-mail about a week ago to the address posted on your website and sent it once more yesterday to the address that you registered with this forum. If you didn't find it in your inbox, please check your spam folder.

A big problem with spam filters is that, no matter how low your settings are, more often than not it filters out anything coming free email accounts, like hotmail, yahoo, etc. Makes normal communication a hit-and-miss thing.

Xaarg, I sent you an e-mail yesterday which you might want to check out.

xaarg Member

From: Neverland Registered: 2007-07-13 Posts: 160

Robert_Rauther wrote:
I think your tone is rather outrageous, especially for someone hiding behind a forum alias.

I don't see the connection. Is it a legal requirement to state your name before you can state your opinion? So, if you like, you can call me John Smith, Bruce Willis or whatever. Does that increase the impact of my arguments?

Robert_Rauther wrote:
If you typed off the keywords out of the book and then used them in your own privately written software on your own private computer, without sharing them, that would probably constitute "fair use" (I'm only guessing, though).

If you don't distribute your copy, there is no need for fair use. You can do at your computer at home whatever you like if the source of your copy is legal.

Common cases of fair use would be to give a copy to your friends or use it as a teacher in a class room. Other cases of fair use would be if a work is no longer available or highly over-priced. The main point of copyright is to allow the creator of the work to make profit. It is not intended to control information. It's a democracy, you know what that means, right?

Robert_Rauther wrote:
What you're entirely failing to grasp is the concept of copyright.[...]
It's really that simple.

Maybe you are living in an entirely different world, but here where I live, copyright is no easy thing at all, because it is e.g. slightly different in different countries. I see you have a vague feeling of what copyright means to you, but it is a different concept than what is granted by law. As you don't even know what fair use means, you can not have a clear concept of copyright as it is in use today either, so please don't try to lecture me. It just makes you look silly.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
The copyright holder may charge you for copying the information or not, that's his/her choice. (Pretty much the same way you are free to decide who you lend/give your car/jacket/cigarettes/PC/whatever to.)

Information are no things. You analogy is flawed. The laws pertaining to stealing or destruction of things have no equivalent in copyright. Even you should know that.

Robert_Rauther wrote:
Besides, if you ask for permission for a non-commercial project with the publisher, they are not likely to want to charge you anything. But they DO want to decide whether they give their consent or not. That's entirely legitimate.

No, it's not. It is just a nuisance for other people. Why did you (or whoever is in charge of this) not give the permission to use the German keywords to this website? Do you like being a meanie?

Robert_Rauther wrote:
As for the license agreement: Anyone installing the software is required to agree with it. Go check for yourself. Read point 5. in particular.

I can download the software without getting a chance to even read the license, so there is no point to read this license agreement. Maybe you still don't understand so I make it clear:
If you don't force people to accept the license, before they download your software, it is not valid, because you already gave them an implicit license letting them download the software. Did you never notice that most sites ask you to accept their license before you can download? Is the right thing to do, if you want your license to hold in court.

woelpad wrote:
Xaarg, I sent you an e-mail yesterday which you might want to check out.

Thanks, it was most useful.

Last edited by xaarg (2008 March 15, 8:43 am)

Ramchip Member

From: Canada Registered: 2006-09-22 Posts: 108

Xaarg, if the author specifically asks that you do not use his keyword list for another work I think it's really basic politeness not to do it. Whatever would hold up in court, whatever the software license says... it's still a man and his work and he took the time to state quite clearly the reasons for his choice (which weren't "being a meanie")! You shouldn't try to pry it out of his hands with legalese

Edit: By the way, I did skim through some posts but I'm under the impression that Mr Rauther was indeed open to discussing the issue ("So, by all means, ASK BEFORE doing what you want to do, OK?"). He also said that the publisher was the one to decide on this. Still, discussing whether he has the legal rights to his keywords list is really not the way to go...

Last edited by Ramchip (2008 March 15, 2:28 pm)

ファブリス Administrator

From: Belgium Registered: 2006-06-14 Posts: 4021 Website

xaarg wrote:
No, it's not. It is just a nuisance for other people. Why did you (or whoever is in charge of this) not give the permission to use the German keywords to this website? Do you like being a meanie?

To be fair, I did not ask to Robert or his publisher explicit authorization for use of the keywords. So it wouldn't be correct to say they refused me the use of the German keywords on the site, without me having explicitly asked for it.

Robert emailed me soon after I made a public announcement on the site, more than a year ago, that the site may feature German keywords in the future, because a person had sent me a list of the RtK1 german keywords. Robert asked me to "refrain from doing so" without asking for permission first. I agreed that I should probably have asked first (having publicly announced I may add those German keywords on the site), and left it at that for various reasons.

While I don't agree with Robert's (and presumably his publisher's) stance, let's respect his opinion, and keep the discussion constructive..

Even if there were some legal loops somewhere that let me use the German keywords without their explicit permission, I wouldn't want to. I'd rather add support for non-english keywords where the author sees an opportunity and welcomes it.

Transtic Member

Registered: 2007-07-29 Posts: 201

Hello Mr. Rauther and welcome to this forum.
I understand your point of view: you have put a lot of effort into your work, and you do deserve a reward. Besides, you need the money just as everybody else. But I wonder if the method you are using to get your well deserved profits is the best one.

May I ask you same questions? How much costs a copy of the German translation of RTK, and how much of that money goes actually into your pockets?

If someone wants to get paid for their work,it is much more effective if you persuade people to give you a retribution instead of preventing them of making use of your work at all.

Haven't you considered distributing your work online instead of through a publisher? The cost in materials (paper, ink, etc) and distribution would be zero (that means the book would become much cheaper, and people would be more interested in paying for it). Furthermore, every cent would go directly into your pocket. You could even recibe donations from people using digital copies of the book, and it would persuade more people into rewarding you for your efforts.

Please think about this: you can see the distribution of your work online as a problem because people are not paying for it, but at the same time they are spreading your work so much more people can know about it. You can try to stop the distribution, but that will result in less people knowing about your work. Or instead, you can try to reach more people and reap the benefits.

Nowadays, stoping the free flow of information through internet is an impossible task. Authors and publishers can try to follow obsolete procedures, or they can adapt to the modern times and evolve. I sincerely think that the latter is the best option for all of us, readers, authors and even publishers.

xaarg Member

From: Neverland Registered: 2007-07-13 Posts: 160

ファブリス wrote:
So it wouldn't be correct to say they refused me the use of the German keywords on the site, without me having explicitly asked for it.

Your intent to use the keywords was obvious, wasn't it? I just said they did not give you permission, not that they refused your request.

ファブリス wrote:
Robert asked me to "refrain from doing so" without asking for permission first.

Why didn't Robert just ask his publisher for you instead? Is it because nobody said "pretty please allow a low life like me to use your most worthy keywords"?

Savara Member

From: London Registered: 2007-09-08 Posts: 104 Website

Is there a working version available at this time? Or something similar to this plugin?

I'll be moving to the UK (most likely) next week, and because I don't know if there will be an internet connection available I wanted to move my kanji cards to Anki... but...

megabadd New member

From: Japan Registered: 2008-02-24 Posts: 8

Hi all, I'm new to Anki in general, but I managed to install the syncing plugin for RevTK and Anki and updated my deck. (I cut my deck down to 1000 btw, cause that's where I am). The data synced fine because when I check the deck statistics it shows up correctly.

The question is, and I'm sorry this is extremely newbie of me, how to change the order in which the cards are given to me? Even though I synced, Anki started reviewing me from 1, going up in order from there. How can I make it quiz me similarly to how RevTK does? (the only option for random quizzing that I found only applied to new cards) Thanks!

mentat_kgs Member

From: Brasil Registered: 2008-04-18 Posts: 1671 Website

I'm not sure on what you are talking about but I think the order anki gives the due cards is random.

resolve Member

From: 山口 Registered: 2007-05-29 Posts: 919 Website

If the cards are appearing one after the other, then either the scheduling information was not copied, or the plugin needs updating.

megabadd New member

From: Japan Registered: 2008-02-24 Posts: 8

resolve wrote:
If the cards are appearing one after the other, then either the scheduling information was not copied, or the plugin needs updating.

Ok, good to know that it's not because I'm tech-illiterate that I'm having this problem.

The data imported fine (I thought), since the deck statistics show up the same as they are on RevTK. Maybe I'll just delete the Anki deck and try again with the importing. Thanks!

resolve Member

From: 山口 Registered: 2007-05-29 Posts: 919 Website

If you send the deck to me, I can tell you why the cards are appearing in order.

Blahah Member

From: Cambridge, UK Registered: 2008-07-15 Posts: 715 Website

Robert_Rauther it's excellent that you decided to translate RtK into German, I'm sure alot of German people would love to study the Kanji using this effective method. I fail to see why there would be a problem with there being a freely distributed list of the keywords you chose.

If you are worried that people can study without your book using the keyword list, write a better book. If you think they might be in breach of copyright law, you're wrong. In the U.S study has always been supported as fair use and even fair dealing - meaning I can take a word list from your book and distribute it to others for studying purposes. I'm in the UK, and here you would be laughed out of court for trying to bring a case against someone making and distributing such a list, as long as they didn't try to charge money for it.

As for asking permission, there is no legal reason to do so. Study lists are a perfectly acceptable use of a book which is educational material in the first place. You could argue that you consider it a matter of courtesy. I would personally not consider it to be so, and when I write or adapt educational material I distribute it freely and would fully encourage anyone to edit and otherwise adapt it to their study. It is unreasonable and unnecessary to expect everyone who improved the learning experience of your readers to ask or even tell you about it.

Finally, I question whether a list of words translated from one language to another could even be covered by copyright law. The semantic content of your book is your intellectual property (and, I presume, Heisigs, although I haven't read your book). A list of words as a study aid is not (symbolic vs. semantic content), even if you came up with those translations.

Nice work on writing the book, and I wish you the best of luck with sales. Reconsidering your stance on this issue would probably enable you to make some good money. If this site offered a german option, alot more people would buy your book, just so that they could use it with this site. Perhaps you should ask Faburisu if he would consider making a german section, rather than him having to ask you. It will benefit you more than him. He's not charging any money for his hard work.

I will not buy your book, as I think you've spoken to everyone here as if they were children.

Last edited by Blahah (2008 September 05, 2:06 am)

resolve Member

From: 山口 Registered: 2007-05-29 Posts: 919 Website

megabadd: The problem is that the plugin is setting all cards as failed. If you contact the plugin author and get them to set cards as not failed (by setting successive > 0), then the order should become 'random'. If you can't wait for the author to fix things, send me the latest copy of your deck and I'll fix it for you.

scout Member

From: North Carolina Registered: 2005-11-29 Posts: 63

This sounds like the problem I was having. I posted the solution I used at

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=23588#p23588

(I think 0.9.6 was the latest at the point, so it may need to be modified.)

resolve: I'd be appreciative if you'd see if everything looks OK with the queries I was running. Everything appeared to work fine for me, but I'd like a second oppinion in case I missed something that could cause problems for other people.