Atomusk

As always, I forget to update the credits to thoses that allows Obenkyo to exist because of the Creative Commons licence.

Here is the project Obenkyo is based on:

- KanjiVG – Kanji Drawings (database limited to JLPT 1-5 & school levels 1-8. and some data modified to fit the drawing algorithm : added some tags, alternative view, …) – if you need other kanji, you can ask me to add them

- KanjiDict – Translation, readings and kanji information (French, English, German and Spanish)

- EDict - writing, translation and readings on the vocabulary and information tags (for now not used but I have coded this information to gain some space : verb = u …)

- JFrench – French translation of the vocabulary

- Tatoeba - Sentences and it’s translation modified to identify the kanji, katakana words and particles in sentences

- Tanos – Data is not under CC, but I got the authorisation to use the JLPT repartiton of kanji and Vocabulary

- Tae Kim’s grammar guide – Great CC guide translated in many languages

- Icons for drawing modified from wikimedia (fom David Vignoni work)

- Predicate Layout from Henrik Gustafsson (not changed)

- Small LED to show the actual level in vocabulary page from Modernl (from Stuart Brown work)

And here are the files:

DB File

Traductions extraction(French, English, German and Spanish) from KanjiDict

KanjiVg Extraction for kana

Tae Kim’s guide html pages in De,En,Es,Fi,Fr,Pt,Ru modified to fit into Android (layout changed to prevent horizontal scroll to help swipe & change hyperlink to javascript handle).

Icons modified from David Vignoni work

Once again, I want to thank everyone that are working on theses projects and to encourage everyone to help them in any means possible.

Am I late for analytics? maybe…. maybe… but I had a lot of work on obenkyo lately… no i’m not searching for excuses :p  here is the october / november analytics, after the break

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Happy new year everyone

2011 was quite a buzy year for me, and I hope I will be able to give you more tools to help you learn Japanese in 2012 !

I am sorry I failed to publish the “new year surprise release” before year end, but it will come pretty soon with a new feature I hope everyone will love  ;)

I also wanted to tell you that I found the time to create pages on majors social networks:

Their goal will be to have a way to post things more regularly and maybe sometime not always linked to Obenkyo (but always linked to Japan culture or Android). Right now there is not much on them but I intend to post more frequently than on this blog.

Again, thank you for your support and I hope you will continue to support me througth 2012.

May all of you have a successfull 2012 !

A new feature of Obenkyo starting at 3.0.4 is the ability to change the font for any Japanese writing in the app.

More info after the break…

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Another functionality that was very often requested was the ability to export and to import back personal lists.

Obenkyo 3.0.4 makes the very first baby step in this direction (there is still much work to do about this).

More info after the break !

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Wait what?  … I have posted Obenkyo V3 yesterday and there are no post in the blog … how come?

Well yes, sorry I am late but the release was pretty chaotic (well it was a pretty big update after all code wise)

So let’s start with the thing I am proud of: Tablet design !

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Thanks again for your support of my application, by letting the analytics activated on your phone, here are the stats I got from these data, after the break…

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Hi,

I wanted to do a quick post about some news

The first news is that I have finally reached the 100 000-250 000 download level on the android market !

It is quite humbling knowing that so many people downloaded and use my app … I have to work harder to fix the bug there still is in the app … speaking of bug, some people noticed that some vocabulary were mistakenly added to JLPT level.

For instance 九品蓮台 ”nine-tiered lotus leaf platform in Amitabha’s Pure Land”  was labeled as “JLPT 5″

The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

Sorry I have not noticed this issue earlier, but I did not find time to work my vocabulary recently ^^;

Next, I am still working with Obenkyo V3, but the adaptation of the interface layout creates some issues I didn’t expect.

Yet, I can show you the direction I want to go with the interface:

Here is the main screen on tablet mode with a nice picture from Japan (for those interrested it is Engakuji in Kamakura), I will see if I can enable you to set it as a wallpaper for your tab and I will see if I can send people interested to information from wikipedia or japan-guide for instance (in this case it would be: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3103.html ).

I have many pictures to update them regularly from my trip to Japan 2 years ago but if you have some pictures from Japan that you want to share please send me a mail

Let’s continue with the new kana list layout:

Clicking on any kana will send you to the detail view and as you can see we have now in a single view both the kana list and the list of test available. There is also a new button on the top bar (the action bar), that let you go to the selection mode directly:

Thanks again for your support

(update 10 october – long time without update ^^- with parts done)

I have made the personnal choice that the V3 of Obenkyo will be pretty different. In fact for quite some time, I have watched the uses of tablet rising – and as I personnaly own a tablet, I can see first hand that the App is crippled on this kind of hardware…

Let’s see what I want to do to get to “V3″ (I might do interim build if it drags too long).

- Use Android Settings API (on the V2, I have created my own settings intent, it’s bad design practive, and is often slower – one of the reason why Obenkyo is so slow at launch) DONE

- Improve on coding: I have learned much of Java coding since the start of Obenkyo and some parts of the code are really bad. The changes will improve performance, reduce memory consomation and it’s needed to do a nice tablet version.

parts needing work :

Menu (the layouts are a mess), test page (this whole code is a mess), kana list (I have to simplify this part of the code),DONE kanji display view (would be great if could get it to “open source releasable” level), kanji information View,

- Update the KanjiVG file from new version of the database DONE

- add an action bar (have to see how to manage with small screen) (Done)

- add Fragments management in the app (for tablet design) (Done)

- Improve design : I will try to improve the design to add a little more colors (while keeping the old design if I mess up too much) (Reported for next version)

-  Show the color level in the display list (like in Vocabulary) and DONE – add a button to switch from display mode to change selection mode DONE (And I love it )

- add “hint” button on the test screen so that you will be able to “hide some wrong multiple choices”, show all or part of the drawing, or get the translation of the sentence for instance (I’m on it)

- add a “try again” and “skip” button on the drawing tests (I’m on it)

- add more info in the vocabulary screen (Verbs, Adjective …) (Reported for next version)

- improve search (at least get a screen to show the SKIP search info, perhaps the romaji search, and see if the drawing search is not too long) (Reported for next version)

- and the many other suggestions that where sent to me (too many to list)

-> pretty sure to be in 3.0

• push Database to SD (Done)
• add setting to show more than 20 entries in the history and/or keep only last entry and all errors
• give the option to check whole group of kana DONE

-> might no be in 3.0

• improve the stoke study part (allows to hide drawing …)(Reported for next version)
• enable a way to use external font for the kana/kanji (Kaisho fonts) (Reported for next version)

And many more (I have to browse my mails and comments to have the full list)

In short, quite some work on my hands, but hopefully work  where I can lean the right way to do things “the android way”.

I will try to update the post with what have been done and if there are things I want to add to the list

I guess I completly forgot to do an update on the credits to thoses that allows Obenkyo to exist because of the Creative Commons licence.

Here are the modified files for V2.61 :

In fact several things changed since last time … I have now a big database file that is loaded at first launch, that contains everything needed for Kanji (drawings & traduction), all the vocabulary and the particle sentences.

It contains works from all of theses projects:

- KanjiVG – Kanji Drawings (database limited to JLPT 1-5 & school levels 1-8. and some data modified to fit the drawing algorithm : added some tags, alternative view, …)

- KanjiDict – Translation, readings and kanji information (French, English, German and Spanish)

- EDict - writing, translation and readings on the vocabulary and information tags (for now not used but I have coded this information to gain some space : verb = u …)

- JFrench – French translation of the vocabulary

- Tatoeba - Sentences and it’s translation modified to identify the kanji, katakana words and particles in sentences

- Tanos – Data is not under CC, but I got the authorisation to use the JLPT repartiton of kanji and Vocabulary

DB File

And out of the database I still have  :

- KanjiVG file for the kana (harder to integrate in the database)

- Icons for drawing modified from wikimedia (fom David Vignoni work)

- Predicate Layout from Henrik Gustafsson (non changé)

- Small LED to show the actual level in vocabulary page from Modernl (from Stuart Brown work)

Traductions extraction(French, English, German and Spanish) from KanjiDict

KanjiVg Extraction

Icons modified from David Vignoni work