JBDRILL 1.0

Welcome to JBDrill, Jim Breen's simple Japanese Flashcard program.

I wrote JBDrill for my own use, but feedback from a couple of people who have seen it has induced me to release it.

What is it?

JBDrill is a simple flashcard program, which uses text files such as extracts from the EDICT dictionary file.

JBDrill has been written using "Tcl/Tk". Tcl/Tk is a combination of a scripting language (Tcl: Tool Control Language) and a GUI (Tk: ToolKit). I have used Tcl/Tk partly because it was a simple way of writing the system, and partly because it can be use on all the major operating systems: Windows, Unix/Linux and Macintosh. And it's free.

Installation

First, you must have a working version of Tcl/Tk 8.0 or later on your computer.

almost all Linux versions have this already;
Windows and Macintosh users will probably have to download and install it, e.g. from http://www.tcl.tk/ or http://aspn.activestate.com/Tcl

JBDrill comes in a ZIP archive file: jbdrill.zip, containing:

jbdrill.tcl the program
jbdrill_doc.txt this information file (text version).
jbdrill_doc.html this information file (HTML version).
*.gif a few screenshot images

Simply unzip this archive into a suitable location:

Windows: I suggest you create a folder under "Program Files"
Linux: Anywhere you like. Creating a "jbdrill" directory would be a good idea.
Macintosh: no idea. Sorry.

Starting JBDrill

Linux

Under Linux, JBDrill may well start simply by typing

./jbdrill.tcl

in the directory where it was unpacked. If your copy of "wish" (the TCL interpreter) is not in /usr/bin, either edit the first line of the program, or start it with

wish jbdrill.tcl

I use the Gnome window manager, and have created a JBDrill applet on the Task Bar. It depends on your system how you do this.

Windows

Under Windows you have to run "wish" (the TCL interpreter) and give it the program file to interpret. An easy way to do this is to set up a Shortcut. I have a Shortcut with the following Target line:


C:＼Tcl＼bin＼wish.exe C:＼kanji＼jbdrill＼jbdrill.tcl

Obviously you would have to make it match where you have Tcl/Tk and JBDrill installed.

Flashcard files

JBDrill uses flashcard files, which are simple text files in the EUC-JP coding. They can be prepared by almost any word-processor, however you may need to take care that the files are saved in the correct coding.

Each "card" is a single line of text in the following format:

KANJI (sep) KANA (sep) English-1 (sep) English-2 (sep) etc.

where the (sep) can be a TAB character, a "/", a ";", a "[" or a "]". Thus the common EDICT format of:

KANJI [KANA] /English-1/English-2/

will be fine. If the word you are using is only written in kana, you will need to repeat the kana in the "KANJI" field.

Any line starting with a "#" will be ignored, so you can insert comments.

Files can be of any name you like, but JBDrill will detect files with extensions of "vcb" or "jfc".

Using JBDrill

When started, JBDrill displays the following panel:

the Select File button allows you to select the next vocabulary file to use. It must be pressed at least once in a run.
the Select Font button allows you to change the default font to any of the fonts available to Tcl/Tk on your computer. It may be a good idea to experiment to see what suits you best.
the 熟語, 読み方 and Meaning buttons will result in a random "card" being selected from the current file and the selected field displayed in a popup panel.
Here is an example resulting from pressing the 熟語 button:
on the panel which has just popped up, clicking on the two Show .... buttons will reveal the other fields of the card.
clicking on the OK button makes the panel vanish, however this is not necessary as the next card can be selected simply by pressing one of the 熟語, 読み方 or Meaning buttons.
Here are the panels after pressing those two buttons:
clicking on the Delete button will cause that card to be removed until the end of the run. Thus you can refine the set of cards to the ones you wish to study.
another file can be selected, or the same file repeated at any time by clicking on the Select File button. Clicking on the Reset File button also allows the same file to be repeated in its entirety.

Downloads

JBDrill can be downloaded from:

jbdrill.zip or from
http://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/jbdrill.zip
Also available (included in the zipfile) are:
- some instructions by Ray Bartlett on how to use JBDrill and Kiten with EMACS to make up vocab lists. (pdf) (doc)
- some vocab files contributed by Ray:
  - alcoholterms.vcb
  - giseigo.vcb

Future Improvements

If I ever get around to adding to JBDrill, it might be such things as:

the ability to save a stripped-down file back to disk;
the feature of marking cards according to difficulty and weighting the selection accordingly;
being able to save and restore the font, etc. configuration.

Most of my Tcl/Tk has been learned from the book: "Graphical Applications with Tcl & Tk" by Eric Foster-Johnson. The font-selection window routine (which makes up over half the lines of code in JBDrill) came from his book.

I would also like to acknowledge Jeff Hobbs at ActiveTcl, who is always very helpful, and who has played such a significant part in the internationalization of Tcl/Tk.

Copyright

Oh yes, copyright.

As far as I am concerned anyone can do whatever they like with this program. It really is too trivial to try and protect in any way.

HOWEVER, you use this program at your own risk. It is not warranted in any way, either as to performance, or as to being safe to operate on your computer.

Jim Breen
jimbreen@gmail.com
September 2002
May 2005