Mnemosyne program is in Chinese? How to get an English one.

[paike]

I started looking at all the advice for those into the flashcard programs and am considering getting a PDA to run Mnemosyne and possibly get the Pleco dictionary to boot. That seems like it could be beneficial and worth the time/cost.

My problem right now: When I download Mnemosyne to my computer the program is in Chinese and while I understand all the commands, or most of them =), I want the program in English. Some things about Mnemosyne are cauching me headaches and I think its just because I cant fool around with it and look at the commands.

For example: I want to erase all the cards already in the program and start again. The ones I have are too easy and I put like 5 thousand cards in. Might take away to get to the harder ones. I got a 6 on the HSK and now just want to study newspaper type words.

Etc.

Anyone know how to get around this issue?

Also, on a side note: If I wanted to get a PDA in CHina that would run both Mnemosyne and a Pleco dictionary, anyone have one they recommend that wouldnt knock my saving out?

PaiKe

[paike]

I would also like to add. Mnemosyne program is great with all the already added decks, such as HSK4 words, etc. Right up my alley.

Does anyone know how to make the font about 4 times as big. http://shengci.wojas.nl/mnemosyne Has an awesome list of decks that include sentences, but all I see is a thin grey and black smudge. I even reduced my monitors pixel count to its lowest setting, which made everything else huge, but those sentences were still a bit small.

There must be a better way around this aspect of the program.

Any thoughts on these question would be great. I can see how this program would be nice to use.

PaiKe

[studentyoung]

I have no idea on this Mnemosyne program, but I think the links below might help you.

http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/

http://groups.google.com/group/mnemosyne-proj-users/topics

Cheers!

[Scoobyqueen]

I love Mnemosyne and am grateful that sourceforgenet has created it. I first leant about Mnemosyne through Chinese-Forums so thank you!

renzhe, a prolific contributor here, hopefully sees this posting and can provide some useful comments. He has previously helped me with some questions about Mnemosyne.

[imron]

I love Mnemosyne and am grateful that sourceforgenet has created it.

Sourceforge hosts it, the contributors are listed here and the creation history here.

[paike]

I've figured out some of my issues, just randomly clicking on buttons and seeing how that affects the program (everything is in Chinese).

I downloaded the program from the website listed, but every time I install it, the program is in Chinese. I don't have any control over which language is chosen. I do live in China and this is a computer that was previously owned by a Chinese person. That may have something to do with it.

I sure wish I could get it in English. I'd like to start making my own books but that is just too complicated a function guessing hitting buttons.

PaiKe

[Scoobyqueen]

I don't have any control over which language is chosen. I do live in China and this is a computer that was previously owned by a Chinese person. That may have something to do with it.

renzhe told me this was because it chooses the language windows uses if you have windows. If you use linux apparently the problem doesn occur. I dont know how you solve it.

but the programme has very few commands so you should be able to solve it.

[paike]

Programmers! =)

They think they're SOOO smart, but wouldnt it have been just as easy to allow the user to choose the language when its installed? =)

Bah!

[Scoobyqueen]

That is why the really clever ones choose to work with Linux. Just blame gate.

[paike]

Scoobyqueen

Quote:

I don't have any control over which language is chosen. I do live in China and this is a computer that was previously owned by a Chinese person. That may have something to do with it.

renzhe told me this was because it chooses the language windows uses if you have windows. If you use linux apparently the problem doesn occur. I dont know how you solve it.

but the programme has very few commands so you should be able to solve it.

Thanks so much!!! Both Renzhe and Scooby!

I went and changed the language in the Windows section for programs. It had been in Chinese before, though this is the first time I have used a program that automatically checked this setting in Windows. Usually its manual.

INTERESTING side note! For many programs the chinese is now not nearly as beautiful it was before. The chinese setting in the computer allowed for a much better looking font, whereas the English setting, then using Chinese, not as good look. A lot more blocky. I will see in the coming weeks how this affects other things, but it was immediately noticeable surfing the web and in the Mnemosyne program itself.

Pai Ke

[renzhe]

Have a look here

Changing the language Mnemosyne uses

By default, the language corresponding to your system's locale is chosen. If you want to override this behaviour, edit the .mnemosyne/config.py file and replace the line locale = None to locale = 'en' or locale = 'es' or whatever. You can find the corresponding language codes here.

You can change the size of the Chinese characters in the preferences dialog (or maybe it's "options"), there is an option to "Increase the font size for non-Latin characters". Make that 20 or something, and all Chinese characters will be much larger.

As for having cards that are too easy, the HSK flashcard set for Mnemosyne has the cards sorted in categories: HSK1-characters, HSK1-words, etc. etc. You can activate and deactivate categories as you wish, and treat them as separate decks.

The best way to deal with many flashcards you already know IMHO is to go through them and grade them all with "5" whenever you see them. It will be a bit of a nuissance from time to time when you get a batch, but soon they will get spread out so far that you will rarely see them.

[Scoobyqueen]

Sourceforge hosts it, the contributors are listed here

Thanks for this list. Do you not find it odd though that there are so few females involved in programming? Cant see a single one listed here.

[renzhe]

Computer science is notorious for having few women. Things are changing, but it's very slow.

[imron]

Yep. Thinking back to university, the degree I did had maybe 5-10% female students.

[Scoobyqueen]

Yep. Thinking back to university, the degree I did had maybe 5-10% female students.

Computer science is notorious for having few women. Things are changing, but it's very slow.

Is it then like it is in female-dominated sectors such as hair-dressing or fashion design that very few males qualify within this sector, but those who do tend to excel

joke aside, I have met a few female engineers (mechanical and civil) from China who chose the engineering profession because they thought it would provide a comfortable career rather than because they had a passion for the subject.

[renzhe]

Don't know why, but fields like computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and mathematics have really few girls. This has always been this way.

The girls who do it are usually not worse on average, I guess a big part is that many are simply put off the subjects for a variety of reasons.

Also keep in mind that most of the people coding open source apps tend to do this as a hobby, and people who program as a hobby are a somewhat different category still.