Version 2008.08.14

I only did two of the three new features for this release.  The alignment will come later.

I would like to solicit feedback on the following issues:

1. Is the Bopomofo correct (including spacing)?
2. Are there any systems other than Pinyin and Bopomofo that people would like to have?
3. There are now 6 types of HTML documents.  I personally always want the literal English translation to be there.  Is there anyone who prefers to still have documents without the literal translation?  If not, I will cut down the number of documents to three: Simplified + Pinyin, Traditional + Pinyin, Traditional + Bopomofo, all with literal English translation.

I've been a bit inconsistent with version numbering.  The format is year.month.date.  I'll try to stick to that from now on, and not get the last two switched up!

One more suggestion regarding getting it working on your computer:  You point out that there's no file welovechinesepodlog.txt, which means that Python is no longer even starting the program.  According to your first post Python was starting and running the program, but just not finding the file pinyin_bopomofo_dictionary and stopping with an error message.  I would backtrack to that point and then it may be possible to debug the problem from there.

Andrew, I love the literal translation!  That is brilliant.  I always try to do the literal translation in my head, so this feature makes it so much easier and accurate.

Regarding the number of documents, I don't think you need to remove any.  The beauty of this is that you can use the documents that best fit your needs, and ignore the ones that don't.

Thanks again, this program is a great tool.

Good point.  For now six different html files isn't too much.  With a few more options though it could get to be out of hand.

I want to thank acorrigan once again for all his work.  The features I most like are the bo po mo fo and the literal translations,  I also find the dialogue and expansions mp3 very helpful.

For those who use the bo po mo fo, the facility to change the pinyin in the vocabulary manager has been restored.  It works better that ever.

Many thanks to all

Andrew, the new program is perfect! The literal translation makes this so powerful. For me, and the way I learn language, this is indispensable. Thanks so much.

RJ

How did I ever live without this program? Especially now that the PlecoDict 2 beta is somewhat stable.

Yes, a GUI would be nice and yes, it would be nice if I didn't have to know the precise URL, but I'm so happy with this, I can wait a long long time for any other features.

Thanks.

I'm glad that you like it sfrrr.  I have to agree with your sentiment.  Before, using CPod was so frustrating to me, since there is so much great content that is otherwise inaccessible to me.  If it wasn't for this software, I probably would've went back to FSI, since it doesn't require a constant Internet connection, although it has low-quality audio, and irrelevant, aging, non-interactive, content.  Can you say more about you use this with WLCP with PlecoDict?  Perhaps the rest of us are missing out on a really great learning technique.  About knowing the precise URL, I agree.  You probably saw that JJCarson is working on a GUI, and once that's done, there should be no need type in the specific URL name.

I hope that you and RJ don't mind that I quoted you guys on the group page.

Hi...sorry for asking but how can I apply the Bopomofo settings?

Sorry to toot my own horn,  but I just used the new HTML document with the literal translation on the bus ride over to school, and I had a much more productive bus ride than usual.  I used to waste so much time because:

1. I was often unable to connect what each character contributes to the idiomatic translation.  Therefore, I would just be memorizing sounds without the associated meaning.
   
2. There would always be sentences with multiple adjacent words that I've never heard before, whose meaning I couldn't infer from comparing with the literal translation, so that I would have to spend a really long time looking these up, manually - yuck.
   

Neither of these are issues anymore :-D

Hi Andrew,

Just wondering if the program can work with the new Video Tours.  I just tried it, unsuccessfully, so I assume not.  I'm guessing since the format, tabs, etc. is setup differently than the audio lessons.

Thanks,
Brent

Hi Brent,

There are two separate issues:

1. The trip-to-the-vegetables-market is totally messed up.  All of the expansion sentence links are broken.
2. I just tried the at-the-hair-salon lesson and it mostly worked for me.  The expansion sentence mp3 and HTML files downloaded just fine.  WLCP will however crash for the reason that you mentioned. in particular there is no dialogue tab.  Did this lesson's expansion sentence material download successfully for you?    The issue of there being no dialogue tab will be dealt with in the upcoming version of WLCP (still in progress btw).

Andrew

Just got around to using the new upgrade. I like the literal translation. I am not very good at grammatical points, but if I see the sentence in it's raw translation I can then convert that style back into Chinese. Thats my theory anyway.

Just wanted to say I really appreciate the time you put into this. Thanks.

I hope this isn't a foolish question... I'm having trouble getting We Love ChinesePod to work on my Mac, which is still using Tiger.

I download the folder, and double-click on welovechinesepod.py. (I don't see the "Run" option anywhere.)

It starts to run but the finishes with the error...

  bo_dict = pickle.load(open('pinyin_bopomofo_dictionary'))

IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'pinyin_bopomofo_dictionary'

The file "pinyin_bopomofo_dictionary" is very much in the same folder, however. Is it looking in the wrong place?

lostinasia, I might be able to help since I'm running the same on my old PowerBook. 

After you click on the welovechinesepod.py file, it should open in a program called IDLE.  Actually, 2 files will open, one that is labeled Python Shell and one labeled welovechinesepod.py (click your cursor on this one).

At the top of your monitor, you should see the Run pull-down menu.  Click that, then Run Module.

I hope that helps.  If not, you may need to download Python (though it's usually built into Macs).

Thanks for the tips Calkins. I'm one step closer--for some reason, I didn't have Python (I'd checked and seen the folder, but didn't realize it was empty).

I've now downloaded and installed Python. However, now when I click on WLCP it bounces and nothing happens--I can't see anything new happening in the Activity Monitor. When I go into the Python folder, I can double-click on Idle, and that bounces but then nothing happens.

(If I try opening WLCP with Python Launcher, it opens the Terminal and then does... nothing.)

It being 1AM, I think I'll continue tomorrow.

(Wow is this discussion ever a good example of how some things should NOT be in the main feed that everyone sees!)

Hi Lostinasia,

Have you actually unzipped the entire folder?  If you just run welovechinesepod.py directly from the zip file it will not work.  I don't know how this works on the Mac, but in Ubuntu or Windows it's possible to download a zip file and run the program welovechinesepod.py directly from the zip file without unzipping it.  If you did this, then you would definitely be seeing the error message that you're getting.   This is my first suspicion as to what is going wrong.

Otherwise, it's hard for me to say: do you see a file welovechinesepodlog.txt in the folder?  If you do and could please send me that file then I could most easily help you.

BTW, from your first message, you already had Python installed to begin with.  The error message that you reported is Python speaking:  "IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'pinyin_bopomofo_dictionary'" .

Thanks for the suggestions.

Yes, the file's always been unzipped. There's no welovechinesepodlog.txt in the folder - I see six files:

• language.txt
  
• LICENSE.txt
• pinyin_bopomofo_dictionary
• silence2.mp3
• silence3_5.mpe
• welovechinesepod.py
  

Something's very odd between Python and my computer. I click on the .py file and it LOOKS like it's opening--there's no error message or anything--but nothing happens. Ditto when I try to start "IDLE" within the Python folder. Python Launcher starts OK; if I try to use that to open welovechinesepod.py, I wind up in the terminal (a place I don't understand at all).

I've been looking around on Python forums and I'm well beyond my comfort level.

Next step: try this on my wife's Windows computer.

You don't need to apply any settings.  It will automatically create both Pinyin and Bopomofo HTML documents.

When you run the software there should be a number of html documents in the folder named after the lesson you downloaded.  Using the flowers-and-bugs lesson as an example, there will be two html files:

• flowers-and-bugs_traditional_bopomofo.html
• flowers-and-bugs_traditional_with_literal_bopomofo.html

Both of these contain the Bopomofo transliteration.  Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any more questions.