qVoc manual

Table of Contents

General Information
I. Installation
1. Download
2. Binaries
Unix
GZipped Package
Windows
3. Sources
Unix
Windows
II. Use
4. Get your vocabulary into unit files
Create a template
Use qunitedit
Porting from other apps
5. Let qVoc manage your learning process
6. Exchange units
7. Use qVoc as a vocabulary database
III. Development
8. Sourcecode
9. Translation
Unix
Windows
A. License
B. Thanks

List of Examples

4.1. A simple template file
6.1. The first line of a sample unit file

General Information

qVoc is a free avaible application that shall help you managing your vocabulary. It is based on Andreas Jorde's WT, whose main concept (which is qVoc's, too) is completely being descibed at WT's homepage (German). WT is only useable under MS Windows and not "really" free (but free of charge), so I decided to port it to Qt which allows us to run it under Unix and Windows.

qVoc's main differences in comparision to other vocabulary apps are

  • Learning based on the facts scientists have found out about our brain. qVoc uses WT's great cardbox system

  • You don't have to type any voc during repeating.

  • Easy to port Units (We use an XML-based open format)

  • You can create XML-based templates for any language which includes specific options. (See Chapter Create a template)

  • Comfortable translation (see Chapter Translations)

Installation

Table of Contents

1. Download
2. Binaries
Unix
GZipped Package
Windows
3. Sources
Unix
Windows

Chapter 1. Download

You can get the latest releases from sourceforge.net.

Chapter 2. Binaries

Table of Contents

Unix
GZipped Package
Windows

Unix

GZipped Package

Type $ gunzip < qvoc-x.x.x.tar.gz | tar xf -. This should create a new directory qvoc-bin-<version> in which you'll find the executables qvoc and qunitedit.

Important

You need to have a Qt library >= 3.1.0 on your computer. If not, look for the package libqt at your dist-CD, download it from rpmfind/debian.org or get it directly from the vendor as sourcecode.

Windows

  • Simply execute qVocs setup-assistant and everything should work.

  • Only qVoc < 0.2.1b: Install Qt. You probably won't habe done so. Download it from the vendor, execute the setup assistant and restart your OS.

Chapter 3. Sources

Table of Contents

Unix
Windows

Unix

  • Make sure that you have libqt-dev >= 3.1.0 (it may be called qt-headers, libqt3-devel or anything like this in your distro) installed. If not, look for the package on your dist-CD, download it from rpmfind/debian.org or get it directly from the vendor.

  • Type $ gunzip < qvoc-src-x.x.x.tar.gz | tar xf -. This should create a directory qvoc-<version>. Change to it and call qmake and make. You don't have to be root do to so. Afterwards you'll find the executables qvoc, qunitedit, qsearchvoc and qtemplateedit in the root of the qvoc dir.

Windows

Note

Qt-noncommercial is no longer supported by me. I wanted to benefit from the great Qt-free 3 under Linux, but noncommercial is only available with version 2.3. You need a commercial license to compile Qt with windows, sorry.

Eventhough Qt-noncommercial + MS Visual C++ may still work.

Do the usual $ qmake and $ nmake (or whatever your make is).

Use

Table of Contents

4. Get your vocabulary into unit files
Create a template
Use qunitedit
Porting from other apps
5. Let qVoc manage your learning process
6. Exchange units
7. Use qVoc as a vocabulary database

Chapter 4. Get your vocabulary into unit files

Table of Contents

Create a template
Use qunitedit
Porting from other apps

Create a template

Templates are one of qVoc's greatest features. They tell the qVoc's subapps which specific options to use and it generates the GUI automaticly from it. A template file is a simple XML file like the following.

Example 4.1. A simple template file

							
<FileTemplate title="English as second language">
 <selectable name="Kind of word">
  <option value="Noun"/>
  <option value="Verb"/>
  <!-- ... -->
 </selectable>
 <textOption value="Simple past"/>
 <textOption value="Present Perfect"/>
 </FileTemplate>

This would lead to the following screen in qunitedit:

Simply create such a file and copy it into the templates subdir of the qVoc installation.

Note

From version >= 0.3 you can also use the GUI-tool qtemplateedit to create and edit templates if not being able to create XMLs from scratch.

Use qunitedit

qunitedit is qVoc's unit editor. It supports dynamic GUI creation, so that it can be customized by your templates. The unit format is XML based, so it shouldn't be a problem to convert this data to any other format.

Porting from other apps

qVoc's units are XML based. So if you have some experience in XML programming it shouldn't be a problem to create qVoc units from other files. Simply create a a test unit, watch the XML source and you'll understand it's structure.

Chapter 5. Let qVoc manage your learning process

Simply execute the following steps and qVoc will do the rest for you:

  • Get your vocabulary into unit files (see the previous chapter

  • Create a new File via File->Create File (Ctrl-C)

  • Learn the units you have to learn via File->Learn a new unit (Ctrl-N)

If you run qVoc regularly, it will ask you the vocs and you will learn them.

Chapter 6. Exchange units

One of the main disadvantages of computer based vocabulary learning is definitely the fact that you have to make printed data digital. Perhaps you could work with OCR tools, but it's still a lot of work.

So of course you should share your unit files with other people to save time and work. Please keep the following in mind:

Important

Every unit points to a template file. If you want other people to use your files, you also have to provide the the associated template file, which has to be stored into the templates subdir of your qVoc installation.

You can get to know about the associated template by having a look at the unit source:

Example 6.1. The first line of a sample unit file

<Unit templateFilename="test.template" index="1">
The templateFilename attribute specifies the name of the file which you can find in the templates subdir.

Chapter 7. Use qVoc as a vocabulary database

If you have got your vocabulary in a digital format you can use it as a database of course. Execute the tool qsearchvoc in the qVoc dir to do so. It will ask you for a file and a template and you can search vocs stored in the file's cardbox or in it's archive.

Note

You can use regular expressions as search terms. For more information see the Qt documentation.

Development

Table of Contents

8. Sourcecode
9. Translation
Unix
Windows

Chapter 8. Sourcecode

qVoc is open-source software. It's license grants you lots of rights to modify it. For details see Chapter License

Chapter 9. Translation

Table of Contents

Unix
Windows

Unix

The great tool Qt linguist allows you to translate Qt based apps comfortably. Linguist is part of Qt-free >= 3.0 so it shouldn't be a problem to get it. (rpmfind/debian.org or as sourcecode).

  • Get and unpack qVoc's sources. See the part Installation for details.

  • Copy every file with the suffix "_unfinished.ts" in the translations dir to files with the suffix "_xx.ts", where "xx" stands for your contry code.

  • Call $ linguist filename.ts for each of your copies and edit the files.

  • Test them:

    • Change to the dir src/qvoc, edit qvoc.pro and type $ lrelease qvoc.pro.

    • Change to dir src/qunitedit, edit qunitedit.pro and type $ lrelease qunitedit.pro.

    • Change to dir src/qsearchvoc, edit qsearchvoc.pro and type $ lrelease qsearchvoc.pro

    • Change to dir src/qtemplateedit, edit qtemplateedit.pro and type $ lrelease qtemplateedit.pro

    • Change to dir src/shared, edit translateqt.pro and shared.pro, type $ lrelease translateqt.pro and execute $ lrelease shared.pro.

    Then restart qVoc choose File->Settings (Ctrl-S) and select your languge. Restart qVoc and look for mistakes.

  • Send them to me.

Windows

On Windows translating is a lot of handwork. Why don't use Linux ;-) ?

  • Get qVoc's sources and unpack them. See the chapter Installation for details.

  • Copy every file with the suffix "_unfinished.ts" in the translations dir to files with the suffix "_xx.ts", where "xx" stands for your contry code.

  • Edit all those files with your favourite XML editor.

  • Send them to me.

Appendix A. License

qVoc is licensed under the terms of the GPL. You can find it in the file COPYING provided with your distribution or at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Note

As a special exception, Timo Huesemann gives permission to link this program with Qt commercial for MS Windows, and distribute the resulting executable, without including the source code for Qt commercial in the source distribution.

The file qt-mt310.dll which is distributed with the win package >= 0.3 is part of the commercial Qt, msvcrt.dll is Microsoft's C Runtime Lib.

Appendix B. Thanks

Special thanks to

  • Jan

  • The beta testers

  • Kuba Ober

  • The w4fboard community

  • sourceforge.net for hosting

  • Trolltech AS for allowing developers of free software to use Qt

  • The Linux community for providing a great OS