Madabar

With the new vocab file format (MVL) for Madabar Vocab, the wordlists can now be viewed online, using XML+CSS.

Here is a sample set that shows off the kind of things for which you can use attributes...

ccat_tauber_1john.xml

I've posted a sample word list for Madabar Vocab that I generated from James Tauber's CCAT Morphological Greek New Testament. See the new sample Vocab Lists page for more info.

Although this doesn't have the translations at this stage, it could be quite useful as an aid to studying New Testament Greek. You can easily test yourself on a verb paradigm for instance. Or you could sort on nouns, select them and test yourself just on nouns. (The forthcoming query select feature will make this a bit more convenient.)

I've also included fields for word frequency and lemma (root) frequency. This is really handy together with the sorting feature within Madabar Vocab. You can sort on root frequency and learn the most common words first.

In trying this out I discovered a bug in the sort dialog code (sort_dialog.py). It is quite easy to fix: just change Category to Field in sort_dialog.py. The fix will be included in the next release, but I want to do some more changes before the next release.

A new official release of Madabar Vocab (v0.8) is available on the Download page.

Highlights

• Fixed reading/writing of MVL (.mvl) file format (This was majorly broken.)
• Now works properly with Python 2.4
• Fixed loading of choice fields
• Fixed updating of fields when choices are modified
• Fixed wql reader

If you are using the 0.7 release then upgrade ASAP, as you will lose data when saving to mvl format in the 0.7 version.

I've also fixed the sample vocab set from the Greek of 1 John on the Vocab Lists page.

A new official release of Madabar Vocab (v0.7) is available on the Download page.

Highlights

• Now using new MVL (.mvl) file format
• Added a CSS stylesheet show that the new MVL format can be viewed easily from a web browser when saved as .xml
• Metadata (vocab list info, e.g. author, etc.)
• Numerous bugfixes
• Added auto-show timeout for plain flashcard quizzes
• Launch external links in help using a web browser
• Save size of shortcut palette
• Keep editing when focus is lost and then returned to the editor
• Confirmation before overwriting files using Save As (thanks Karl!)
• Some usability improvements (thanks Kate!)

The big change is the file format. Old files can still be read by selecting the .mml plugin. Please convert your existing lists over to the new format.

I'd like to do a more publicised release soon, so give it a try and let me know about any bugs that need to be fixed.

The fifth official release of Madabar Vocab (v0.6) is available on the Download page.

Highlights

• duplicate answers are prevented in multiple choice quiz mode
• changed item progress bar to indicate number of items completed
• fixed problem with adding shortcuts (thanks Karl!)
• fixed problem reading WQL files with multi-word values (thanks Kate!)
• fixed problem where dirty bit was not getting set when table was modified
• fixed a few other little bugs

The third official release of Madabar Vocab (v0.4) is available on the Download page.

This is still an alpha release, so you may encounter a message box with an ugly error message if you find a dark corner.

Release Highlights

• Support for reading in WordQuiz Language (.wql) word lists
• Some compatibility fixes for PyQt 3.14, Qt 3.1 and Python 2.2 (the fixes have not been tested on those platforms yet)

The first official release of Madabar Vocab (v0.2) is available on the Download page.

Note: This is only an alpha release, which means the program may crash under certain circumstances and it awaits some more polishing and feature additions.

The second official release of Madabar Vocab (v0.3) is available on the Download page.

This is still an alpha release, but it makes a .backup file whenever you save a file now, so you will probably be able to recover your data file if their is a critical error.

Release Highlights

• New data file plugin architecture (Adding support for new file formats is a bit simpler now.)
• More graceful handling of critical errors
• A bug that caused a crash when opening certain files has been fixed
• Categories are now known as Fields
• Better error checking

Enjoy!

The fourth official release of Madabar Vocab (v0.5) is available on the Download page.

This is just a minor bugfix release. It fixes up the Find dialog. It also fixes some problems with Python 2.2 and Qt 3.1, so it should work on Red Hat Linux 9 now.

I discovered a GPL packaged version of PyQt the other day. This means that you can use Madabar Vocab under Windows now! Just follow the instructions on the Download page.

There are some vocab lists in WQL format available on the KWordQuiz site. These can be opened in Madabar Vocab. Extra fields can then be added if desired.

On that page there are vocab sets for French, German, Italian, Portugese, Spanish, Swedish, and Polish. There are also lists for US states and capitals, US presidents, the chemical elements and Nobel laureates. They are all copyright Peter B Hedlund, and unfortunately he does not state what license terms they are released under.

I'd like to do a table of the elements within Madabar Vocab as an example of how you can take advantage of having more than two columns. You could have a field for name, a field for the symbol and a field for the atomic number. This would enable you to test yourself on the numbers given symbols, or names given symbols, or names given numbers, etc. It also means you can sort on the different aspects.