MindDate Software

 

Stackz

Flashcard Organizer

7.1

 

Dictionary Edition

User Manual Supplement

V 1.0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MindDate Software
www.stackz.com
info@stackz.com


About this Document

What is Stackz Dictionary Edition?

As the name suggests, the Dictionary Edition of the Stackz Flashcard Organizer integrates translation dictionaries for convenient lookup during the study activities.

What’s new in version 7.1?

Stackz 7.0 is a major upgrade from earlier releases. It features a completely new user interface with new icons. The dictionary tools can now be docked in the main window.

Stackz 7.0 is a service release with some minor fixes and enhancements. The generation of the dictionary index files has been made more robust, index-free kanji query has been improved and the performance of “exact match” queries has been improved.

 

Table of Content

About this Document.. 3

What is Stackz Dictionary Edition?. 3

What’s new in version 7.1?. 3

1.       Supported Languages and Dictionaries. 5

2.       Dictionary Concept.. 6

3.       The Tool Dialogs. 8

3.1.         Dictionary Dialog.. 8

3.1.1.      Sorting the query results. 9

3.1.2.      The “Analyze” query option. 10

3.1.3.      The Dictionary Query Filters. 10

3.1.4.      Exploring the query result 12

3.2.         Kanji Info Dialog.. 12

3.3.         Kanji Select Dialog.. 13

3.4.         Example Sentences Dialog.. 14

3.5.         Textpad.. 15

4.       Dictionary Setup.. 17

4.1.         Translation dictionaries (Japanese or Chinese) 17

4.2.         Japanese Specific Dictionaries. 18

Appendix I       Figures and Tables. 19

I.A          Figures. 19

I.B          Tables. 19

 

1.   Supported Languages and Dictionaries

Stackz originally integrated Jim Breen’s EDICT Japanese – English Dictionary. Since some other dictionaries are available in this format, they were added as well. Currently the following dictionaries are possible to be used with the Stackz Dictionaries:

 

Because of the internal character conversions, EDICT formatted dictionaries of other languages may or may not work. Please contact us if you are aware of a dictionary that can not be correctly added to Stackz.

2.   Dictionary Concept

The Stackz dictionary interface allows browsing through dictionary files in a convenient way. There are several tool dialogs (cf. Tab 1), each of which focusing on a different aspect.

The Kanji Info -, Kanji Select - and Example Sentences Dialogs are available for Japanese only.

Tool Dialog

Purpose

Supported Languages

Dictionary

Translate Words

Japanese,
Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional

Kanji Info

Show detail information of kanji

Japanese only

Kanji Select

Select kanji according criteria

Japanese only

Example
Sentences

List sample sentences

Japanese only

Textpad

Copy/Paste intermediate text

Language Independent

Tab 1: Dictionary Dialogs

The Stackz Study Dialogs allow conveniently running quick dictionary tool queries with any selected text, typically the words that must be studied. All dictionary tool dialogs except the Kanji Info Dialog can also be opened from the Stackz Flashcard Organizer menu. In this case, the query string is entered in the dictionary tool dialog after its appearance.

Fig. 1: Dictionary Tools relations (Japanese only)

Add to selected stack

Textpad

Start new query

The query result that is then displayed in the tool dialog can be selected and used as new query string for a next dictionary query with one of the tools.

The Textpad can be used with all dictionary tools to save intermediate text results. Selected text in the textpad can be used to directly run new dictionary queries with the context menu.

The query results in most dictionary tool dialogs can be conveniently added to the selected stack of the currently active Stackz document with the “Add to selected Stack” function in the context menu of the query results.

Fig. 1 shows how the tool dialogs are linked conceptually, in Fig. 2 a screenshot of a test session with heavy use of the dictionary integration is shown.