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Please be more specific.

Yes, it works on iPhone 4.

Testers are still welcome! Simply follow the link in the reply #9 above for more information.

Testing Stackz for iPhone/iPod touch has started!
For more information about the features of iStackz 1.0, please visit this link!

Is it possible to add new boxes ? As I can see (at first glance) there are 5 boxes the cards can be put into. If I want 6 or 7 boxes, is there a way to accomplish that ?

Stackz is limited to 5 levels to keep the complexity as simple as possible. Do you have any particular need for additional levels?

What do I do when I want the romanji to be shown instead so I can try to remember the Hiragana ? Do I have to write a complete new lesson for that purpose ?

Stackz uses "skills" to manage different attribute appearing orders. For each skill a different order of attribute appearance is used, e.g. hiragana -- roooma ji for reading Japanese, rooma ji -- hiragana for writing kana (which corresponds to "speaking", as hiragana describes the pronunciation). That way, any appearance order is explicitly linked to a meaningful name. Some notes:

• There are many skills required when learning Japanese because pronunciaton and meaning of the kanji must both be mastered. This translates into different skills, such as "understanding kanji" (kanji -- english translation) and "reading kanji" (kanji -- pronunciation in hiragana). Stackz allows defining and training these skills individually if wished.
• The examples you mentioned correspond to the predefined skills "Japanese comprehension" (hiragana -- english) and "Japanese speaking" (english -- hiragana) skills.
• The current skill can be easily switched anytime while testing or learning.
• Test statistics are not linked to skills: a success is a success, regardless of the used skill. This is to keep the complexity low and not to overload the proficiency estimation with too many details.
• Skills are defined in the file options (tab "Skills"). Several skills are predefined, renaming or removing them, as well as adding custom skills is easy.

Even better would be the possibility of a "mixed" test session, so that somtimes the romanji and sometimes the Hiragana is shown (in the same test). Is something like that possible ? Learning "one way only" can't be good ...

This would correspond to a "random skill selection" in the Stackz system. This is not planned at the moment because it somehow contradicts the Stackz fundamental assumption that the student is in control of the action, not the program (i.e. the student decides what to study).

On the other hand it would not be hard to implement, although adding to the overall complexity and leading to difficult situations with many words that have several possible answers. If there are many votes for that it might make it to an upcoming release.

The Stackz for iPhone test is about to start soon!
For more information, please visit this topic in the members zone (free registration required).

The Stackz for iPhone test is about to start soon!
For more information, please visit this topic in the members zone (free registration required).

After a vey busy period with little activities on the project we hope to get back on track now so that the first alpha will be available in december.
Feel free to subscribe in this thread, we will contact you as soon as there are any news.

Tricky, tricky!

In all my attempts of exporting/copying cell content with Excel Linefeeds (inserted with Alt+Tab), the linefeed was lost and the lines were wrapped in quotes (like this: "line1line2"). Then Stackz has of course no chance of finding the linefeed when importing this text.

All I found was the following workaround:

1) replace the Excel linefeeds with a special character or sequence that is not apparing anywhere else in this wordlist (say, <LF>). You can do this by searching and automatically replacing all the Excel Linefeeds: enter Alt+0010 on the numeric key-block to specify the Excel-Linefeeds in the search part of the search/replace dialog (you won't see anything but it works), and "<LF>" in the replace part.

2) export the file in the CSV format (file save - as). This will insert ';' between the columns, and the Excel-Linefeed is included as your <LF>. To force the termination of your last column with a CSV character in the generated file (instead of the linefeed that is used in the last column), add another column with some dummy text that you will ignore later on, e.g. "END".

3) Open the exported CSV file in a text editor and replace all <LF> sequences with a real linefeed. Some text editors will allow you using the linefeed character when finding/replacing text, in others you might have to write a macro, or maybe you can do it by hand if there are not too many linefeeds.

4) Now you have a source list that is well suited for importing with the list import wizard of Stackz - simply use the CSV character as token-end-marker in the import wizard second step. Ignore the added last dummy column ("END").

I hope this was clear... and yes, it is quite complicated -  because I did not find a way to copy/export some text from Excel that includes Excel-Linefeeds in a convenient way. If there is such a possibility, please let me know and I'll update this description.

You can use Ctrl+Return to insert a linefeed.

Thank you for your encouragement, it's very motivating to continue this long work like that.
Money will not speed things up, the limiting factor is time for development.

But nevertheless we are progressing quite well, a first useful beta version will be available "soon". There will be a beta test phase for interested people advertised on our site. If you want to be sure to be among the first beta testers, please leave your message directly here in this thread or send me an email.

Thank you all for your interest in our products!

We will come out as soon as possible with a minimal version that will be completed step by step thereafter, but it is definitely too early at the moment. Please understand that we can't give a release date at the moment, the thing is not very well plannable due to limited available time, and the potential of unforeseen problems. We estimate it should be a matter of a few months - maybe two, maybe four... but please don't take this as a promise!

We are currently observing the Android platform, and there might be a Stackz version, some day in the future.
But please don't expect this soon, we are currently working on the iPhone version.

This is just a short status about the "Stackz for iPhone" development.

Development progress is quite slow due to lack of time, but we are more and more convinced that iStackz will be great!

At the moment, we can copy Stackz files from the mac to the iPhone and view the content there - in fact copying the files was quite a challenge with the iPhone platform! Adding the real Stackz features will be less tricky from a technical point of view, but finding the right balance of useable tools for this device will not be trivial either.

A couple of things must be added before the first minimal version will be available in AppStore. It's hard to indicate a release date because many unknowns are included in the timeplan, but we are positive that the release will not be in the far future (whatever this may mean  ;) )

This has nothing to do with your list!
Adding the lists takes some time, and I did not find a moment to do it. I hope to do it soon!

I don't understand why you need to buy "a new license" - if you had an old old license, it should still work! Remember that our licenses won't expire, they are valid for all future versions of Stackz!

If you lost your license during the crash, send us a mail where you identify yourself and we'll send you your original license key again.