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Collegues,

as you may know, one of our major concerns in the DictionaryForMIDs project is to provide the dictionaries on an up-to-date version of DictionaryForMIDs. For example, we already will have version 3.4 soon, but most dictionaries are on much older versions.

Fortunately Jeff Krengel will create a 'dictionary archive' where we can store the input files that are needed for setting up a dictionary with a new version of DictionaryForMIDs. For more information see http://dictionarymid.sourceforge.net/dictionaryArchive.html.

Then when we have a major new version of DictionaryForMIDs, from the dictionary archive we can automatically set up the dictionaries for the new version of DictionaryForMIDs.

If you did set up a dictionary for DictionaryForMIDs, please send your inputdictionaryfile along with the other relevant files to Jeff. Jeff will then put your files in the dictionary archive.

For contacting Jeff, please see our contributor list at http://dictionarymid.sourceforge.net/contributor.html.

Many thanks to Jeff !!
Gert

DictionaryForMIDs JavaME uses the class StringColourItem for displaying the coloured translation texts (by default the coloured display is activated in the settings form). StringColourItem an important class in DictionaryForMIDs. When StringColourItem was introduced in DictionaryForMIDs version 3, this was a big improvement in the "look&feel" of DictionaryForMIDs !

However, the code of the class StringColourItem is hard to read, and it turned out that in some cases the implementation shows 'incorrect behaviour' (aka bugs).

For this reason we are asking for support of a code review of StringColourItem. Who can help here ?

Here are the tasks:

• review the code to check whether there is an incorrect implementation (bug)
  
• 
  check whether the code makes correct use of the MIDP API (StringColourItem is a MIDP CustomItem class)
• 
  if possible: amend the source code with comments (currently hardly any comments are found in the source)
  
• 
  of course corrections for detected problems will be welcome too
  

Priority 1 is review of the code that is executed by the method pointerPressed. Review of the remaining code is priority 2.

Here is a link to the source of StringColourItem: http://dictionarymid.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/dictionarymid/trunk/JavaME/src/de/kugihan/dictionaryformids/hmi_java_me/lcdui_extension/StringColourItem.java?view=markup

Note: StringColourItem supports 'selections' of text (see also 'selectionMode' in the source). Currently those selections are decativated in de.kugihan.dictionaryformids.dataaccess.content.PredefinedContent by using selectionModeNone. For this reason also the triggering of translations by pointing on the touchscreen' (results in a call to pointerPressed) is deactivated. I still will provide a test version where PredefinedContent has its selection modes set to selectionModeSingle.

Thanks in advance !
Gert

Thanks to Erik Wetterberg, now there is an patched version of antenna which also supports the new Sun Java ME SDK version 3.0. See also http://eriksdiary.blogspot.com/2009/07/antenna-suport-for-java-me-sdk-30.html

For simplicity, I did put the new antenna Jar-file in the SVN repository under the Build directory (I deleted the previous antenna version there).

Note: I also updated the build.xml file for the new antenna version - you need to update the Build-directory from the SVN repository in order to build with the build.xml file !

Gert

JavaME source code is now separated in the directory JavaME - analogously to JavaSE and Android.

The directory DictionaryForMIDs now only contains the sources that are common to all platforms.

I still will have to update the development pages on our web site during the next days.

Best regards,
Gert

I just converted the DictionaryForMIDs CVS-repository to Subversion.

If any problems with the SVN repository should show up, then please let me know.

Regards,
Gert

Android does not 'out of the box' support Java ME / MIDP. Fortunately there are a few projects that have the goal to run Java ME applications on Android.

I did a quick test of "J2ME MIDP Runner" (which is in beta state) - and it works ! Well, at least with the 'stone age' 2.4.0 English-Spanish dictionary; see the attached screenshot.

When I tested the 3.1.2 English-Chinese dictionary, the application did not start up. Ok, the "J2ME MIDP Runner" is still a beta version.

Of course we are still searching for someone who does implement the HMI with a nice native Android look&feel (see the "We need your support / Java Development for Google Android" page on our web site).

Gert

It seems there are a few cell phone models where DfM does exit after a translation is done (i.e. where the DfM application is not running any more after a translation is done).

I have the following questions:

1.
Is there anyone who has a cell phone with this problem ? What model is it ?
Did you ever try to update to the latest firmware version for your cell phone ?

2.
Is the problem still there when the coloured display is deactivated in the Settings dialogue ? Maybe the problem only exists with the coloured display.

3.
Could you please test if the problem is still there in the latest version of DfM:
http://www.kugihan.de/dict/download/test_versions/3.4pre-release1/DictionaryForMIDs.jar
and
http://www.kugihan.de/dict/download/test_versions/3.4pre-release1/DictionaryForMIDs.jad
In that version, is there a simple way how to reproduce the problem, for example to translate a word which has only one translation result ?

Thanks for helping on that topic !

Regards,
Gert

Colleagues,

the 3.3.0 testversion ('pre-release') is available !

You can get the 'empty' version here:
http://www.kugihan.de/dict/download/test_versions/3.3.0/DictionaryForMIDs_3.3.0_pre-release_empty.zip

And set up with a test dictionary (this is a 3 languages English-Tagalog-Spanish dictionary): http://www.kugihan.de/dict/download/test_versions/3.3.0/DictionaryForMIDs_3.3_dev_EngTagSpa_testversion.zip

For a list of new features, see http://dictionarymid.sourceforge.net/history.html

If you discover a bug, please post a description in this thread.

Thank you !
Gert

Sometimes there is a request for the source of the old 2.7.0. Yes, there are still many people with very resource-constrained cell phones around, and they are interested in the old 2.7 version which was much smaller than version 3.

You can find the source of 2.7.0 here:
http://www.kugihan.de/dict/download/related_files/versions/2.7.0/DictionaryForMIDs_2.7.0_source.zip


Gert

Many people read this forum as 'guests' only. Hey, please do register as a user in this forum and then also write postings in the forum !

DictionaryForMIDs lives from the user community - and from the people who actively participate and contribute to the project ! There are so many ways how people can contribute to the DictionaryForMIDs project (just have a look at "We need your support" on our homepage (http://dictionarymid.sourceforge.net/needhelp.html).

I will appreciate any useful posting in this forum !

Thank you !
Gert

P.S.: If you should have problems to register in the forum, check our Contact page and send an email about your registration problem (http://dictionarymid.sourceforge.net/contact.html).

Is there anyone who wants to implement the HMI modules for Google Android ? Could be an interesting thing to do ?

I think it should be rather straightforward to do this. In the architectural layering (see http://dictionarymid.sourceforge.net/development.html) there just would be an additional hmi_android package.

Besides: before anyone starts to implement the HMI for Android, tell me first, because I should do some cleanup around the class DictionarySettings.

Regards,
Gert

This time I will start conservatively on 'all of the features' that will go into 3.3:

I myself plan to implement a frequent wish: searching over all languages (i.e. the user enters an expression, and a search is performed over all languages with this expression). This feature was reqested often in the past, so I'll finally implement it.

How about your contributions, is there any nice improvement that you could contribute ?

Very roughly speaking, I'd plan to release 3.3 in half a year (maybe around September).

Best greetings,
Gert

On Blackberrys a deadlock may have happened with the incremental search (more detail at http://www.blackberry.com/developers/forum/thread.jsp?forum=1&thread=13301&message=45513&q=#45513). I just checked in a change to the CVS repositore which calls the translation thread via Display.callSerially; this is a workaround for the Blackberry problem.

Hope that by now no more problems with the incremental search show up on any device - testing will be appreciated (I will provide a JAR file for testing some time later).

Gert

Colleagues,

I just did build version 3.2.0 of DictionaryForMIDs. For the moment I did put it at
http://www.kugihan.de/dict/download/test_versions/3.2.0/DictionaryForMIDs_3.2.0_empty.zip

If someone could set up a dictionary with that 3.2.0 and do some tests to check that this build is ok, that would be nice !

I will then put this 3.2.0 on the DfM homepage.

Let me thank all of you who contributed to this version 3.2.0 !! Please also see our "Version history log" for the improvements of 3.2.0 and the people who contributed to them !

Gert

P.S.: for those updates that did not make it in this 3.2.0 release (final update of Spanish user interface translations; Japanese Romanji lists), don't worry, as soon as these are available they will be included in the next version.

I just looked at DfM on the Nokia S40 with activated coloured display: there is an ugly black background colour for the translation texts ! Actually, the translations are unreadble because of this !

The code is from the latest 3.2 development baseline, I used a test dictionary which does not contain any colour specifications, also not for the background colour.

So the idea was, that the background from the device should be used, whatever theme/background the device user did set. But on the S40 devices, the black background is used instead.

On the WTK emulator the colours seem to be ok (at least the colour is not black).

Anyone knows about this ?

Gert

The Stardict project (http://stardict.sourceforge.net) seems to be open source now too. They have plenty of dictionaries, as far as I know they use the DICT format.

So with the DictdToDictionaryForMIDs tool, these dictionaries can be converted to DictionaryForMIDs. The DictionaryForMIDs format is much more powerful than the original DICT format. (see the DfM content feature at http://dictionarymid.sourceforge.net/newdictContent.html).

Maybe Stardict uses some extensions to the DICT format, that makes the dictionaries nicer to look, such as with the DfM content feature.

Could someone check this on http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Documentation.php and convert the Stardict dictionaries for DictionaryForMIDs ?

Gert

Does anyone know about the file format from the Babylon translator ? Are they using an open file format (i.e. a file format that is documented) ? If yes, maybe a simple file converter could be written, in order to generate the .csv file for DictionaryForMIDs (at least for their free dictionaries).

Well, I would be little surprised if their file format was open documented, I'd guess that at least their commercial dictionaries would be somehow encrypted.

But I just read about the dictconv application (it is open source) which is said to convert the Babylon files.

Does anybody know about this topic ?

Regards,
Gert

DictionaryForMIDs can be run on a cell phone emulator (which simulates a cell phone on a PC). There are plenty of emulators for Java ME / CLDC / MIDP available, usually at no cost. Here is an overview:

1. Sun's WTK
The emulator that is incluced in Sun's WTK is probably the most popular one: http://java.sun.com/products/sjwtoolkit/overview.html

2. Nokia emulators
At http://forum.nokia.com you can download the S60 (Series 60) and the S40 (Series 40) SDKs, which contain an emulator for S60 / S40. For me it seems that the Nokia S60 / S40 emulators emulate the devices rather precisely. These emulators are the best that I know when it comes to device emulation !

3. SonyEricsson emulator
SonyEricsson unfortunately only provides a customized version of the emulator that is part of Sun's WTK (see point 1. above). This emulator does not really emulate any of SonyEricsson's mobiles. So this emulator is not useful to develop workarounds for the bugs in SonyEricsson devices. If you are still interested, look at http://developer.sonyericsson.com

4. Motorola
The emulator(s) from Motorola can be downloaded from http://motocoder.com . I never spent a lot of time with the emulator (honestly speaking I had trouble to work with the user interface).

5. Samsung
Same problem as for SonyEricsson: the Samsung emulator is a 'general emulator' and does not really emulate the Samsung mobiles. If you are still interested, look at http://developer.samsungmobile.com

6. Siemens
(Only of historical value, because of the Benq debacle)
The Siemens emulators were the best of all ! Even ahead of the Nokia emulators ! For example their S65 emulator even emulated the phone crashes correctly 

7. Midp2Exe
I personally like Midp2Exe: http://kwyshell.myweb.hinet.net/pager.html?Project/Midp2Exe/ However you need to understand how to use the Midp2Exe compiler.

8. More
Many more exist (I just do not have time to list more).

One note: there are many emulators out there. However a few of them are of low quality (for those emulators, if DfM does not run correctly, please complain at the emulator developers and do not complain at the DfM developers).

Gert

Who can make publicity for DictionaryForMIDs ??

This is probably the most important task in the whole project !

To give one simple example: I just uploaded Lars' CEDICT dictionary to GetJar, a famous web site where people can download applications for their cell phone/PDA.
See http://www.getjar.com/products/11249/DictionaryForMIDsEnglishChinese. Besides, hey, if anyone thinks this is a good product, please post a positive review at GetJar

There plenty of web sites where people can download applications for cell phones / PDAs. Who can upload DictionaryForMIDs to some more of these web sites, so that people find DfM easily ? We urgently need to have people who support publicity and advertisement for DictionaryForMIDs !!

Best greetings,
Gert

Dear Developers,

if you have a new pre-release for DfM version 3.2, please do a posting under this thread and provide a link where people can download this version (Jar/jad file; prefreably packaged with README and COPYRIGHT in a zip archive), togeher with some instructions about the new features are in there.

Regards,
Gert