Vocabulary builder

[eschwartz]

Under Preferences ==> Output Options==> MOBI Output, set the PDOC tag (default is [PDOC]) to [EBOK]. calibre will then stop updating the cdetype to PDOC on the fly during send-to-device.

If you need to add the ASIN, Quality Check PI can check your library for any book that are missing ASINs and/or add the mobi-asin/asin/amazon/uuid identifier (in descending order of priority) as the ASIN. (This fix is needed so books show up properly on the Fire, IIRC.)

[NiLuJe]

Err, not *exactly*. Calibre defaults to EBOK w/ fake ASIN (ie. everything's fine & dandy).

The output setting eschwartz pointed out exists solely if you *want* a PDOC cdeType (ie. personal) instead, something that will happen (during the Send To Device process) to any books with (at least) one Calibre tag matching the string specified in that setting.

(cf. this thread for a recent run down of the subject).

[mrevent]

With the Kindle Mate program , I wonder now as to whether there is/ can be built a script that looks up the words in a desktop dictionary application and append the definitions to the vocab builder words in the list.

E.g. One can select all words in Vocabulary Builder in Kindle Mate (I suppose that the KM can do that --I couldn't use it since I have no access to Windows yet), transfer them to excel, one word for each row. Then a script can select the words in the rows one by one, look the definitions up in a dictionary program, get the first two lines of their definition and add them to column B for each word.

That would be great, I think, for study purposes --Anki, flashcards/quizzes at cram.com etc.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by mrevent

With the Kindle Mate program ,
- - - - -

If you check the program at that link, you will find it is a closed source program.

So let us know when you get access to the sources and then maybe someone can make an estimate of how practical the additions you ask for would be.

We (the forum members) do not encourage closed source programs here, we already get enough of that from Amazon/Lab126.

As can be seen from the author's activity here, that link is/was just a vanity posting.
Which we also try to ignore at this forum.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by mrevent

With the Kindle Mate program , I wonder now as to whether there is/ can be built a script that looks up the words in a desktop dictionary application and append the definitions to the vocab builder words in the list.

If you know your way around a text editor, you could export the raw vocabulary data as a "|" delimited text file with a simple shell script and import it into a spreadsheet program for further processing.

#!/bin/sh

echo "lang|word|stem|usage|authors|title|category" > /private/var/root/Desktop/vocab.txt
sqlite3 /Volumes/Kindle/system/vocabulary/vocab.db "SELECT WORDS.lang, word, stem, usage, authors, title, category  FROM LOOKUPS JOIN WORDS on LOOKUPS.word_key=WORDS.id JOIN BOOK_INFO on LOOKUPS.book_key=BOOK_INFO.id;" >> /private/var/root/Desktop/vocab.txt

Before running the script, you'll need to change the user name in the Desktop path from root to your user name. If your Kindle isn't mounted as /Volumes/Kindle, you'll also need to change the database path.

To run the script open a Terminal window, drag & drop the shell script to the Terminal window and press Enter. (You'll obviously need to connect your Kindle to your Mac before running the script.)

If your Kindle is jailbroken, you could also use my quick and dirty Vocabulary Builder KUAL extension to export the Vocabulary data to the root folder of the Kindle.

As for the dictionary lookup, it might be implemented using a dictionary website API or querying a StarDict dictionary with sdcv. However, sdcv is a bit buggy and occasionally won't return results, even if the definition is in the dictionary. IIRC, there's also a Google Translate plugin for Anki.

What language combination(s) are you interested in?

[mrevent]

Thank you very very much Doitsu! I wasn't expecting such a great reply so soon!!! I hope this will help others as well...
I am interested mainly in English-English, French-English, German-English, and then French-German

[mrevent]

Hi again,

I tried using Robert Collins English<->French Dictionary for Mac for definitions.

[After seeing belatedly knc1's message above: both Robert-Collins and Ultalingua are closed source programs. Please delete this post if inappropriate, then. I tried to make the script work in Dictionary.app --where one can use Stardict dictionaries -- yet to no avail.]

The following script will get each word from an Excel list (Column A) and append the first two lines of the definitions from the Robert Collins Dictionary to Column B. (TextEdit.app is used as an intermediary). Before running the script, in Excel: the first cell has to be selected; in the Dictionary: the text field has to be selected.


(Currently, the repeat times is set to 2. Change it to the number of the words in the Excel list.
Also: One can duplicate the line '"keystroke (ASCII character 31) using shift down"' in the script to increase the number of lines to be copied from the Robert-Collins Dictionary.)


I don't know how useful it may be to some of us. Since I am still at the newbie level in scripting, I prefer to believe that I "accomplished" something

tell application "Microsoft Excel"
	repeat 2 times
		activate
		tell application "System Events"
			tell process "Microsoft Excel"
				keystroke "c" using {command down}
			end tell
			tell application "Le Grand Robert & Collins"
				activate
				tell application "System Events"
					tell process "The Collins-Robert French Dictionary"
						delay 0.5
						keystroke "v" using {command down}
						delay 0.1
						keystroke return
						delay 0.5
						keystroke "a" using {command down}
						delay 0.2
						keystroke "c" using {command down}
						keystroke tab
						delay 0.1
						keystroke tab
						delay 0.1
						keystroke tab
					end tell
				end tell
			end tell
			tell application "TextEdit"
				activate
				tell application "System Events"
					tell process "TextEdit"
						keystroke "v" using {command down}
						keystroke (ASCII character 30) using command down
						delay 0.2
						keystroke (ASCII character 31)
						keystroke (ASCII character 31) using shift down
						keystroke (ASCII character 31) using shift down
						keystroke "x" using {command down}
						keystroke "a" using {command down}
						keystroke (ASCII character 8)
					end tell
				end tell
			end tell
			delay 0.2
			
			tell application "Microsoft Excel"
				activate
				tell application "System Events"
					tell process "Microsoft Excel"
						keystroke tab
						delay 0.1
						keystroke (ASCII character 32)
						delay 0.1
						keystroke "v" using {command down}
						delay 0.2
						keystroke return
					end tell
				end tell
			end tell
			delay 0.2
			
		end tell
	end repeat
end tell

And for the Ultralingua dictionary:

tell application "Microsoft Excel"
	repeat 2 times
		activate
		tell application "System Events"
			tell process "Microsoft Excel"
				keystroke "c" using {command down}
			end tell
			tell application "Ultralingua"
				activate
				tell application "System Events"
					tell process "Ultralingua"
						delay 0.5
						keystroke "v" using {command down}
						delay 0.3
						keystroke tab
						delay 0.1
						keystroke tab
						keystroke "a" using {command down}
						delay 0.3
						keystroke "c" using {command down}
						delay 0.2
						keystroke tab
						
					end tell
				end tell
			end tell
			tell application "TextEdit"
				activate
				tell application "System Events"
					tell process "TextEdit"
						keystroke "v" using {command down}
						delay 0.5
						keystroke (ASCII character 30) using command down
						delay 0.5
						keystroke (ASCII character 31)
						delay 0.5
						keystroke (ASCII character 31) using shift down
						delay 0.5
						keystroke (ASCII character 31) using shift down
						delay 0.5
						keystroke "x" using {command down}
						delay 0.3
						keystroke "a" using {command down}
						keystroke (ASCII character 8)
					end tell
				end tell
			end tell
			delay 0.2
			
			tell application "Microsoft Excel"
				activate
				tell application "System Events"
					tell process "Microsoft Excel"
						keystroke tab
						delay 0.1
						keystroke (ASCII character 32)
						delay 0.1
						keystroke "v" using {command down}
						delay 0.2
						keystroke return
					end tell
				end tell
			end tell
			delay 0.2
			
		end tell
	end repeat
end tell

[mrevent]

Sorry for 3 messages in a row, but I just saw knc1's message (should have skipped it after Doitsu's): I understand knc1, thanks. -- And Doitsu's script can already do what I need anyway. (Actually, it turned out to be better suited to my purposes than both the current version of KM and the Sqlite Browsers (FF add-on as well as the standalone program) since with the script one can sort the words based on book titles while I could not make those applications list the words together with book titles.)

[morts81]

Hi everyone, here is my very non-techy solution to exporting Kindle vocab data:

1. Plug in Kindle
2. Go to "[Kindle directory]\system\vocabulary" (e.g. D:\system\vocabulary - copy/paste this into Explorer bar) (normally you only see the "documents" directory, the system directory is invisible)
3. Copy paste vocab.db file
4. Open in Sqlitebrowser (Can download Sqlitebrowser at https://github.com/sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser)
5. Export “WORDS” and “LOOKUPS” as a csv
6. Open Excel
7. Import the data from both CSV files using Data-->Get External Data --> From Text
8. In the import wizard change the File_Origin to "65001 : Unicode UTF-8"
9. Change the Delimiter to comma
10. Select where to import to and Finish
11. Manipulate data as required.

[knc1]

#2 is the result of your settings made in your browser, you can change that.

- - - -

Any hints on getting the manipulated data back into the device?

[morts81]

The only change I make on the vocab.db file (on the Kindle) after exporting and saving the data to Excel is to delete all entries and start collecting words in the vocab list again.

I open Sqlitebrowser, open vocab.db (directly from the Kindle), browse data, and delete all records in the WORDS and LOOKUPS sections. Hope this helps.