Sokudoku is a program for practicing reading random characters. Although probably best for syllable-based character sets like Japanese Katakana or Hiragana or Korean Hangul (for which it is primarily intended), it more or less works fine with "regular" phonetic character sets as well (or something like Korean Jomo), taking into account the fact that it more or less produces strings of random gibberish (alternately, instead of drilling on longer strings, it's always possible to simply drill on single characters). Things like Japanese or Chinese compound words would also work reasonably well, although those are probably more suited for a general flashcard test program like Anki which has the further advantage of allowing you to drill in the other direction as well.
The program itself is fairly simple: it displays a set of characters, the user attempts to type in the pronunciation of those characters as quickly as possible, it times the user (with a penalty for incorrect answers), keeps track of how fast the characters were entered and optionally preferentially feeds the user characters they have trouble with.
Really, the program is a bit of a gadget thrown together over a couple weeks (and refined a bit as I've used it) so I could drill down on Hangul reading practice (with Katakana as a bonus). It's not as generally useful as a general/configurable drill program like Anki, but I believe it's still useful as a complement (I've been using both) -- after all, I know why I wanted it, but your mileage may vary.
At this point, I'm probably done working on it (minus any bugs I find while using it, except for maybe adding a character package or two to test myself on).
If you just want to install the program, there's a barebones DMG with the application (and character packages) in the release directory; the current latest version is 1.0.0.
This repository contains an XCode project in the following directories; if you have XCode installed, it should be possible to load the project from the checked out repository and then build and modify it.
- Sokudoku/ : source files
- SokudokuTests/ : unit tests
- Sokudoku.xcodeproj/ : XCode project files
This repository contains several package files that can be drilled on in the main program.
- Packages/ : package files
- Packages/Source/ : ruby programs that generate those package files
So far a Japanese kana and Korean Hangul and Jomo packages are included; more may follow (as I build packages to practice on, or maybe other people do if anyone besides me ever uses the program). The test package, of course, is mainly a simple package for testing and not of any particular interest beyond that.
Packages are encoded as plists (Apple's XML format that Cocoa supports natively). The format is actually fairly simple: a dictionary with a name, an array of tags, an array of descriptions, and an array of characters (each made up of a dictionary containing a literal, tags, and pronunciations). It's unlikely I'll fully document the format anytime soon, but for the curious there are obviously several examples in the repository of both programs that will generate packages and packages themselves -- if you build a new package that contains any errors, the program should supply somewhat meaningful error messages when you attempt to load it (which should help you fix it).
Once packages are loaded, the application handles storing the package and history internally in the user's account.
The first time the program is run, it will prompt you to load a package into Sokudoku's library. This step is not optional -- the program will not run until at least one package is loaded. From there, the user is presented with the main window:
Everything else launches from there. Drill options can be chosen on the right. Subsets from a package can be selected (e.g., for the Japanese Kana package, drills can be limited to Hiragana or Katakana). Session length can be chosen, minimum and maximum lengths for drill questions can be selected, and whether or not difficult characters should be prioritized can be toggled off and on (i.e., the user can choose whether slower characters should appear more often in drills).
On the left are some other options: the top button chooses which package is currently loaded. Below that, more packages can be loaded, a package can be "forgotten" (i.e., taken out of the list of packages available to select), "recalled" (i.e., restored to the list of packages available with all of its history intact) or permanently deleted (which will remove all of its history as well. Once that occurs, it can only be restored -- minus any history or character weightings -- by being re-imported).
On the bottom are other options for erasing history (this removes any data used by the history graphs) or completely resetting the package (restoring it to the state it was in when freshly imported, losing any character weightings and history). The other two buttons load graphs.
Starting a drill is done by pressing "Go!" -- as should be fairly obvious -- and produces the following window. To respond to each set of characters, type the pronunciation into the box (which should start selected, and clears itself after each question).
Copyright 2013 Douglas Triggs ([email protected]), All Rights Reserved.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.