KanaDrill User Manual Introduction: KanaDrill is a quick and dirty "flash card" like program that displays hiragana or katakana images on the screen as an aid for learning to recognize these symbols. It will work from Workbench or from the CLI. Distribution Files: KanaDrill is distributed as a package containing the following files: KanaDrill - the KanaDrill program file katakana - the katakana image data file hiragana - the hiragana image data file KanaDrill.doc - KanaDrill documentation and user manual [this file]. KatakanaDrill.info - an icon file to run KanaDrill from the workbench, using the IconX default tool to execute the KatakanaDrill script. KatakanaDrill - a script file to start KanaDrill using the katakana image data file HiraganaDrill.info - an icon file to run KanaDrill from the workbench, using the IconX default tool to execute the HiraganaDrill script. HiraganaDrill - a script file to start KanaDrill using the hiragana image data file iff.library - PD IFF image run time library Installation: Copy iff.library to LIBS: and copy KanaDrill and the rest of its support files to wherever you want to put them. Running KanaDrill from the Workbench: - Open a window to the disk / directory where you put the KanaDrill files. - Double-click on the appropriate icon. - The KatakanaDrill icon starts the KanaDrill program using the katakana image file. - The HiraganaDrill icon starts the KanaDrill program using the hiragana image file. Running KanaDrill from the CLI: Change directory [CD] to the disk / directory where you put the KanaDrill files. At the CLI prompt, type: KanaDrill ImageFileName where ImageFileName is either: katakana - to drill katakana symbols hiragana - to drill hiragana symbols Example: To practice hiragana, type: KanaDrill hiragana KanaDrill User Interface: KanaDrill is controlled via the keyboard and the mouse. The cursor keys allow you to move your current position around within the kana symbol table. Below is a romanzi symbol representation of the kana symbol table using the romanzi from "Reading Japanese" by Eleanor Harz Jorden and Hamako Ito Chaplin. ra ya ma ba pa ha na da ta za sa ga ka a ri n mi bi pi hi ni ti zi si gi ki i ru yu mu bu pu hu nu tu zu su gu ku u re wa me be pe he ne de te ze se ge ke e ro yo mo bo po ho no do to zo so go ko o Kana Symbol Table The kana symbol table is read from right to left, from top to bottom. Therefore, the table reads: a i u e o ka ki ku ke ko ..... ra ri ru re ro. [Note: n and wa are stuck in the y* column so as not to enlarge the image file beyond the standard 352 x 200 size.] The following keys and mouse buttons are assigned the following functions: Cursor-Down Key or Keypad 2: - Moves the current position down one place in the table. (wraps around to the top of the same column) Cursor-Up Key or Keypad 8: - Moves the current position up one place in the table. (wraps around to the bottom of the same column) Cursor-Left Key or Keypad 4: - Moves the current position left one place in the table. (wraps around to the right most column of the same row) Cursor-Right Key or Keypad 6: - Moves the current position right one place in the table. (wraps around to the left most column of the same row) Enter or Return Key: - Moves the current position to the next place in the table, automatically moving to the next column at the end. (wraps around to the beginning of the table from the end) Home Key [Keypad 7]: - Moves the current position to the beginning of the table. (ie: top right corner) Help Key: - Toggles Help Mode on and off. Help Mode displays the romanzi symbol for the current kana symbol in the window's menu bar. Esc Key: - Exits the program. Left Mouse Button: - Moves the current position to a random position in the table. Right Mouse Button: - When Help Mode is off, pressing the Right Mouse Button displays the romanzi for the current symbol in the window's menu bar only for as long as the Right Mouse Button is being pressed. Clicking the Close Gadget with the Left Mouse Button: - Exits the program. [Note: Since the KanaDrill program gets keyboard and mouse events through its window, the window must be active for the user interface to work.] Using KanDrill: For novices, I recommend studying the symbols column by column, beginning with the right most column. Go down the column over and over again using the Cursor-Down Key. Use Help Mode until you become fairly well acquainted with the symbols of that column, then turn Help Mode off to practice. When you feel familiar with that column, turn Help Mode on and repeat the process with the next column. Keep this up until you are familiar with the whole symbol table. Then, turn Help Mode off and push the Left Mouse Button to select randomly from among the symbols. If you have a momentary lapse of recall, toggle Help Mode, or press the Right Mouse Button to refresh your memory. If your Japanese is not good, study katakana first because words that the Japanese borrow from other languages are written in katakana. Many (if not most) of these are taken from english, so you can often figure out what these words are from their sound. The Kana Image Files: The hiragana and katakana image files are standard IFF image files. They are 352 x 200 x 1 bit plane images. Each symbol is confined within a frame of 24 x 24 pixels. If you would like to change the appearance of any of the symbols, you can easily do so using your favorite paint program, as long as you follow a few simple rules. - Do NOT change the placement of the symbols. - Do NOT change the size of the symbols. - Keep each symbol within its own 24 x 24 pixel frame. - You CAN change the number of bitplanes for the image. - You CAN change the colormap of the image. Error Messages: The KanaDrill program tries to open and allocate Amiga resources in a responsible manner so that it can free them later on. If it fails to acquire some resource, it will attempt to shut down gracefully. When KanaDrill shuts down, it displays the error level at that time. The following list shows what errors were responsible for KanaDrill to shut down: error level Reason for shut down ----------- ----------------------------------------------------- 0 No errors. Program was terminated by the user. 101 intuition.library failed to open. 102 graphics.library failed to open. 103 layers.library failed to open. 104 iff.library failed to open. 201 iff.library could not open the image file. 202 iff.library could not find the image bit map header. 203 KanaDrill could not allocate memory for image bit map. 204 KanaDrill could not allocate Raster. 205 iff.library could not decode the IFF image. 301 KanaDrill could not open its screen. 302 KanaDrill could not open its window.