How do I import a Chinese database into Palm Supermemo?

Question

I am using a Palm T/X and Supermemo Palm v.2. I am trying to import a Chinese database from Supermemo 2004 to my palm. I have exported the database from sm 2004 as HTML (keeping the Chinese characters, if I export it as Q&A text I lose the Chinese) which I copy and paste into Excel and then save as a unicode text file (I have also tried Notepad, saving it as UTF-8 among others). But when I import it into Palm, if the database has Chinese characters all that appears is gibberish (not ‘?’ marks or squares like some people have reported), and usually only one line of it even if the database I imported was much larger. I am using CJKOS for Chinese on my palm with all font files installed. Also I can enter Chinese directly into supermemo from my palm, it’s just when trying to make the transition from my Laptop onto the palm where the trouble seems to lay.

I purchased the Palm and software such as Supermemo Palm and CJKOS with the sole interest of making my 4000+ item, Supermemo 2004 database portable, but after many, many long hours of trying to fix this problem I am beginning to lose hope. If anyone can help it would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Answer

Foreign languages can use many different encodings (ways to display foreign characters using only standard English characters). If you want to transfer from one program to another, be sure to use an encoding that both programs understand. You saved your Chinese text in Excel using Unicode encoding, however, your Chinese font tool (CJKOS) cannot read Unicode.

Read the user manual for your font tool (CJKOS in your case) to find out what encodings it supports, and save your text file in that encoding. If your font tool does not say what encodings it can handle, try saving in all available encodings and see which one works for you.

Here is a procedure known to work for Korean and MS Word for instance:

1. Open MS Word.

2. Construct a database in Word using the "Tab delimited file format" method described in the SuperMemo for Palm OS manual (i.e., use tabs to separate fields), or try to import or copy&paste from your desktop SuperMemo HTML exported files.

3. Save the document as "Plain Text". Click Save.

4. A window entitled "file conversion" will pop up, asking you to confirm which encoding you want the file to have.

5. Choose the "other encoding" button.

6. In the list of encodings on the right there are 6 different Korean encodings. The first one on the list, just plain "Korean", worked for me. Select "Korean" and then click "OK".

7. Now follow the normal procedures for converting this text file to a Palm database (1. drag and drop the text file over the SMCONV application. 2. double-click the resulting .pdb file to start the Palm install application)

8. Hot Sync to upload the database to your Palm.