Rosetta Stone - learn a language on PPC - Page 2

pocketpower · 08-30-09, 06:22 PM

Back again. ;)

Just tested on WM6, x50v and it works really nice!
This is great!

Running in landscape mode, simply launched the MiniRS VGA exe and all worked well.
The drop down menus and a button or two are a little off position, but it still works.
Voice is nice (radio like, native speaker). Voice launching is instant. Next page is instant. Photos are good.

Nice!

Again, someone let me know if posting a link to a file host is ok and I'll upload somewhere.
It would be ~100MB and only English lessons. But anyone with a bit of tech savy could rig up there own lessons from a standard RS cd. I'll be doing that next.
Again, all that matters is the main guts is already working. :)

pocketpower · 08-30-09, 07:09 PM

...and here's a screenshot running in Windows (don't have a screen cap app on my PPC).

I almost thought for a moment that there were none of those infamous 4 panels to choose/learn from, but they are also there. You click the white cards in the top left corner.

Should note: I don't see any navigation back-forth arrows, so you have to go through the whole lesson I guess. Maybe there's a way around that.
Also, you don't see the text of what the native speaker is saying.
Really, not much of a big deal to me. Just glad this nice app is working on the PPC.

So when you launch a lesson with the 4 images, you hear the native speaker, such as "a girl in a car". The middle speaker let's you play the voice back. You click the appropiate picture and you automatically go to the next 4 cards with the voice speaking automatically. A nice natural native voice and so it's welcoming to learn, just as in the original RS.

**hyedipin** · 08-30-09, 08:02 PM

This is great, thank you so much for finding this. I have to give it a try. The thing is, this is not being sold by anyone (including RS) so I don't see why it would be illegal to download/share. Since you need the original discs to get the content (I assume)..

Julie · 08-30-09, 08:34 PM

I don't see any problem with posting a link to the pocket pc download file. Since the software is not being sold anywhere and since the software doesn't include the RS content, I see nothing wrong with posting the link or even adding the file to the Downloads section here.

BTW, I searched around for a RS pocket pc application several months ago and so I am interested in checking it out. This might make me justify purchasing the RS package - going to The Netherlands next year and I'd like to be able to speak a little Dutch.

**hyedipin** · 08-31-09, 12:44 AM

If it is just Java, does that mean it could also work on Blackberry!? :)

cravaus · 08-31-09, 02:04 AM

Please post the link. This is great.

Barrow · 08-31-09, 06:11 PM

pocketpower said It would be ~100MB and only English lessons.

Maybe I am just dense today because what I am understanding from what I am reading is that
all this RS program does is teach you english.
OR
Do you mean it just is in english and teaches you other languages?
Could someone clear up this misunderstanding for me, please.
Because if it is in english and teaches you other languages put me in line also for the download.

Julie · 08-31-09, 08:08 PM

If you want to learn a foreign language, you must purchase the Rosetta Stone materials and install the materials to a pocket pc. The pocket pc software allows you to load the Rosetta Stone materials you purchase onto a pocket pc.

**hyedipin** · 09-01-09, 01:47 AM

I found the software on a forum which we don't link to. The package includes only English and supposedly it has a text file and config file which you can modify with other languages.
The thing is, you would have to find a way to extract images & wav files from other language CDs in order to be able to modify and replace english versions. It is basically ready for anyone who wishes to learn English, but for other languages, either you would have to go through 13 pages of topics, or find a way to replace the wav and image files with other languages (I assume images should be the same, only waves need to be replaced)

Why couldn't Rosette Stone do an official one and sell it!? :(

Julie · 09-01-09, 01:34 PM

Originally Posted by hyedipin

I found the software on a forum which we don't link to. The package includes only English and supposedly it has a text file and config file which you can modify with other languages.
The thing is, you would have to find a way to extract images & wav files from other language CDs in order to be able to modify and replace english versions. It is basically ready for anyone who wishes to learn English, but for other languages, either you would have to go through 13 pages of topics, or find a way to replace the wav and image files with other languages (I assume images should be the same, only waves need to be replaced)

Why couldn't Rosette Stone do an official one and sell it!? :(

I think I stumbled across that software on a website that posts illegal pocket pc software last night, but the screen shots looked somewhat different than those posted here. It is unfortunate that Rosetta Stone has not produced a windows mobile application of its own...I read somewhere that they were working on such an application at one time, but shelved it because they didn't think there was much of a market for it. I haven't taken the plunge to purchase any Rosetta Stone products simply because there isn't a way to use it on a mobile device. If this software works and if I wouldn't have to spend hours formatting the files to get them to work on my mobile device, it would be worthwhile to me and I would probably pay the price to use Rosetta Stone. But if not, I just don't think I can justify the cost...

**hyedipin** · 09-01-09, 01:39 PM

Julie, I agree. I suggest waiting until someone (me or anyone else) tests this with a language other than English and posts results.

pocketpower · 09-03-09, 05:50 PM

Oh, sorry guys. I was away and now back surprised to see the thread quite active.

Yes, it is correct, strangely there is only English in this 101.34MB rar file.

This will be a mod project.

The excitement for me was that after all this time, and people's frustrations, at least A program exists.

This app does appear to be Java. No info on the exe, but running a decompiler should show more as confirmation or not.

From studying the contents, it looks to be that as long as you convert your original desired language audio and image files from the CD to the same specs and folder structure, the ppc app will see them just in the same way it currently sees the English set.

That shouldn't be hard.

As for the missing text? That could be tricky. I see there are locations on the GUI for the text to be displayed (and to select which language to-fro) the "learn language" (the one you are desiring to learn of course) and the "native language" (your native tongue).
Will have to hunt around the CD to see if it will just be a simple copy/paste of txt into the pcc config file.

I've been really busy with other stuff, but I am setting out to do a couple things for this in the next few days.
1. Now that it's been okayed, upload the 103MB rar file to some sort of file host and post the link here.
2. Build another language, try it out and post the results here. If all goes well, I'll detail the instructions on how I did it.

Sure, I see no issues with this app being shared and if one already owns the CD, they can play with the files on their own (ie copying them to their ppc) without causing any stinks I would assume.

Glad to see others interested. Gives me some motivations to get this other language a tryout.

So if you don't hear from me over the next few days, no biggie, I'll be back. Or so I hope.

pocketpower · 09-03-09, 10:45 PM

I'm so excited I had to pop in here for a short moment to share that excitement with you guys! :approve:

This works with a foreign language modded in! This is great!

I just fired up my RS cd, navigated to one of the language folders, first lesson and copied out the first .swa audio file.

I first tried simply renaming to .wav as those are what the ppc app uses.
I also had to open the RSppc config file and simply add in the new language right after where it says "EN - English". This entails simply making a new language folder of 2 letters and adding that name into this config file, so that when you run the app, you can select the language from the drop down menu and it will also point the app to the language folder with the audio.

I did a trial with the first audio as simply renamed. The app didn't take it.
I suspected it was due to an incorrect format and happily I was correct.

I converted it exactly to the specs of the ppc PCM wav's.
Fired up the ppc up, selected the new language from the righthand side drop down, clicked the speaker to manually have a listen and there it was!
I heard the meaning for "a girl" in the foreign language!

So exciting! It really works. Real visual/audio language learning on the go instead of the standard audiobooks.

I am writing a tutorial as I go, so I'll save that for when I'm done, to post here.
For the root lessons, you can just use the same photos that are already included. But if you have more advanced lessons, you will have to convert the photos.

The language txt file is simply the same. That's not hard.

All of this is just a bit of work, but it's not too bad.

Currently uploading the rar file. For some reason it's crawling, but should be done in about 40mins. I'll post the link soon after.
Someone download and open and let me know it's ok.

Back to work now. Happily motivated to continue on. :approve:

pocketpower · 09-03-09, 11:41 PM

Ok, here goes:

(110MB .rar RS ppc app with only english lessons 1-19, contains vga and qvga and also desktop win32 exes.
Need to mod in other languages from CD, see this thread and its continuation)

MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service

Someone please download, open, and try. To let me know the download is ok.

I've run this on WM6, x50v and it works. Also on the PC of course.

pocketpower · 09-04-09, 03:57 AM

Wow, this is taking a while but it's because I have all 19 lessons of each language.
Each lesson is 11 or so sub-lessons.
It's the copying/pasting that is time consuming.
I did use a bulk copier to find all the .txt files of the said language so they were all in one folder. I dragged and dropped them to the ppc language folder. I created the language folder in each lesson folder with a simply ctrl v each time from an original folder I made.

So, I fully have the lesson one completed and working. Eventually I will upload that lesson so it can be tried out by others.
I have now all the text's copied to the 19 lessons of this one foreign language, I am going to begin with all the audio bulk converting for lessons 2-19.
Hey, this isn't tedious if you just have a few lessons, or plan to do the converting as you go along.

A little bit of good news is that it seems you don't have to mess with photos at all. Looks like all you need are already in this ppc rar, up to lesson 19 and as all images are the same for all languages, you don't have to add any more.
There is some confusion with the two drop down menus.

What I've found is that the left side one "learn language" determines both what text is displayed and what language is spoken. It seems to me now as if the right hand drop down "native language" does not do much.
You can do two-way learning with this though.

There was also an extra English in the drop down menu and txt file, so I removed one. It was originally just there as a placement to show the use of the drop down.

Ok back to work.
I'll finish with this one language and probably will take a break for a while. No way I can go through all the others.

But what helps here is sharing that root setup with others and people who have their own cd can do these steps to bring RS to their pocket device.
This one language with all the 19 lessons I am converting is ~ 700MB, so I can't upload it.

Eventually I'll post precise steps.

EDIT: Just noticed one more thing. Strangely, from lessons 10 to 19, the filenaming is different, not in the format such as from lesson 2 for example: "EN0201.TXT" (or ESP0201.TXT for Spanish, etc. depending on language).
At lesson 10 it now becomes "EN01.0.TXT" for example, and is the same no matter which lesson 10 to 19. Also the audio file names are all the same from lessons 10 to 19 of course within each folder climbing numerically, ie "EN01.001.wav" to "EN01.040.wav"
Just compare with the stock EN folders when creating your new language files.
Basically with lessons 1 to 9, stick with one scheme, for lessons 10 to 19, make adjustments for the info I mentioned above.

Also!...just found another thing:
.. for the lessons 10-19, the *.10, *.11, *.12 sub-lessons need the txt to have the *.1 in the filename, for example "ESP01.1.TXT"

It all seems so tedious, but it's really not too bad once you get it and are doing it bit by bit. IOW's a language each day.