WeLoveChinesePod

I learn Chinese from ChinesePod. A few aspects of ChinesePod I have found to be inconvenient, and so based on discussion with other members have been working on a program to make it more convenient.

I want to emphasize, that this program does NOT provide access to or distribute premium content to people who do not already have access to it. This program merely automates, for an INDIVIDUAL PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER, the process of downloading and displaying material provided by ChinesePod. For example, many users already manually copy-and-paste the expansion sentences into a document and print this out, or manually create a practice MP3 file of the expansion sentences for their own personal use. This is exactly what this program does, it only automates the process. It is intended for those of us who want to practice the expansion sentences "on our terms" away from the computer. This makes ChinesePod a more mobile form of learning. It also also possible to use this program for any of the RomanceLanguagePods. See the instructions below for more details and additional features.

What you get

• going-to-the-gym.xml
• going-to-the-gym/going-to-the-gym_dialogue_sentences.mp3
• going-to-the-gym/going-to-the-gym_expansion_sentences.mp3
• going-to-the-gym/going-to-the-gym_vocabulary.mp3
• An MP3 file for each individual sentence.

Instructions for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu users

• Before downloading, read the license and disclaimer at the bottom of this web page. If you do not accept this license, then you do not have any right to use this software.
• Install Python if you haven't already.
• Windows users: Download and install Python for Windows
• Mac users: Python is already installed.
• Ubuntu users: Python is already installed.
• Download welovechinesepod and unzip it.
• welovechinesepod_2008_08_14.zip
• welovechinesepod_2008_09_14_testing.zip (for testing by advanced users)
• To run welovechinesepod.py:
• Windows users: Double click on welovechinesepod.py
• Mac users: Click on welovechinesepod.py, then click on "Run" at the top of the program, then click on "Run Module"
• Ubuntu users: Double click on welovechinesepod.py, and click on "Run in terminal".
• Follow the instructions in the black box that pops up. It will ask for your email address, password, and the name of the lesson (exactly as it appears in the URL, see examples below) that you want to download. This information is only sent to the Praxis log-in site. If you don't trust me, feel free to look at the source code.
• Right: going-to-the-gym
• Wrong: Going to the gym
• Wrong: Goingtothegym

Advanced Instructions

• If you create a file called settings.txt in the same folder as welovechinesepod.py, which contains your email address in the first line, and your password in the second line. Then, when you run the program, you will not have to enter your log-in information.
• If you want to download many lessons at once you can create a file called lessons.txt, for example, which contains the name of each lesson, exactly as it appears in the URL, listed one per line.
• To download lessons from any of the RomanceLanguagePods, edit the file language.txt to say either spanish, italian, or french instead of chinese.

News

• September 14, 2008 Testing
• HTML files are no longer produced. Instead, a single XML file is produced which contains all content including Key & Supplementary Vocabulary, Dialogue, and Expansion sentences. This XML uses XSLT and CSS to control how this content is presented to you. Advanced users can fully customize the presentation by editing welovechinesepod.xsl and welovechinesepod.css to their liking. These XML files appear in the root folder due to a security setting in Firefox involving accessing files from other directories.
• The default XSLT stylesheet uses ruby character annotation. (Note, if you don't want to use these, feel free to edit welovechinesepod.xsl). The only browser I found that supports this well is Firefox 3 with the XHTML Ruby Support extension. For the content to display correctly you have to use this extension, which can be downloaded here, and you need to change the settings as follows: In Firefox: Tools->Add-ons, then click on the Preferences button for XHTML Ruby Support, then go to the Ruby Appearance tab, and then near the bottom select "Expand to Ruby height"
• Video lessons more or less work reliably, without crashing due to the dialogue tab.
• Creates a vocabulary mp3 file. This should be especially useful for old lessons missing an Audio Review, and also for learning the additional vocabulary.
• August 14, 2008
• Bopomofo HTML documents.
• HTML documents with literal English translation.
• July 20, 2008
• Fixes a bug that occurred when dealing with English words involving apostrophes, for example the Aussie Rules lesson expansion sentence "Don't leave, OK?".
• July 19, 2008
• The program creates an html document containing traditional characters.
• Punctuation is included in the Pinyin.
• June 30, 2008
• The program is now called welovechinesepod.py. All media is now stored in an automatically generated subfolder named after the lesson.
• There is a logging feature so that when the program doesn't work we can debug it.
• It doesn't redownload material in case you download the same lesson more than once.
• The mp3 files now work much better - they worked with every single media player I tested them with, and the technique used should also work on the Mac.
• The mp3 ID3 tags no longer contain useless information such as "Use Mp3Splt to obtain original tracks".
• Advanced lessons with 汉字 names can now be downloaded with no problem. In Windows, you probably cannot type 汉字 into the command line, you will need to add these via the text file lessons.txt, and make sure to save it in the UTF-8 encoding (this should be an option in Notepad when you save the text file).

Known Bugs

• Bopomofo is incorrectly translated from pinyin for words with ng/n endings, such as canguan

Requested and Planned Features

• Make the program easier to use / create a simple GUI for the application.

Questions

• It didn't work, can you please help?
• Yes. Open the file welovechinesepodlog.txt in WordPad. First double-check that welovechinesepodlog.txt does not contain any personal information such as your user name or password (it shouldn't). Then, please send me a private message containing the contents of this text file. I will do my best to figure out what went wrong.
• Can you please add a new feature to the program?
• Check the requested features list above. If it's already there then I'm already planning to add this feature once I get the chance to. Otherwise, yes I probably will add it, feel free to let me know about your idea.
• What is Python?
• It is a really easy-to-use, yet powerful, programming language. Its most famous user is probably Google, who likes the language so much that they hired Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python, and let him spend half of his time working on Python. To run a program written in this language, Python needs to be installed on your computer. If you want to learn more about this programming language, I recommend Wikipedia - Guido van Rossum, Wikipedia - Python programming language, and Python.org - About
• Can I see the source code?
• Yes. And it's a good thing you can: this program asks for your email address and password, you might want to see for yourself how this information is handled. The source code consists of the file welovechinesepod.py, which can be opened and edited with any text editor (in Windows, I recommend WordPad). Furthermore, this is free software. Not only can you see the code you can improve it and share your improvements under the terms of the GNU General Public License
• Some of the Pinyin in the HTML document is incorrect or missing.
• The HTML document is created based on the expansion tab, so check to make sure that the Pinyin that appears there in the tool-tips is present and correct. If it is present and correct then you have found a bug in the program, please let me know. Otherwise, this is an issue with ChinesePod, you can email them and inform them of the missing or incorrect Pinyin if you feel like it.
• One of the sentences is missing from one of the generated MP3 files.
• The mp3 files are created from the mp3 files of each individual sentence linked to on the expansion and dialogue tab, so check to make sure that the sentence is played when you click the corresponding red box in the dialogue or expansion tab. If it plays then you have found a bug in the program, please let me know. If a box pops up that says "No Data" or some other error message, then this is an issue with ChinesePod, you can email them and inform them of the missing sound file if you feel like it.

License and Disclaimer

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses.