LaTrine - drill yourself in language vocabulary

latrine [options] [dictionary|path]

LaTrine is a curses-based Language Trainer. It takes a dictionary and asks you for a word or a phrase, and you try to give the correct translation. You can choose in what direction LaTrine shall ask, and the selection of the words or phrases will depend on how often you don't know the correct translation for the respective phrase. This is a a conventional way to drill yourself in foreign language vocabulary.

LaTrine provides full UTF-8 support for non-ASCII characters, as well as right-to-left input and output, e.g. for Hebrew and Arabic. The program features Dutch, English, French, German, Romanian, Swedish, and Turkish localization. Screenshots can be found at LaTrine's upstream homepage http://www.godisch.de/debian/latrine/.

In addition to this program you need an appropriate dictionary. You may write your own word list, or you can install one from the Free Dictionaries Project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/freedict/, providing dictionaries for about 50 language combinations, which can be used with LaTrine. Download and unpack them, and put the wordlist.dict.dz file into /usr/share/dictd/.

dictionary|path

Unless there is a dict entry in the system-wide or user configuration file, a dictionary needs to be specified as non-option argument. See the FILES section below for further information.

-d, --debug

Turn on debug mode, which provides additional error messages and some status information.

--direction={0|1|2|3}

Choose the initial input direction: [>>] (0), [<>] (1), [><] (2), or [<<] (3). The direction can be switched with F4 while LaTrine is running.

-f, --force

Overwrite stale lock files. Use this if LaTrine says that it's already running but it isn't.

-h, --help

Display a command line summary.

-i, --ignore-case

Compare case-insensitively when checking a translation.

-1, --keymap1=path

Use the specified path as keymap file. The keymap file defines keyboard input conversion for the primary input field, see the section FILE FORMATS below.

-2, --keymap2=path

The keymap file for the secondary input field.

-a, --label=language1/language2

The screen label for the input fields. --help displays the maximum length for each of them.

-l, --limit=max

The number of phrases to hold in memory. LaTrine handles large dictionaries by loading only the max least-known phrases into the memory. When these get a higher hit rate the dictionary will be reloaded. Specify 0 to load the whole dictionary into the memory. --help displays the default value.

-m, --mode={normal|reverse|mixed}

Decides, whether you will be asked for the translation of a LHS phrase (normal mode), or a RHS phrase (reversed mode), or both in mixed order. The F3 key will cycle through these settings while LaTrine is running.

-r, --random=max

After each input, the wordlist is kind of sorted using a continuously improved algorithm. The next phrase is then selected by chance from the first max entries in this sorted list. --help displays the default value. max is less than or equal to a non-zero memory limit above.

-v, --version

Display the program's and the libraries' version numbers.

/etc/latrine.conf

System-wide configuration, see the FILE FORMATS section below for further information.

~/.latrine/config

User configuration.

/usr/share/dictd/wordlist.dict.dz

Default location for dictionaries, only wordlist needs to be specified. If you want to use another file as dictionary, just specify its path, say ./foo if you mean foo instead of /usr/share/dictd/foo.dict.dz.

~/.latrine/wordlist.gz

The user's hit statistics (so-called wordlist files).

~/.latrine/wordlist.gz.lock

The wordlist lock files, containing the PID of the running LaTrine.

/usr/share/locale/*/LC_MESSAGES/latrine.mo

Localization files. Contributions for other languages are appreciated. Find the current PO template file at http://www2.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard/po/registry.cgi?domain=latrine.

Configuration files

contain one long option per line, e.g. mode=mixed. Whitespace, empty lines, and lines beginning with a # will be ignored. In addition to the command line options there is a dict={dictionary|path} keyword, providing the task of the non-option command line argument. On the other hand, --force, --help, and --version may not be used in configuration files.

Dictionaries

are usually compressed, even if they don't need to be. They must be UTF-8 encoded, and have the following structure:

language 1 phrase [more lines, CR/LF will be replaced with ", "] 5 spaces or one tabstop, language 2 phrase [more lines, same indentation] empty line [...]

Language 1 phrases beginning with 00- will be ignored.

Keymap files

have the following structure:

[# comments are ignored] one input character, tabstop, conversion character (or string) [...]

To specify a # character, precede it with a backslash. To use the backslash itself, do the same, i.e. double it.

The LaTrine homepage

http://www.godisch.de/debian/latrine/

The Free Dictionaries Project

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freedict/

The F1 key is not yet implemented.

Automatically reloading the dictionary is not yet implemented. This becomes necessary when the hit rates of the phrases in memory change, and other phrases (not in memory) should be asked instead. You may trigger it using the F2 key, which will save the current state and reload the dictionary thereafter. There is usually no need to do so, unless you set --limit very low.

Please send any bugs to <martin@godisch.de>. Debian users are encouraged to use the Debian Bug Tracking System at http://bugs.debian.org/latrine.

LaTrine was written by Martin A. Godisch <martin@godisch.de>.

Marco Colombo <m.colombo@ed.ac.uk> (Italian localization)
Matt Dunford <zoot@zotikos.com> (bugfixes)
Eyüp Hakan Duran <hakan_duran@hotmail.com> (Turkish localization)
Eugen Hoanca <eugenh@urban-grafx.ro> (Romanian localization)
Patrik Johansson <patjoh@itstud.chalmers.se> (Swedish localization)
Michel Robitaille <robitail@iro.umontreal.ca> (French localization)
Clytie Siddall <clytie@riverland.net.au> (Vietnamese localization)
Julie Vermeersch <julie@lambda1.be> (Dutch localization)