Focusing your labours

There are a few different ways of getting a focused drill on specific characters. One way would be to make custom dictionaries, but I suspect most people won't want to do that!

Another way would be to use the "Options" menu, to enable only specific grade levels. That's pretty good for keeping in practice... but there can be up to 200 characters in a grade!

The most specific option is to put together a "usefile". The way to do that within jdrill, is to make use of the "usefile" checkbox, in the search window. Whenever you come across a particular character you want to repeat a lot, check that box. When you have 10 or more such characters of interest to you, go to the Options menu, and enable "usefile". The program will then pick quiz lines only from your list, instead of from the whole dictionary.

Pre-built usefiles, in groups of around 20 lines, can be downloaded here. You can download the whole lot as the ".jar" archive, or just grab a few to try out.

Trimming the list

When the time comes that you want to trim out a few lines from your list, (or just see what is ON your list) you can select "trim usefile" fromthe "File" menu. This will bring up a window similar to the search line select window.
(usefile window screenshot)

[ Notice that the top caption is red, not blue.] You can now see what lines you have selected, bring up any particular one in the search window, and uncheck the usefile box if you don't wish to see it again

SAVE YOUR LIST!

When you toggle the usefile checkbox to add or delete a line, it only affects the current program. If you want the change to be permenant, save by either using the save button on the above window, or the "safe usefile" menu option, under "File".

phil@bolthole.com Philtop