The Cunning Coder Blog

Continuing along with my last post about trying to get Ichitaro to work I was really happy when AppLocale allowed me to use the application. But I noticed a new annoyance. Though I could manually start the application just fine, this doesn’t make sense for a document viewer. Most of the time you want to just double click the document and have it open, you don’t want to open the viewer, File -> Open and browse to the file you want to view. Though AppLocale will allow you create a desktop shortcut to open the program, it can ONLY be called on programs. I needed to find a way to make it behave slightly more normally.

After searching through the registry for a while I found the key responsible for the open command used for TaroView Documents. I’ll copy paste the relevant key below. Note, this requires that you have AppLocale and the Ichitaro Viewer installed in their default locations and this key was exported on Windows 7 professional.  Modifying the registry is potentially dangerous and I take no responsibility for the results of choosing to modify your own registry.  It will still nag you telling you that this is a “temporary” solution, but you can find a patched version of AppLoc.exe if you really want to get rid of that.

Below is the exported key that solved my problems.  It  will open anything that is registered as a TaroViewDocument to open through the AppLocale’d version instead of the default one.  I hope this helps someone else who was as frustrated as I was:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TaroViewDocumentFile\Shell\Open\command]@="\"C:\\Windows\\AppPatch\\AppLoc.exe\" \"C:\\Program Files\\JustSystems\\TaroView\\TAROVIEW.EXE\" \"%1\" \"/L0411\" "

Ichitaro doesn’t like running on English Windows. I’m sure this is the same for virtually every other non-Japanese language setting but I finally had enough. I wanted to be finally be able to use MY computer to open the Ichitaro files I sometimes received from teachers and I was determined to get it to work.

I found that if I switched the non-Unicode language setting in Windows to Japanese it would work. Yay! BUT… This is a system wide change. No any non-Unicode program I have things it should be Japanese and that also messes with the display of certain things like the command prompt (which will use a Yen sign instead of a \). I could change it back when I was done, but each time you alter this system setting it requires a reboot. There must be a better way, I thought.

It turns out there IS a better way, but it’s still not perfect. There’s a program called Microsoft AppLocale (http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/apploc.mspx). This application will let you point it to an EXE and pick the language it should run it. It even will let you make a shortcut to always run the application through AppLocale. No reboots, not side effects. The only annoyance is that it doesn’t install properly under Windows 7 (You need to tell it to use backwards compatibility) and it will prompt you even when using a shortcut to remind you that AppLocale is just a “temporary solution”. Hopefully it’s right, and Microsoft will release a more robust system level update that will allow it to handle such situations on its own, or software manufacturers will start releasing software in Unicode.

I’ve recently become involved in a friend’s open source software project revolving around dictionaries and orthography.  The project has been dubbed glot (http://launchpad.net/glot).  It’s a hobby project, so it may or may not be updated super frequently (it really depends on how much free time the developer’s all have).

It’s going to be my first time actually using Python on a real project, so we’ll have to see how that goes.  So far we’ve been just getting used to Launchpad, evaluating technologies for incorporation, and reading up on standards to support.  There is some code in the repositories, but it’s really just a base that the real project is going to spring forth from.  I’m just happy to be doing something computer sciency again.

Spring break is finally over and I just wrapped up my first week of classes.  It’s interesting being there at the beginning of a new school year, as when I first arrived they were already halfway through their textbooks.  It’s also interesting to be the with the new first year students as they just start embarking on their English education.  Though I had some of these students in elementary school, this is their first truly structured English learning experience.

All my students seemed re-energized, like they were ready to learn again.  Toward the end of last term they seemed to be losing steam and will to participate, but now they seem to be ready to go.  I only had a few teachers change on me (that I know of so far), so largely my routine hasn’t been interrupted too terribly much.  The only significant change is that my number of office days is going to plummet starting in May.  The elementary schools have stated they don’t care which ALT visits the school, so I’m going to be visiting some of my coworker’s schools, and she some of mine.  These make it so there really isn’t a day in the schedule where there isn’t a visit of some kind.

Community courses are also going to be starting at the beginning of June and run until mid July.  It’ll be once a week, on Tuesdays, running from 6:30-7:30.  The community courses are both enjoyable and annoying.  They are fun because I have free reign on my lessons and can choose to teach them however I please.  They are frustrating in that, because it’s all mine, I have to do it all, beginning to end.  This time around I’m going to do an advanced beginner’s course on business English.  Here’s to hoping it goes well!

So the school term is finally over for me and we’re heading in to spring break!  I only have 2 more visits to schools left and they aren’t for usual class, they are for the Hokkaido English Challenge.  Four of my students have opted to enter, and they will be taking the exam on this Thursday, with a practice section on Wednesday.  I’m really looking forward to them seeing how far they’ve come.  When we initially started, even some of the questions in the Q&A section would give them great pause, but now they can best me at 20 questions more often than not.

With spring break coming, of course, there’s also the changing of the guard in the Board of Education.  I’ll be interested to see who’s staying and who’s leaving.  We have a party this Wednesday to bid farewell to those who will be departing so I imagine I’ll find out in short order.  I’ve grown to like many of my coworkers, but I’m sure even if they move on to other areas of city hall that I’ll come to appreciate their replacements just as much.

The only thing that could make this whole situation better is if we had some time off during spring break, but unfortunately the ALTs are required to be in the office doing whatever we can.  Kinda annoying, but if they want to pay me 150,000 yen to sit on my butt and do next to nothing, I won’t complain.

The next school year is looking like it could be quite busy, I have maybe 4 days the entire term without school visits, whereas I used to have at least 1 day a week which was set aside for prep.  The change has come as a result of the elementary schools requesting more and more visits from the ALTs, to the point where those schools are no longer really assigned to a specific ALT, but we both will manage them whenever we can.  This translates to me adding about 4-5 more schools to my load (I was already at 10).  I’m sure it’ll be rough in the beginning, but I’ll adapt.  In the end, I’m sure it’ll work out for the best, especially since I had so many office days where I didn’t know what to do with myself before.  I just have a small lingering fear that this is going to produce the exact opposite problem.