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NAME

       LaTrine - drill yourself in language vocabulary

SYNOPSIS

       latrine [options] [dictionary|path]

DESCRIPTION

       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  do
       not  know  the  correct  translation for the respective word. This is a
       usual way to drill yourself in foreign language vocabulary.

       LaTrine provides UTF-8 support for non-ASCII  characters,  as  well  as
       (currently limited) right-to-left input and output, e.g. for Hebrew and
       Arabic. The program features several localizations. 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 should
       be compatible with LaTrine.  Download and  unpack  them,  and  put  the
       wordlist.dict.dz file into /usr/share/dictd/.

OPTIONS

       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
              status     information,    which    will    be    appended    to
              ~/.latrine/debug.log.   Debug  mode  may   slow   down   LaTrine
              considerably.

       --dir[ection]={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.

       -g, --digraph
              Enable  the  entering  of digraphs. Example: Press A <BSP> ’ and
              the result will be Á.  The following  digraphs  are  implemented
              (list may be incomplete due to groff limitations):

              Á    A’             á    a’
              Ä    A:             Ä    a:
                   C<                  c<
                   D<                  d<
              É    E’             é    e’
              Í    I’             í    i’
                   L’                  l’
                   L<                  l<
              Ñ    N?             ñ    n?
                   N<                  n<
              Ó    O’             ó    o’
              Ô    O>             ô    o>
                   R’                  r’
              Š    S<             š    s<
                   T<                  t<
              Ú    U’             ú    u’
              Ý    Y’             ý    y’
              Ž    Z<             ž    z<
              ¡    !I             ¿    ?I

       -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 words 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.  See  THE  WORD
              SELECTION ALGORITHM section below for further information.

       -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 special
              alogrithm. 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. See THE WORD SELECTION ALGORITHM section below for
              further information.

       -v, --version
              Display copyright information and the program’s  and  libraries’
              version numbers.

FILES

       /etc/latrine.conf
              System-wide  configuration,  see  the FILE FORMATS section below
              for further information.

       ~/.latrine/config
              User configuration.

       ~/.latrine/debug.log
              Debug output.

       /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
              LaTrineprocess.

       /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.

FILE FORMATS

       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 do not need to be.  They
              must be UTF-8 encoded, and have the following structure:

              language 1 phrase
              [up to 15 more lines, CR/LF will be replaced with ", "]
              spaces or tabstops, language 2 phrase
              [up to 15 more lines, CR/LF will be replaced with ", "]
              empty line(s)
              [...]

              The order of the ", "-concatenated  lines  above  is  irrelevant
              when checking the answer.  Language 1 phrases beginning with 00-
              will  be  ignored.   Due  to  bad  documentation  of  the  dictd
              dictionary  format,  not  all freedict dictionaries can be read.
              Suggestions, how to improve the parser, will be appreciated.

       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 WORD SELECTION ALGORITHM

       From  the  dictionary  a  list  of limit least-known words is read into
       memory. This list is alternating sorted: three  times  by  least-known,
       one  time  by  earliest last access. From the first random words of the
       sorted list, one is picked by chance. If this is one of the last  three
       (two,  one) words asked, another one is picked by chance, unless random
       is not greater than three (two, one). Using the --debug switch you  can
       follow the word selection.

SEE ALSO

       The LaTrine homepage
              http://www.godisch.de/debian/latrine/

       The Free Dictionaries Project
              http://sourceforge.net/projects/freedict/

BUGS

       The  screen  is messed up when resizing the terminal while using the F1
       key.

       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.

AUTHORS

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

       Computation  of  the  MD5  message digest was written by Ulrich Drepper
       <drepper@gnu.ai.mit.edu> and taken from the GNU C library.

CONTRIBUTORS

       Marco Colombo (Italian localization),  Matt  Dunford  (bugfixes),  Eyüp
       Hakan  Duran  (Turkish localization), Joe Hansen (Danish localization),
       Eugen  Hoanca  (Romanian  localization),  Patrik   Johansson   (Swedish
       localization),   Michel   Robitaille   (French  localization),  Andhika
       Padmawan  (Indonesian  localization),  Kevin  Patrick  Scannell  (Irish
       localization),  Benno  Schulenberg (Dutch localization), Clytie Siddall
       (Vietnamese localization), Michał Trzebiatowski (Polish  localization),
       Julie    Vermeersch   (Dutch   localization),   Ji   ZhengYu   (Chinese
       localization).