How to use weightjinni
 

Anyone know how to use this cool weight control software. I have installed it but without any instructions or help, I am having a hard time figuring it out.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

I was really hoping you had an answer that question. I've been looking for software to do this, but there's no help and not a clue where you're supposed to import the data from, and I can't get to let me add stuff manually. I type in the box, but there's no enter button...

Very frustrating

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

I too am wondering how to get started with this!

Oddly, my problem isn't over, but underweight, :p and I really need a good tracking program to keep me on track. I thought this was the bomb, but...anyone?

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

There is a new update but still no usage info.
Maybe I'll start my own project next week ;)

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

OUCH| You lucky... :(

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

dont get me wrong please, I appreciate that somebody works on this software and I really do hope it will eventually turn into something useful, but: this is exactly the kind of stuff that should never ever make it to the extras repository. it makes end users feel theres something broken.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Hello, I'm the author.

Somebody made me aware that you are talking about WeightJinni and have problem with getting it to run. I hope I can help you :-)

Some points:

• You could have contacted me :-/ There were a few people that contacted me and got immediate help.
• You are right, the application is missing some documentation. I hoped that the hints on the page at www.maemo.org/downloads should get people starting (and if they stil had problems, would contact me). Obviously this was not enough. The problem with online help is, that the undrlying GUI library currently does not have support for formatted multiline text. The maemo online help system seems not to be designed for non-Gtk applications. Now that I know that there are people iterested in, I'll do my best to improve the situation.

Now some backround information about WeightJinni:

• WeightJinni has two main views realized by two tabs.
• The first tab again is splitted into two ares, the left side and the right side.
• On the left side you can collect various items of food. For every food item you can give a unit (gramm, spoonful, pice or similar) and you can give it a value or rating. A simple rating would be the kcal or joule for the given portion. But there are other units possible like for example the unit of some well known organisation helping people watching for their weight :-)
• Currently there is no preset data for this. The problem is that my currently only user uses data that is protected by copyright and ths cannot be shared. If somebody has a source for non-copyright proteced material, I can generate a preset file for this. Note that you can import end export this data, so once you have some datat you can share it.
• The left table has a popup menu that can be activated by pointing and holding. Themenu items should be obvious.
• Note that the rating can be independent of the amount fo food (choose a specific unit for this). Also note that rating can be negative, so Jogging is a specia kind of negative food!
• On the right side you have a log fo the food you hav eeating a date together with your weight. Use the Date chooser to scroll through the days. Use the popup menu for this table to add weight, edit entries and so on.
• Double clicking on a food on the left side poups a dialog asking for the used amount and then adds this to the right table.
• The diagram shows your weight ove time and also shows the sum of rating per day as a bar. Stroking up or down on the graph changes units. Double clicking on a date jumps to that date.
• The preferences dialog now allows you to adjust some stuff:
  • You can enter the minimum rate and maximum rate and also the minimum and maximum wieght displayed in the graph.
  • You can enter minimum and maximum recemmended values for rating per day and weight. Values within this range will be marked black, values outside will be marked red. You will also get some red ticks to the left and right of the diagram.
  • You can also define limits for good and bad food. Good food (with low rating) will be marked green, bad food (with bad rating) will bemarked red. Currently you must adjust the unit for the food to get this to work fine.
  • You can define the units for the rating (kcal or joule) and the weight (Kg or ounds).
• Besides the date chooser are two values: The first one gives you the different in average weight of the last seven days incomparison of the seven days before this seven days. The second one shows the used rating and the left rating per day, relative to the upper limit as defined by preferences.
• I plan to further improve the application.
• If there are frther question, please ask. I will try to further monitor this thread.

P.S.:I can also offer a Linux desktop version and a Windows desktop version.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Thank you very much Framstag! This is all what was needed!

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

:)
I'm interested in other versions

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

OK, that makes two. I will build a Windows version start of next week and put it on my webpage somewhere (simple "contains everything" zip).

A Linux version is a little bit more tricky. There is some code to build debian packages, but I likely have to update this. I can build a tar.gz, but note that there are a few dependend libraries to have and one to install. So what do you want?

Anybody interested in building packages for various (or at least his own) distributions? I can give help in building and could even offer write access to the sourceforge repository.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

You too? Once, I was called pencil. :D :P >.<

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

qwerty12, probably it will change with the age :P

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Ha, I hope so :P

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Nope...everybody told me that, in my teens, twenties, thirties, well, you get the idea. Never have gotten above 140.

BTW, thanks Franstag for chiming in here and giving instructions. I've been playing with it and so far, so good!

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

I have now placed a Windows version of WeightJinni on my webpage:
See www.anderenen.de/anderenende/maemo.html (changes at the top) or directly www.anderenen.de/anderenende/WeightJinni.zip. This is not a real distribution or even a nice installation but only a teaser :-) There are also some glitches. The Windows port of libIllumination is not as well tested as the X11 port. File format is be exchangeable, unde rwindows the application generates a WeightJinni.xml below ApplicationData or similar (in the user directory). If you are further questions....ask!

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

hey Framstag...

i think weightjinni is AWESOME...

but here are some suggestions to make it more user friendly..

instead of double tap and hold to add data, maybe make a toolbar, or a little "+" to click on... its kind of tiddius to dubble tap and hold to get the menu to come up.

personaly i a tracking calories, it would be nice if i could make a spreadsheet of foods and calories on my PC and import it to weightjinni. i notice there is a import feature but i think i read that there are copy right issues, but why cant we make our own files? a good web site for info is http://www.thecaloriecounter.com/


thats all i have for now, i would like to see you keep working on this program. it is very nice...
Viele Gruß

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Thanks for your response :-)

Double tap: Yes I know the double tap is a little bit tricky and not obvious at all, so having a special button and or a menu entry would be nice. A meny entry is not a problem - however "add", "remove", "edit" and "use" buttons would take away screen space. And I value screen space on the Nokia as important (what would be a list where you can only see tree entries;-)). However if there is a majority of people finding button more important than space that can be easily changed (othe rideas are of cause laso welcomed).

IMHO the best solution would be to just use drag (from left) & drop (to right) in this case. Sadly my GUI library curently does not support drag & drop (earlier incarnations i a different computer language did) and currently I lack the time to implement this.

Yes there are import/export menu entries and they are working and can be freely used. Just export your entries and analyse the resulting XML file for its structure. It is very simple. I can also add support for other (simple) formats if there is interest. Notr that exports only exports the left table.

If there is copyright free data material I could also offer pre-installed import files (or add data files from somebody else).

(I'm a little bit in hury and away till next friday so I do not explain the export/import file format here and now).

Note that there are curently two known bugs in WeightJinni:
Cliping of value bars in the graph is buggy (this is already fixed) and sometime the line drawing seems to miss intermediate points and thus there can be jumping lines while scrolling (not yet investigated).

I also plan to improve the statistics part a little bit for the next version.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

So I take it we have to manually add food data? That'd be a bit tedious since there's several thousand possible items that can be added. >.<

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

That is not exactly what I said :-)

• I cannot release data that is under copyright
• I can put uncopyrighted data on the web page and can make it part of the package.
• I can convert data that you are interested in
• You can do this, too. Just contact me for details!
• You can directly exchange any data you like using the import/export functionality. The import is additive and just skips existing (unchanged) entries

That means:

• You can share your data (just do it), so not everybody needs to input everything himself. In fact you even do not need me for this.
• Tell me in which concrete data source you are intersted and I'll see what I can do. I need concrete requirements since I do not want to convert data you do not need
• If you need me to improve the import just tell me

The import/export functionality was build so that you can share!

Somebody already mentioned a link to a page with data. I did not have the time to look at it yet but will do this ASAP.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Hmm, yeah. And I don't have any data to get started with, copyright or otherwise.

And speaking of copyright, who in their right mind copyrights calorie data anyways? I thought that was all public knowledge stuff.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Data tables are data bases which can have a copyright while the singular data does not have (can something that does not have uniquness and identity have a copyright?) sinc ethe collection is work on its own. A telefonnumber does not have a copyright, a telefon book can. While you can read the calories from some label thw people that collect their data can have some copyright on their collection.

So it is likely allowed to make your own data base but you cannot copy it from somebody else. Of course how can somebody proof that you did not collect it but only copied it? Their is no signature in numbers. However the labels and names and the size of the portions may have.

Of course downloading an converting for personal use might be something different...

But look for example at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcom...t/sr18a208.pdf or http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=15867 (what is its copyright?). Would this something that would suite the needs of you, if you could import it into WeightJinni (the database is big!)?

There are alsotextual or csv formatted versions of the data...

However before I start to convert, perhaps a more compact data base would be more helpful (60 character descriptions are a bit heavy)?

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Good heavens, yes. 60 characters are a bit heavy, but needed sometimes. But I'd gladly take a ready to use/import database for weight jinni if someone were to build one. And thanks for the explanation.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

I will see what I can do. I would however be nice if someone (you :-)?) could clarify the copyright, especially under what conditions I can package a file based on this data for maemo. Not ethat I have seen at least one portal that clearly states that it is based on this data, so there must be a way to officially use that data.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

The data in the database itself is not copyrighted or copyrightable. The way it's packaged however is. ;)

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

That sound like a philosophic answer. What does it mean? Can I package or not? And if I can, how? Can I convert the data to another format? What must I do? It the result still "free"? In which sense?

Nevertheles, I'm currently writing a little Java converter (should be working under Windows and Linux), that does the conversion for you, so there is currently no urgent need to add the data itself to the package. If the resulting data is acceptable I will possibly add another import menu entry to WeightJinni for direct import.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

OK I have now a little java application for converting the data to the WeightJinni import format. The import it self performes well on my dual core Desktop PC, I haven't tested it on the Nokia itself. However I must admit that - as assumed - the data is not realy useful. Labels are too long and too unstructured and there are too many variants o the same food for useful searching and finding.

I might take a look in th evening if the data can be reduced by skipping to be defined duplicates, but I assume that this is not possible.

However if someone is still intersted in the converter I can send it to you. Please leave me a mail with your EMail adress and I will send it to you (or will place it on my web page this evening...).

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

OK I have now a little java application for converting the data to the WeightJinni import format. The import it self performes well on my dual core Desktop PC, I haven't tested it on the Nokia itself. However I must admit that - as assumed - the data is not realy useful. Labels are too long and too unstructured and there are too many variants o the same food for useful searching and finding.

I might take a look in th evening if the data can be reduced by skipping to be defined duplicates, but I assume that this is not possible.

However if someone is still intersted in the converter I can send it to you. Please leave me a mail with your EMail adress and I will send it to you (or will place it on my web page this evening...).

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

OK; you can now download the USDAConverter from http://www.anderenen.de/anderenende/USDAConverter.jar. You need the ABBREV.txt from http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcom...d/sr20abbr.zip. Call the jar with java -jar USDAConverter.jar ABBREV.txt <output-file> and import the resulting file into WeightJinni. Make sure to backup your ~/.weightjinni.xml file before.

Other converters should be also possible if the origin format is as simple. Please contact me if you have found other sources.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

I found a bug with v1.4 on an n810. If you use the slide out keyboard when entering food items, you can only enter lowercase alpha characters for any of the three fields. The shift and function keys appear to be disabled within this dialog box, which means you cant use the built-in thumb keyboard. The on-screen stylus keyboard dies not exhibit this behavior.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Also, I can't get the stupid converter to work. Can someone convert the file for me and post the database so I can just download it and copy it over? It'd be much appreciated. Thanks.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

One thing that might be nice is to change the highlight color settings for the currently selected item on the Input tab. White on a bright teal background makes the items text extremely difficult to read. In general, light colored text on light colored background is more difficult to read than on a darker colored background.

Is the font size on the Input tab staticly defined in the app?

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

The description was not exact so I assume that you press the shift key and then afterwards the alpha key. This currently in deed does not work. WeightJinni uses libIllumination, which is an non-Gtk GUI library and thus has to handle keyboard stuff directly. It seems like the slight out keyboard does some interesting thinks libIllumination cannot or at leats does not correctly handle (yet).

Not that pressing shift and the alpha key at the same time does produce the correct keys (at least on my german device). I admit that this is a little bit more tricky.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

The underlying libIllumination tries to mimic the Gtk style used on the device. However while this works on desktop systems for list selection this does not seem to work correctly with the current standard theme. Font color should be black in this case instead of white. I will take a look at it.

libIllumination does use the default fonts for proportional and fixed characters. However the was an bug that made the font size smaller
then the default. So expect bigger fonts in the next version - and I hope that then the fonts will not be too big :-/. If this will be the case I will have to add some font size configuration option to the application.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Did this ever happen (posting the converted database for WeightJinni)? I'd like to try it, but the .jar converter doesn't work on my Mac (OS X 10.5) either, giving a Java version error.
-Jon

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Yes, I managed to generate an WeightJinni import file and import that into WeightJinni. I however found the result inconvincing since the database contains to many entries to be useful and I found no simple way to for example reduce the numerous entries for variants to corn flakes to a usable subset.

You can find the sources for the (very simple) converter here:

http://illumination.svn.sourceforge....htJinni/extra/

Please test it yourself and make your own opinion. If you have changes to the source (addapt to your Mac problems) please send them to me so I can add them to the repository.

Any other usggestion or improvement is still welcome.

It is not a problem to package default data or offer web space for manual download, the problem is that I need data that is free. I'm sure as soon as one person starts to share its data things will gain speed!

There is also a new version of WeightJinni in extras-devel that adds easier to use buttons to the tables instead of the popup menues. I'm also interested in bugs reports further suggestions etc...

Gruß...Tim

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Bump...
Just wondering if there is a file floating around yet with the items to be imported. I am very slowly adding items as I eat/drink ;) but having something readily available would be swell :) If you have been using yours for a while and have a decent list please post that as well. Lets grow a list

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Some thoughts.

I am currently using http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/users/myplate/ for my diet tracking needs. It can track foods, excersize, draw graphs, has some shiny charts, and with its help I've lost 10Kg or so since october.

This is an ad right?

Well - not quite.
I have come to the conclusion after 50 days or so of use that the site is coded by ******ed monkeys, with little idea of how to actually use databases, and it has so many little niggles.

The core of the site is a - largely - user contributed food database.
This is however also the main problem - start out with the fact that foods may have multiple regional variations, and that people don't always enter foods carefully.
Then there is the fact that foods being edited means that all users that have historically used the 'old' food value now have screwed up charts.

Rather than coding, or doing something productive, I will now describe:
My ideal diet program. (I have some awk scripts that attempt some portions of this - but nothing like this)

I hit 'new meal'.
I slide open the camera, and point it at the barcode on a bag of onions, It beeps, and I shake the phone twice, to indicate I've used 2.
I grab a couple of cans of tomato, scan one, shake again.
Scan a can of curry powder, weigh out 20g, enter 20.
select 'meat' - lean pork is the third on my list as I use it often. enter 200g as I slice some off and put it on the scales.

...
Now, I get a figure of 1600 calories for this at the end. I edit this to subtract 20g of fat, which I've skimmed off the top, for a total of 1500 calories.
I kmow I want a portion size of around 350 calories, so I set the usual portion size of this to 1/4 - it will last 4 days.

Now, I have a new food 'pork curry', with 350 calories, 30g of fat, 15g of protein, cholesterol n, ...

I create a new meal, and add one 'pork curry', and scan a bag of rice, entering 100g.

Save this as 'curry and rice'.

I now for the next 4 days just add 'curry and rice'.

After the meal, I feel a bit tired, so I tap on the 'coffee' I added in the morning. and add another.

The food database is stored 'on the internet' somewhere - though it can be downloaded too.

A food not in the database occurs:
The user scans the barcode, and it says 'not found'.

A) They check it's not a mis-scan, if it's not, they take three pics, one of the front of the pack, one of the back, and one of any nutritional information on it. They choose not to enter any more than the portion size, and the calories, but they've selected 'auto-share' - so these pics get uploaded, and anyone can type this in.
B) They simply enter the food name and calories/portion into their local db, they aren't interested in sharing.
C) they type in all the info, and share it along with their pics (so anyone can point out an error)

I look at the overview of the day as I'm about to go to bed, and see that I'm still 100 calories down, so I snag a bananna on the way.

The next morning, I look at the totals for yesterday, and find that the onions diddn't count towards my budget, as I hadn't entered a price, so I tap that in, and find I spent 4.20 on food, a little below my average for the month.

It also says I'm low on cheese, so I add that to my shopping list.


Of course, some of these are quite hard to implement. :)

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

Does it work on N900?
I tryed... but there was some kind of database error and there was no possability to enter numbers

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

database errors on first start are normal as there is no database. If you have problems after the first start this is not normal. What do you mean by "no possibility to enter number", there was a bug with numbe rinput, that at leats was fixed in libillumination. I can build a new version of weightJinni to assure that the new library will be used.

I'm still unhappy with the user interface under the N900. The New approach of handling sub windows/dialogs does it make difficult to copy entries from the database to the diary. I'm open to suggestions to improve this.

The other problem is, that there is still no common database, so everybody has to type in everything himself. I have some ideas about that, too, but that would be bigger changes.

I'm still supporting the application but currently lack a bit time to make big changes. Howeever that will change as soon as my other applications are in shape.

Re: How to use weightjinni
 

no possibility to enter number <-- thats correct. I cant enter numbers :(