Import Palm SuperMemo Databases

Importing of Palm databases is, at the moment, a one way track. We have no software to go the other way round and convert karatasi databases back to the Palm database format. This manual applies to karatasi version 1.1.8 and newer. We have tested the import with our own training data, all ASCII characters and German Umlauts.

For new installations we recommend to use our Java application (version 0.2) instead of the Perl script to import Palm databases.

Preparation

• You need, of course, the Palm database file, it has the extension ''.pdb'' . Usually you can get it from your Palm backup.
• You need Perl.
• The Perl module DBI:SQLite to create the SQLite database.
• The Perl modules Palm::PDB and Palm::Raw for reading the Palm database file.
• The Perl module Encode for UTF-8 support.
• The Perl modules File::Basename, Time::Local and HTML::Entities.
• Download the karatasi Tools bundle from http://sourceforge.net/projects/karatasi/files/Tools.
• Setup the synchronization feature. For this you can either use the Java application, or install an Apache web server and use our cgi scripts for the transmission.
  Note: for new installations we recommend to use the Java application to transmit the databases.

Do It

• unpack the downloaded tools bundle.
• change into the tools directory (e.g. karatasi-tools-1.5.0) and copy your palm database file (e.g. sm_mydata.pdb) into this directory.
• perl import_palmpdb.pl -h      displays usage information.
• For Java: perl import_palmpdb.pl -s sm_mydata.pdb      converts the palm database file 'sm_mydata.pdb' to the karatasi database file 'mydata.kdb'. This name with the extension *.kdb matches the needs of the Java-based synchronisation. Note: the -d option is not needed in this case.
  For cgi server: perl import_palmpdb.pl -s -d l_mydata.db sm_mydata.pdb      converts the palm database file 'sm_mydata.pdb' to the karatasi database file 'l_mydata.db'. This name with the prefix l_ and the extension *.db matches the needs of the cgi-based web server for synchronization.
• For Java: import the database with the menu File / Import.
  For cgi server: Copy the database into the sync area and set the file owner to '_www'
• Finally synchronize to karatasi on the iPhone.