Hi,

I've had some problems using the bookmarklet. Here's my problem report, which I hope will be of help, sorry if it's a bit long:

I tried adding 歐巴馬 = Obama (Taiwanese spelling) using the bookmarklet dragged from the bottom right of the Skritter homepage
http://www.skritter.com/home
but I got an error:
http://www.skritter.com/vocab/api/add?from=bookmarklet&lang=ja&word=歐巴馬
The error says:
"歐巴馬" could not be put in our database.
Reading
This field is required.
Definition
This field is required.
http://screencast.com/t/v05IJovGhJU

I figured it wasn't in the database, and clicked the "Add Manually" button at the bottom of the error page. But I wasn't able to add it.
The error said:
Pinyin
This is not a valid pinyin.
Word
Word already exists in database.
http://screencast.com/t/4f9YG30oev

Then I tried adding the word via the MDBG "Add to Skritter vocab" button
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=歐巴馬
and that worked fine. The word was indeed already in Skritter's database.

It seems there were two problems with the bookmarklet as I used it:

1. The lang parameter was "ja": it works better for Chinese if I change it to "zh". It seems the bookmarklet is set to Japanese on the home page by default, even though I am logged in and studying Traditional Chinese.

2. The bookmarklet works with the simplified character version of a word, but not the traditional character version. This works fine:
http://www.skritter.com/vocab/api/add?from=bookmarklet&lang=zh&word=欧巴马
but this does not:
http://www.skritter.com/vocab/api/add?from=bookmarklet&lang=zh&word=歐巴馬

Is there a way for the bookmarklet to work with traditional characters, or can it only work with simplified Chinese?

Thanks for reading this long message :-)

k a i

You wrote "Barack Obama" for Obama/"歐巴馬" as definition. I'm guessing the whole phrase "Barack Obama" is occupied, you should maybe try "Obama" as definition which actually matches "歐巴馬" better.

@severian Thanks, but I don't think that was the problem. The word is already in the database:
http://www.skritter.com/scratchpad?words=歐巴馬

Anyway I don't think the definition has to be unique. Also I was trying to follow the style guide:
爱因斯坦: "Ai4yin1si1tan3" - "Albert Einstein (1879-1955), famous German-born Swiss-U.S. physicist"
http://www.skritter.com/style_guide

By the way I wish there was a way to search Skritter to determine what is and isn't in the database.
Actually I just realized I can sort of use the scratchpad for that:
In the database: http://www.skritter.com/scratchpad?words=歐
Not in the database: http://www.skritter.com/scratchpad?words=歐巴

Yep, those are bugs! I've fixed them and will upload the fix soon. Thanks for the detailed report, that was very helpful for figuring it out quickly.