File: Jisho0.1.zip Author: Pascal Goguey (pascal@sakura.email.ne.jp) Release: 0.1 January 8th, 1999 Compatibility: R4 PPC, Intel Location: Utilities/misc Description: Jisho is a Japanese -> English dictionary. Well, I should rather say that it is an interface to an existing Japanese->English file. It is a quick & dirty implementation that I wrote because I needed a quick lookup. In fact, it does not more than a quick lookup. Although it is an J->E dictionary, it is possible to use it as a E->J translator with the option "contains". The data file: Jisho's data file is named Edict (English Dictionary). It is the result of a project conducted by Jim Breen, Monash U, Australia. Please read edict.doc at least once. The file is not written in a "natural" dictionary sequence. A regular japanese dictionary is sorted by syllablials (a, i, u, e, o, followed by their combinations with the consonnants in the following order k, g, s, z, t, d, n, h, b, p, m, y, r. Basically Edict is not sorted. However, as it is easier to use a sorted file (e.g. lookup next entry or previous entry), I have sorted the UTF-converted edict and put back its header at the beginning. If you want to have an up to date file, please look once in a while at ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/edict.zip. The file edict.zip is about 1 MBytes. It is updated a couple of times a year. In the early days (around 92-93, there were 2 or 3 updates every months), but now it's a lot less than that. How to use it: 1. Font Before you use it: make sure you have a japanese font installed. In the whole program, I didn't care about the font at all except for the entry counter, and I don't know why it works, but for sure, you should have one japanese font installed. 2. Location As it is a first implementation (a couple of hours of codng only), it's not so smart. Tou have to leave all in the same directory exactly as decompressed. You can put the folder anywhere you want, but you should keep the dictionary with the exec code. When you run it the first time, it will create an index table This should take a couple of seconds. 3. Run: - Double-click (what a surprise). Jisho will appear immediately or after a few seconds if it has to create its table of contents. - Enter something in the caption; - Press return. The translation will be displayed in the text area. Then, if you want to find subsequent matches, press the magnify (search) button. Once you found what uou were looking for, you can also use the arrow buttons to look around that entry. File menu: it is a fake menu (see paragraph bugs). Options: There are 4 options to search for an entry: - Exact match - Begin with - Ends with (don't ask me why this one!!!) - Contains. By using it, I noticed that the option "contains" is the most useful one. But Begin with or Exact match are faster. 4. Edict update: - Download a new version of edict (ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/edict.zip) - Download also the edict.doc and read it once foe the license stuff. - Decompress and convert it to UTF-8. I used to have a converter, but I can't find it anywhere. jconv, if I remember well. - Remove the header, sort the file, and put the header back. - Delete your old edict.toc - Run Jisho. The new edict.toc will be created, and that's it. 5 Bugs: Not so many, but it does not so much... However: - When Raphael Moll tried this software, he had a CRC error when decompressing edict.utf.zip. This time, it is not exactly the same file, so it may not happen. If it does happen, forget edict do what is explained at paragraph 4 (edict update). - The menu "file->Create user file" is a fake menu. It might disappear or might be implemented in a later version to allow the user to create his own file in the same format.