= Saikan Kanji Dictionary for Psion 3a/3c = Copyright (C) 1996 Jamie Packer INTRODUCTION ------------ Saikan is a Japanese kanji character dictionary. It allows characters to be found by a number of different lookup methods and displays their readings (pronunciation), meanings and other information. It is intended as a reference for those who know, or are studying, Japanese. It currently supports the 6,355 kanji in the JIS X0208-1990 character set. Note: this is not a Japanese dictionary; most Japanese words are written using two or more kanji characters (or sometimes with none) -- those words will not be found in this dictionary. This program is freeware -- no charge is made for using it. However, if you find it useful, please register with me and I will inform you of new releases and any other developments. The program and data files are free but they are NOT in the public domain. You may make copies this program and data files for redistribution, etc. These copies must be complete and unaltered, in particular this document and the file KANJIDIC.DOC MUST be included complete and unaltered. No charge may be made for this program and data other than reasonable costs of media. See the section `References And Copyright' for more details of copyright, etc. USING SAIKAN ------------ General ------- All functions are available via menus or one or more `hot-keys'. Where there are alternative hot-keys for a function, these are shown in the menu. Some of the information in this document is available as help from within the program (if the file saikan.hlp is installed). From any point in the program it is possible to go back to the previous search step (use `Previous menu' option or the Escape key) or back to the startup display and main menu (`Main menu' option). The key combination Psion-Ctrl-K will bring Saikan to the front if it is running in the background. Kanji Lookup ------------ There are 8 lookup methods available from the main menu. These are: By Radical: characters containing one or more selected radicals can be found By Stroke Count: all kanji with stroke counts within a specified range are found By Reading: all characters with a given reading are found By Meaning: the characters with a given meaning will be found By Index: finds the character with a specified `dictionary index' By Code: the character with the specified ASCII, JIS or EUC code is found JIS Table: the entire JIS table can be displayed to find characters Memory: a previously found character can be recalled In most cases the search can be further refined by specifying a range of stroke counts for the target kanji. The meaning and use of the different searches are described in more detail in the following sections. When the search finds a single character the "kanji information" screen is displayed. The kanji information display is described in more detail below. Some of the search methods may find several kanji that match the search criteria -- in this case the list of matching kanji is displayed for selection. Any of these can be selected for detailed information display. Kanji selection works in a similar way to radical selection, described below. Search By Radical ----------------- Radical lookup allows kanji to be found using any of their constituent radicals (not just the radical the kanji is traditionally listed under). Basically, you select one or more radicals and initiate a search. All the kanji containing the specified radicals are found and displayed. At any time while you are selecting radicals, you can set the stroke count range of the kanji you want to find. Radical Selection The radicals are organized in ten pages by stroke count (page 10 has the radicals with ten or more strokes). The radicals displayed are the 214 classical radicals along with some of their variant forms. The cursor keys are used to move around the displayed radicals and between pages. In addition to simply moving the cursor, the following functions are available: Key Function ------------------------------ Page Up Go to previous page of radicals Page Down Go to next page of radicals Home Move to start of line End Move to end of line Ctrl-Left Move left by 5 characters Ctrl-Right Move right by 5 characters Ctrl-Up Move to first row of characters Ctrl-Down Move to last row of characters The displayed page can also be changed by typing the corresponding digit (1 to 9, or 0 for page 10) or via a menu option. At the bottom of the radical selection display a status window gives some information about the currently highlighted character. Radicals added added to the "selected" list using the `Space' key. The list of selected radicals is displayed at the top of the screen. When all the desired radicals have been selected initiate a search by pressing `Enter'. Characters can be removed from the list of selected radicals by pressing the Delete key. This brings up a dialog box which allows you to delete any or all of the kanji in the list. Search By Stroke Count ---------------------- Enter the minimum and maximum number of strokes in the characters you want to find. (This search method is fairly slow.) Search By Reading ----------------- Enter the reading you want to find and the type(s) of readings to be searched. The default is to search both `on' and `kun' readings -- i.e. to search the more common readings. You can also choose to search any one of the `on', `kun' or `nanori' readings, or all types of reading. By default the search looks for readings beginning with the specified string. This can be changed with the Set Preferences menu option. Entering search strings Readings are entered in Roman letters. Input is accepted in any of the common romanization schemes (nihonshiki, kunreishiki or Hepburn) as well as some variants (e.g. using `L' for `R'). The Check button on the dialog can be used to check the input string for acceptability; this will display as much of the string that can be transliterated -- the string will be truncated at the point an error is found. Note that, because readings are stored internally as kana, readings must consist of complete syllables. For example, it is not possible to search for "mik*" to find any of "mika", "miki", "miku", etc. The string will be truncated after all the complete syllables have been converted to kana (i.e. before the "k"). Search By Meaning ----------------- Enter a string to search for in the meanings field of the kanji database. The string searching is very simple in this version and you will need to use wildcards or abbreviations to find words with related meanings -- e.g. searching for `beaut*' will find `beauty', `beautiful', etc. By default the search looks for meanings beginning with the specified string. This can be changed with the Set Preferences menu option. Search By Index --------------- This method will match a single, unique character with the specified index value. Currently only the Nelson dictionary index is supported. See the References section for more information on the Nelson dictionary. Search By Code -------------- This method will also find a single character. Enter the value of the code in the dialog. The format can be either a hexadecimal number, a decimal number or the pair of ASCII characters that make up a two byte character (these are the characters that are typically seen if Japanese text is displayed on a device which does not support Japanese character codes). The only encoding currently supported is JIS/EUC -- although character codes less than 255 ($FF) are assumed to be ASCII. A simple dialog is used to display limited information about non-kanji character codes. JIS Table --------- This function first displays a dialog which allows you to choose the subset of the JIS character table to be displayed. That subset of the table is then displayed with one row of the table per page. Kanji can be selected for detailed information display. Display memory -------------- This option will display the information for a character which was previously found and stored in the memory. See the description below in the `Kanji information menu' section. Kanji Selection --------------- When a search finds more than a single character the results of the search are displayed for browsing. The full kanji information can be displayed for any of the characters in the list. Kanji selection works in a similar way to radical selection (see Search By Radical above) and, in particular, the cursor keys have the same function. The Space key is used to display the full kanji information for the selected character. At the bottom of the kanji selection display a status window gives some information about the currently highlighted character. Kanji Information Display ------------------------- The kanji information display is the end result of a successful search. It shows an enlarged version of the character and all the available information about it. The following information is displayed: o The number of strokes in the character. o JIS and EUC codes (in hexadecimal) and the ASCII representation of the two byte character code. o The JIS "level" -- this is 1 for frequently used characters, 2 for less common characters. o The radical (as used in Nelson). This is followed by the "classical" radical that the character is found under, if this is different. o The readings of the character: - onyomi in upper case (or katakana) - kunyomi in lower case (or hiragana) - nanori in italics (or hiragana) The Hepburn romanization system is used in the kanji display. In the readings, a hyphen is used to indicate prefixes and suffixes. A dot is used to separate the kanji reading from the okurigana (see Glossary). Syllabic `n' followed by a vowel is distinguished from the n+vowel syllables by a single quote after the n. o The meanings associated with the character. o The index in the Nelson dictionary. o Cross references to related kanji. Kanji Information Menu ---------------------- The kanji information menu has the following functions Previous/Next in list This option displays the information for the previous or next kanji in the list of matched characters. The presence of kanji before or after the one currently displayed is indicated by small arrows at the top or bottom of the display. Note that although the JIS and dictionary index searches will only match a single kanji, this function will still work -- going to the next or previous JIS code or index value. Redraw This can be used to redisplay the current information -- this is mainly useful if the Preferences dialogue is used to change the information displayed. Radical information The radical information option displays information on the kanji which is the radical for the currently displayed character. Cross reference This option goes to the display for the cross reference shown at the bottom of the screen (if there is one). If there are two cross references (JIS and Nelson) then you have the choice of which to display. Display Memory This option will display the information for a character stored in the kanji memory. Back This option returns from the radical information, cross reference or memory display to the character originally displayed. Store in memory This will store the currently displayed character in the programs memory. Currently only one character at a time can be stored. If the memory is not empty then a dialog asks whether to overwrite the current contents or not. Setting Preferences ------------------- The Set Preferences option allows you to: Enable/disable the Psion-Ctrl-K hot-key Select which readings are shown in the kanji information display Choose the display of readings in Roman or Kana Whether to include JIS Level 2 kanji in the search results Control whether searches for meanings and readings should match anywhere, or only at the beginning of a word Note that if display of readings in kana is selected, the program will turn off the display of nanori readings. This is because some characters have more readings than will comfortably fit on the display. You can use the preferences dialog to re-enable the nanori readings if you wish. Kana display isn't very good anyway, because of the font size. REFERENCES AND COPYRIGHT ------------------------ Saikan ------ Kanji dictionary program copyright (c) 1996, 1997 Jamie Packer This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of `merchantability' or `fitness for a particular purpose'. The copyright holders will not be liable for any damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages of any kind arising out of the delivery, performance or use of the software. Having said that, this is a pretty straight forward OPL program so it shouldn't cause any problems. If you have any difficulty running this software on your machine please contact me. Kanjidic -------- This program is actually a front end for the `kanjidic' kanji data file produced by Jim Breen (jwb@dgs.monash.edu.au). The full kanjidic is a text file approximately 900 KBytes in size. A subset of the information has been extracted, compressed and converted to Psion data file format for use on the Psion. See the Implementation section below for more information. For more information on the contents, format and, most importantly, the copyright of the original kanjidic file, see the file kanjdic.doc included with this distribution. For information on this and other related data and software have a look at Jim Breen's web page: http://www.rdt.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html or the Monash `Nihongo' archive: ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo. Radical Lookup -------------- This was inspired by the radical lookup method in JWP, an excellent *free* Japanese word processor for Microsoft Windows produced by Stephen Chung (JWP is available from the Monash ftp site). The original idea, the necessary data files and many useful ideas came from Michael Raine. If you spot any errors or omissions please contact him directly at michael-raine@uiowa.edu. Nelson Dictionary ----------------- `The modern reader's Japanese-English character dictionary' by Andrew Nathaniel Nelson, published by Tuttle & Co (ISBN 0-80480-408-7). There are now a number of other kanji dictionaries available. These use various lookup and indexing methods. Several of the most popular ones are referenced in the full kanjidic file. But Nelson is the one I have and so that is the one this software supports. Others could easily be added at the cost of using more disk space. IMPLEMENTATION AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS -------------------------------------- This program is written in OPL with the invaluable assistance of the OPP preprocessor (see http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/andyc). A small machine code subroutine is used to speed up the kanji display functions. Most of the searches simply use the OPL data file search function `findfield'. This is slower than I would like -- but it was simple. The database file for the kanji dictionary file contains the following fields: kanji% JIS code of the character bushu$ comma separated list of radical numbers strokes% the number of strokes nelson% the nelson index number imi$ list of meanings (comma separated) xjis$ list of JIS cross references xnelson$ list of Nelson cross refs on$ } kun$ } list of readings of each type nanori$ } If you have any ideas for using this file, let me know as I can provide the Perl script used to generate it from the original. Note that I may change the format in future to add new features. My next project is to use the EDICT data file (also maintained by Jim Breen) to implement a Japanese-English dictionary for the Psion. And then link or combine the two applications. But don't hold your breath... I have a number of ideas for further improvements to Saikan. Currently these are lower priority than getting an interface to the edict dictionary running (although Saikan is a good testing ground for some of the techniques). If you find this application useful you may be interested in other Japanese applications for the Psion: in this case you will want to have a look at the "Japanese on the Psion" web pages: http://www.gingko.demon.co.uk/ GLOSSARY -------- BUSHU See "radical" CLASSICAL RADICAL The radical that the character is traditionally found under in Chinese and Japanese dictionaries. EUC Extended Unix Code. A two byte encoding for Japanese characters. Uses the most significant bit to distinguish between ASCII encoding and EUC. For more information on Japanese encoding methods see `Understanding Japanese information processing' by Ken Lunde, published by O'Reilly & Associates (ISBN 1-56592-043-0). JIS Japanese Industrial Standard. Used to refer to the JIS standard for encoding characters in 16 bits (JIS X 0208-1990) which uses escape sequences to switch between character encodings. KUN READING (kunyomi) A native Japanese reading of a kanji. NANORI Kanji readings defined for use in names. OKURIGANA The grammatical endings of words added after the kanji in hiragana. For example, when the verb taberu (to eat) is written, the first part of the word, which doesn't change, (ta) is written with the kanji meaning food/eat while the rest of the word, which changes according to grammatical function (-eru = present tense, -eta = past tense, etc) is written with hiragana, In this dictionary, the okurigana is separated from the stem of the verb with a dot: `ta.beru'. ON READING (onyomi) Readings of kanji derived from original Chinese pronunciations. RADICAL (bushu) The 214 basic building blocks of kanji. Traditionally, dictionaries organised each kanji under a single radical. Now many other indexing schemes have been invented. Electronic dictionaries (like this one) allow characters to be found using any of the component radicals. ROMANIZATION There are three main ways of writing Japanese using Roman letters. These are Hepburn, kunreishiki and nihonshiki. Hepburn is used throughout this program (although all three forms are accepted on input). The Hepburn or hyoujun (standard) romanization most closely matches English pronunciation. However this has the disadvantage that there is not a unique representation for every kana. For example the kana `si' and `ti' are transliterated as `shi' and `chi', but the voiced versions (`si"' and `ti"') both become `ji' under this scheme. The kunreishiki romanization is fairly regular but doesn't correspond to normal pronunciation of English characters. Nihonshiki provides a one-to-one mapping between kana and romanization. The disadvantage is that the use of Roman letters is not very intuitive for English speakers. = Jamie Packer (29/5/97) = = jamie@bristol.st.com = = http://www.gingko.demon.co.uk/ = -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_