User's Guide

Introduction

Definitions(J>E) is a reading tool to help English speaking people read Japanese over the 
internet. It provides definitions to kanji words at once, and converts kanji and kana to 
romanized form, all in one step.

How it works...

You can select any Japanese text from the internet (i.e. email, webpage content, 
newsgroup articles ) and click Copy ( this places the text into the Clipboard ). Then run 
Definitions and you will receive definitions to all of the kanji words, and the kana words 
will be converted to romanized form, all in one step. If you want a kana word defined, or 
if you want more definitions for a kanji word, you can select it and click "Single 
Definitions" and you will receive multiple definitions for that word.

The Definitions Screen...

When you run Definitions(J>E) you get a window in the middle of the screen containing 
the original text running down the left side of the window, and definitions of the kanji in 
that text, running down the right side of the window. A second window appears above the 
first, which displays the same text, but with all of the kana converted to romanized form. 
A small third window will appear when you ask for a definition of a specific kana or kanji 
word.

How much Japanese do you need to know?

You don't need to be able to read Japanese characters. You don't need a large vocabulary.
What you do need is a basic understanding of how a Japanese sentence is structured. 
Unlike English where we put spaces between words, the Japanese 
stringalloftheirwordstogether. Therefore you must know where one word ends and 
another word begins. This can be the most difficult part of reading Japanese, for the 
beginner.

Kanji display program.

In order to see the kanji and kana characters, you will need a program that enables 
Windows to display kanji characters. There are several programs that do so. The one we 
looked at is "AsianSuite", by UnionWay. It works very well, and a free demo is available 
at ftp.unionway.com/unionway/asiansuite/uwcjkstd.exe. Without a kanji display program, 
you will see character codes instead of Japanese characters. If you do not care to read 
Japanese, you can use Definitions without a kanji display program.

Menu items

Get Definitions JIS, and Get Definitions Shift

All of the characters you see on a computer screen exist as some form of computer code. 
You may be familiar with the format called ASCII, which most English is coded in. 
Japanese is coded in two other popular formats. JIS and ShiftJIS. Most email and 
newsgroup articles are in JIS. WebPages can be formatted in either, as is documentation 
on FTP servers. Use the appropriate Get Definition menu item for whichever format you 
are viewing. If you don't know which it is, just try JIS and if it doesn't work, try ShiftJIS. 
It doesn't hurt the computer to try the wrong one.

Get Definitions (JIS or Shift)

When you click on the Get definitions menu item, a few moments will pass as the program 
finds all of the definitions, and then a window will appear. Any text other than kanji will 
appear as in the original document, starting from left to right. But when a kanji is 
encountered, the original text stops, a space is inserted and then the matching kanji from 
the dictionary is displayed. Next will be brackets containing the kana form of that kanji. 
After that the definition is displayed. At the end of the definition a newline begins with the 
continuation of the original text until another kanji appears, at which time the above is 
repeated. Because of the excellence of Jim Breen's Edict dictionary, you will find that 
most of the kanji matches will be exact. Other matches however, will just contain the kanji 
in a larger phrase. If there is no matching kanji in the dictionary, then the program will 
return "NOMATCH".
Note...
Depending on the speed of your machine, it takes about 1/5 second to find each definition. 
Therefore 1200 kanji will take about 120 seconds, or 2 minutes. We recommend that you 
work in small amounts, for example a paragraph at a time.

Single definitions...

If you come across a kana word that you need a definition for, or if you want more 
definitions for a kanji, you can get it by highlighting that word, and clicking on the Kana 
definitions menu item. A small window will appear in the bottom of your screen will that 
definition. The word you highlight must be in the middle window, because that is the real 
word. If you highlight the romanized version on the upper screen you are not highlighting 
a Japanese word.
If you have a kanji display program installed, highlight the word and click "Single 
Definitions".
If you do not have a kanji display program installed, you need to understand how the 
computer sees the characters that make up these words.
In computer terms a hiragana character is made up of 2 bytes of information. The first byte 
is always a value of A4. The second byte varies depending the character. A4 appears on 
most screens as a tiny circle with four little spikes. You can identify a hiragana character 
by looking for those A4 circles in the middle screen, in the same location you see 
romanized hiragana in the upper screen.
Similarly the first byte of a katakana character is always a value of A5. A5 appears on 
most screens as a capital Y with lines across it. You can identify a katakana character by 
looking for those A5 Y's in the middle screen, in the same location you see romanized 
katakana in the upper screen.
So how do find that word? Let's take an example.
Say you have a line - woshimasu. You know what wo is but you want to know what 
shimasu means. So here's what you do.
woshimasu is made up of 4 kana characters. wo, shi, ma, and su. Remember that each 
hiragana character starts will that little circle. If you look to the middle window in the 
same relative position as above, you will see a tiny circle with something after it, another 
tiny circle with something after it, 4 times. You would simply highlight the three remaining 
tiny circle combinations. 

Clear All

Clear all allows you to clear the screen and memory buffers. 

Installation

Create a directory named DEFINE
Copy or move all Edict files into it.
Copy or move all Definitions files into it.
(If you already have Edict installed, simply copy the Definition files into the same 
directory)
You can start Definitions by double clicking on DEFJ2E.EXE or you can create a 
Shortcut for it. The Shortcut should point to the DEFJ2E.EXE file. If you don't know 
how to create a Shortcut, please refer to your windows help menu, and look under 
Shortcut. 

System requirements
Windows 95 or higher.
Edict dictionary files
1. Edict
2. Edict.jdx
You can download these files from ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo. You will need the 
files edict.zip, and edictjdx.zip.
A kanji display program such as AsianSuite.

Price.
 $49

Definitions(J>E) is a product of BND Products Incorporated, Los Angeles, California 
USA.
You can reach us at guilin@ix.netcom.com or (213) 256-8275.

Demo note...
The demo is exactly the same as the real program except that the number of characters the 
demo will read is limited to 40 at one time, and the number of definitions that are retrieved 
from Single Definitions is limited to a few. Also the name of the program is 
DEFDEMO3.EXE, instead of DEFJ2E.EXE.


