Re: new webpage: rikai.com

[Simon Cozens <simon@example.com>]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2000 at 06:26:53PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> The point of rikai.com is that clients don't have to maintain a
> dictionary and an instance of chasen. 

Hmmm. No.

The point of rikai.com is to furiganaize web pages; the *advantage* of
rikai.com is that clients don't have to maintain a dictionary and an instance
of chasen.

It's like that proxy (I forget what it's called) that replaces Japanese text
with a bunch of GIFs so that those who don't have Japanese fonts installed
don't have to get hold of them. Useful as a temporary solution, but abysmal as
a permanent one.

> But parsing Japanese is much harder, as is deinflection.  Doing it
> well really requires a tool like chasen.

*nodnod*. I am, officially at least, a Japanese linguistics student; do give
me *some* credit. :)

Yes, chasen or whatever (there was another little tool in your book which did
something similar to chasen, although probably not as well[1]) is the way to
go here. Hmm. Yes. It's time to write a Perl module to interface to chasen.

[1] Although since the book is (I presume) making its way across the Ural
mountains round about now, I can't check.

-- 
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth. (Monty Python)