Re: [tlug] New GPL project: Rikai in Mozilla

[Jim Breen <jwb@example.com>]

>> From: Todd Rudick <Todd.Rudick@example.com>
>> 
>>   Hi. Just a quick note that I'm GPLing some work I did in December on
>> getting a standalone version of Rikai.com running as a Mozilla app
>> (1.2.1). 

Very interesting.

>> It was painful, and I got it to a functioning level, but I've
>> come to realise I'll never get enough time to finish it, so I'm hoping
>> some people with interest will be able to contribute what's needed.

I can understand it being painful. I considered something like this as a
way of making WWWJDIC available as a local app, and rejected it as too
hard.

>>   One great advantage of doing it locally is that I can try to match
>> words whereever the mouse points rather than trying to segment with
>> heuristics. That works out quite well I think, allowing lookups of kana
>> phrases as easily as kanji.

About two years ago Todd showed me a neat snippet of Tcl/Tk that sat in a
sleep loop looking at the cut buffer, and if anything turned up it
simulated a dictionary lookup. I wrapped it in with a resident
stripped-down version of xjdic and got a crude version mostly working. You
simply highlighted a word in Japanese and got a little Tk popup with the
gloss that persisted until you moved the mouse.

It was painful too, as Tcl/Tk is very bloody minded about coding on its
boaundaries with other languages. In the end I gave up. It worked with
some apps, but never worked with kterm for example, as that seems to bend
or break the coding rules for CTEXT. Since Tcl/Tk is very strict in such
handling, I didn't want to waste time on something that often didn't work.
I realised too that the Windblows version would be a problem too.

>>   Anyway, let me know if there's interest.

At the moment I'm not going to get involved. I don't do much client
programming these days - I'm flat out with more dictionary-oriented
issues.

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen  (j.breen@example.com  http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/)
Computer Science & Software Engineering,                Tel: +61 3 9905 3298
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学