Radic v1.1                                                                                April 2001

1. INTRODUCTION

Radic is a small and free application for the PalmOS environment that allows
the user to identify japanese kanji by their radicals. Since there are much
less radicals than kanji, identifying them this way makes life for the
agonized student of the japanese language a bit easier.

The program is based on the work of Michael Raine and J. W. Breen who
compiled the original RADKFILE that lists all the JIS1/2 kanji and their
radicals. Alexander Schonfeld, author of JquickTrans later added the english
meanings of the 251 radicals.

Radic is best used together with Hiroshi Kawashima's excellent KDIC
dictionary shareware. To display the japanese characters a japanese
language support must be istalled on the Palm. This can either be the free
J-OS 1.9 or (for much bigger and therefore much easier readable fonts) the
unfortunately pricy J-OS IV. CJKOS with its nice fonts has been reported to
work too.


2. FEATURES

 - lookup kanji by their radicals

 - display the english meaning of radicals

 - edit the results to compose a complete japanese word

 - feed the found word to KDIC or KDIC_DA

 - use different fonts for the radical table and the results


3. LIMITATIONS

Since Radic is based on the RADKFILE the limitations of this database do apply
to Radic too. For some kanji (like the kanji "go" (language, word)) there are
radicals that seem to be obvious (like the radikal "go" (five)), but are
not listed in the database though. I have no idea about the reason for this,
but I noticed that in my german edition of Hadamitzky's Kanji Dictionary these
obvious radicals are missing too. So maybe there is a deeper sense in this.
(If someone can enlighten me on this, please feel free to do so!)

There is another issue with the font used by JOS and CJKOS. Some of the
radicals with a lower stroke count actually display more strokes than the given
stroke number. In these cases the shown character consists of two radicals and
only one of them is the valid one. The valid radical can easily be determined by
looking at the kanji belonging to that radical.


4. REQUIREMENTS

 - PalmOS 3.0 or higher

 - CJKOS, J-OS 1.9 or better J-OS IV to display the japanese characters

 - KDIC and KDIC_DA as dictionary for the found kanji


5. INSTALLATION

IMPORTANT:
When updating from v1.0 please delete v1.0 from the palm first.

HotSync radic.prc and radicdb.pdb to your palm.


6. USAGE

- Main Screen -

The screen is splitted in two areas, the radical table in the lower part and the
results lines in the upper part of the screen.

Choose the radicals you want to include in your search by tapping on them in the
radical table. They will appear in the 'Radicals' line. Delete them by either
tapping the 'Clear' Button, or by tapping them again in the radical table or in
the 'Radical' line.

The matching kanji are displayed at the 'Hits' line. Use the '<' and '>' buttons
to show all the hits. The status line on top of the screen indicates the shown
page and the total number of hits.

Tapping on a kanji moves it to the 'Collect' line. Use this line to compose the
complete word with the found or manually entered kanji. Tapping on the button on
the right of the 'Collect' line does copy the selected kanji into the clipboard
and calls KDIC or KDIC_DA, depending on the preferences. If nothing was selected
in the line, the whole line will be copied.

The checkbox in the status line can be used to deactivate the search function.
This can be handy if you want to add or delete more than one radical at once and
don't want to wait for the intermediate search results.

- Options Menu -

   Results font:

    Choose the font for the 'Collect', 'Hits' and 'Radicals' line here.

   Table font:

    Choose the font for the radical table here.

   Show radical meaning:

    Displays the english meaning of the chosen radicals.

   Preferences:

    Displays the preferences Dialog.


- Preferences Dialog

   Action for collected kanji:

    Choose the desired action for the button on the right of the 'Collect' line.
    When choosing 'KDIC' make sure KDIC is installed and 'Get word from clipboard
    at start' is enabled. When choosing 'KDIC_DA' make sure KDIC_DA and KDIC are
    installed.

   Save:

    Choose what should be saved when leaving Radic.

   Table:

    Choose which table format (compact / sorted) and which scroll mode (snap to
    stroke number / continually)

7. HISTORY

   v1.0 April 2001:
     Initial Version

   v1.1 May 2001:
     - Fixed a bug that caused a crash when tapping behind the last radical.
     - Radic can run now from a flash memory extension.
     - Added a checkbox in the statusline to disable immediate searching.
     - Added functionality to show all radicals for some given kanji.
     - Faster search algorithm.
     - Added a cancel option for long searches.
     - Alternative radical table form.
     - 'Snap to stroke number' option for easier scrolling.
     - Replaced all occurence of the word 'kanjis' with the correct
       plural 'kanji' :)

8. THANKS

   Many thanks to Michael Raine and Jim W. Breen for the pioneer work on japanese
   computing and the compilation of the original RADKFILE. Thanks to Alexander
   Schonfeld, author of JquickTrans, for adding the english radical meanings.
   Thank for testing to Gunter Albrecht.

9. COPYRIGHT
   Radic, a multi-radical kanji lookup method for the palm pilot.
   Copyright (C) 2001  Norbert Siepenktter

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
   modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
   as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
   of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

   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.  See the
   GNU General Public License for more details.

   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
   along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
   Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

10. CONTACT

   Radic's Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/palmradic

   I love getting email, :) so if you have any questions, comments, suggestions,
   praises or flames or if you are interested in the source code or know the answer
   to the 'missing radicals mystery', please feel free to contact me at:

   norbert@siepenkoetter.de


Norbert Siepenktter, May 2001
