Jiten-pai

A Gjiten-lookalike Japanese dictionary written in Python.

Prerequisites

Running jiten-pai.py requires Python version >= 3.7 installed, plus the PyQt5 python bindings for Qt5. Tested with Python 3.7.3, PyQt5 5.11.3.

Dictionary files are not included in Jiten-pai, these have to be downloaded and installed separately, see next section.

Get and Install Dictionary Files

Jiten-pai supports word dictionary files in EDICT format, as made available by the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group:

• EDICT2 (essential)
  • EDICT main dictionary; revised format; EUC-JP encoding;
  • download file, then unpack and convert to UTF-8:

    zcat edict2.gz | recode EUC-JP..UTF-8 > edict2

  • install in Jiten-pai using the Edit→Preferences dialog
  • HINT: In case the zcat or recode utilities are not available, the included simple transcoding utility can be used instead, e.g.:

            eucjp_to_utf8.py edict2.gz edict2
            eucjp_to_utf8.py enamdict.gz enamdict
            eucjp_to_utf8.py kanjidic.gz kanjidic

• EDICT (obsolete)

  • predecessor to EDICT2; legacy format; EUC-JP encoding
  • download file, unpack and convert to UTF-8 (see above)
  • install via Edit→Preferences

• ENAMDICT (optional)

  • named entity dictionary; EDICT format; EUC-JP encoding
  • download file, unpack and convert to UTF-8 (see above)
  • install via Edit→Preferences

More word dictionaries and alternative language versions are available at the EDRDG archive. The respective accompanying documentation will have the details, and in particular indicate whether a file is actually in EDICT(2) format. In most cases a conversion from EUC-JP to UTF-8 will be necessary, see above.

In addition to any of the abovementioned word dictionaries, the KanjiDic part of Jiten-pai requires installation of one of the kanjidic files, also made available by the EDRDG:

• KANJIDIC (recommended)

  • Kanji dictionary; plain text format; EUC-JP encoding
  • contains all kanji covered by the JIS X 0208-1998 standard
  • download file, unpack and convert to UTF-8 (see above)
  • install via Edit→Preferences

• KANJIDIC_COMB (alternative)

  • Kanji dictionary; plain text format; UTF-8 encoding
  • additionally contains kanji from JIS X 0212/0213 supplementary sets
  • download file, unpack, install via Edit→Preferences

• KANJIDIC2 (alternative)

  • Kanji dictionary; XML format; UTF-8 encoding
  • additionally contains kanji from JIS X 0212/0213 supplementary sets
  • caveat: does not support full text search
  • download file, unpack, install via Edit→Preferences

The EDRDG licence page provides dictionary copyright information and licensing terms.

Notes

• If the search term contains any Katakana or Hiragana, Jiten-pai will always report matches for both syllabaries. This is intentional.

• The word search supports Python regular expression syntax to allow for more flexible queries. Consequently, backslash-escaping is required when, for whatever reason, searching verbatim for regex special characters like '.', '(', ')', etc. Using the '^' and '$' regex anchors is strongly discouraged. Equivalent functionality is already provided by the various search options. (If this paragraph is all Greek to you, chances are you can safely ignore it.)

• During startup Jiten-pai will look for the vconj.utf8 verb conjugation file as well as the kradfile[2].utf8 and radkfile[2].utf8 kanji radical cross-reference files in the following directories, in the given order:

  • $HOME/.local/share/jiten-pai/
  • /usr/local/share/jiten-pai/
  • /usr/share/jiten-pai/
  • current working directory

  Without these files verb de-inflection and radical search, respectively, will not be available.

Command Line

Jiten-pai supports a few command line options which might come in handy for workflow integration. These should be fairly self explaining:

    usage: jiten-pai.py [-h] [-k] [-K] [-c] [-v] [-l KANJI] [-w WORD]

    Jiten-pai Japanese dictionary

    optional arguments:
      -h, --help                      show this help message and exit
      -k, --kanjidic                  start with KanjiDic
      -K                              same as -k, but word dictionary visible
      -c, --clip-kanji                look up kanji from clipboard
      -v, --clip-word                 look up word from clipboard
      -l KANJI, --kanji-lookup KANJI  look up KANJI in kanji dictionary
      -w WORD, --word-lookup WORD     look up WORD in word dictionary

    Only one of these options should be used at a time.

License

Jiten-pai incorporates parts taken from other projects, namely:

• Kana conversion code adapted from jaconv; Copyright (c) 2014 Yukino Ikegami; MIT License

• VCONJ verb de-inflection rule file adapted from XJDIC; Copyright (c) 1998-2003 J.W. Breen; GNU General Public License v2.0 Modifications for Gjiten 1999-2005 by Botond Botyanszki

• RADKFILE and KRADFILE kanji radical cross-reference adapted from The KRADFILE/RADKFILE Project; Copyright (c) James William BREEN and The Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence (V3.0)

The remaining majority of Jiten-pai code is distributed under the Modified ("3-clause") BSD License. See LICENSE file for more information.