しあわせ

Another month another set of improvements to Kanji Sieve.
In this release I concentrated on getting data in and out of the program.

• It is possible to import records from a previous version.
• As I strongly believe that the data belongs to the user it can all be exported in a variety of formats to be used elsewhere.
• You can use a built-in mini browser to search for texts at your favourite sites.
• Plain text and audio can be imported.
• Chuta can now be viewed online on PCs and Macs
• There is a choice of 7 online dictionaries to search for word meanings
• Individual dictionary lookups are automated
• The layout is now more flexible
• There is a full screen mode for reading
• There is an online help system (in progress)
• The interface colour has been toned down
• Interface and navigation improvements

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My friend Tomoko-san is performing in JUKAI, starting 28 September 2010, in South London at the Blue Elephant Theatre.

JUKAI was created by Theatre Témoin in Santa Cruz, CA in 2008 with actors, musicians and designers from Japan, California and London. Now the company has gathered together again to perform the London premiere in 3 weeks time.

At the base of Mount Fuji lies a stretch of forest known locally as “The Sea of Trees”. Thousands of people who have entered these woods have never been seen again. Some simply got lost. Others went in intending to disappear…

Physical theatre meets Japanese taiko drumming. JUKAI is a play of mask, dance, movement, samurai sword fighting and live music, telling a touching story of a French writer visiting Japan. Guaranteed to bring you an exciting cultural night out.

JUKAI will be performed in English. It runs from 28 September to 16 October on Tuesday to Saturday at 8 pm for 15 performances at
Blue Elephant Theatre / Nearest tube: Oval (map)

Tickets are £9.50 (£7.50 conc.; £6.50 Southwark residents and Previews)
There are free seats available for under-26s. Check with the box office, but early booking is required.

I’ve been working away at Kanji Sieve whenever I get the opportunity.
Printing has now been added. It will now print the text, stats and vocab for a record properly.
As I don’t like jumping from application to application I’ve added the capability to browse your favourite sites within Kanji Sieve to find new texts.
Although the base layout is designed for small screens I’ve made the screens more flexible for larger screen sizes.
When making new records you can now import a text file. I’ve also added search and replace including regular expression abilities in New Record and Edit Record to clean up texts, removing furigana in brackets for instance. (I may look into the optional display of furigana at a later date.)
I’ve cleared up a couple of bugs. I’ve made popup windows modal to stop users going astray by accident.
I’ve updated the version of 360 Works Scriptmaster bundled in the runtime.

Windows still has me stumped to an extent. As this is a hobby project not a commercial one, and to be honest not many people seem to be downloading Kanji Sieve, I can’t justify the cost of setting up a Windows system just to chase down the glitches. (I looked at cheap netbooks but it doesn’t help that Windows 7 has a confusing array of flavours and I’m not sure at which point you get Japanese support. I prefer Mac’s system of buy once get everything.) So while I realise a lot of people are on Windows, I’m doing this firstly for myself and I use a Mac.

I should have something by the end of this month. As soon as I sort out data transfer from version to version I’ll post the update. I might need to consider a data separation model where the user data is kept in a separate file but this may have to wait until I stop adding to the solution.