Register Guidelines E-Books Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Go Back   MobileRead Forums > E-Book Readers > Kobo Reader > Kobo Developer's Corner

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 12-18-2012, 11:11 AM   #16
andrusz
Member
andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 24
Karma: 476046
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Poland
Device: Kobo Touch, Kindle K3
True. The current Kobo search mechanism used for Japanese dictionary is very poor.

I could not find 調 in my books to check. However I think I can explain why the results are as you have observed:
  1. if Kobo can find exact match to the character, e.g. 調, it will get its spelling from an index file (ちょう【調】) and using this information is able to find a proper word definition from a definiton file (ちょ.html)
  2. if Kobo cannot find exact match to the character (e.g. 来) but can find similar word beginning with the character we are looking for eg. 来意 (the spelling is different: らいい however) so it uses らいい【来意】 to display a word definition (using らい.html file)
  3. if Kobo cannot find exact match nor any other word beginning with it, it will display something odd or no definition at all. I did not figure it out yet. Eg.
    • 思う -> おもう[思う] is ok but others are wrong: 思 -> し, 思い -> おもい[重い], 思って -> nothing is found
    • 来る -> くる[来る] is ok but: 来 -> らいい[来意], 来た -> きた[北] are wrong.

So Kobo is using kanji AND its spelling to find a word definition. It works fine if the spelling is known and there is exact match but in other cases we can get odd results.

The big issue is with conjugated verbs IMHO, eg. Kobo can find 思う but cannot find 思います, can find 来る but cannot find 来ます, etc. Workaround would be to add all conjugations verbs to the dictionary

Last edited by andrusz; 12-19-2012 at 04:12 AM.
andrusz is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-18-2012, 03:23 PM   #17
tshering
Wizard
tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 3,489
Karma: 2914715
Join Date: Jun 2012
Device: kobo touch
Quote:
Originally Posted by andrusz View Post
The big issue is with conjugated verbs IMHO, eg. Kobo can find 思う but cannot find 思います, can find 来る but cannot find 来ます, etc. Workaround would be to add all conjugations verbs to the dictionary
I too considered listing all the conjugated forms in the dictionary, but decided for me that this is to much work compared to the possible gain. Since there is only a limited number of possibilities, it is in most regular cases rather easy to find the corresponding dictionary form to a given conjugated form. For instance if one has 思います, and does not know the dictionary form, one will try 思る and 思う and only 思う will be listed in the proposed words. With the Japanese and the French dictionary, unfortunately, there does not open a dictionary screen for typing a word, at least under FW 2.1.5. But I am sure this bug will be removed one day. By the way, this bug does not concern my dictionaries. So you can use them as a back up to your dictionary for such cases.
tshering is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-19-2012, 07:19 AM   #18
andrusz
Member
andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 24
Karma: 476046
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Poland
Device: Kobo Touch, Kindle K3
Quote:
Originally Posted by tshering
I too considered listing all the conjugated forms in the dictionary, but decided for me that this is to much work compared to the possible gain. Since there is only a limited number of possibilities, it is in most regular cases rather easy to find the corresponding dictionary form to a given conjugated form.
I agree.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tshering
With the Japanese and the French dictionary, unfortunately, there does not open a dictionary screen for typing a word, at least under FW 2.1.5. But I am sure this bug will be removed one day. By the way, this bug does not concern my dictionaries. So you can use them as a back up to your dictionary for such cases.
What do you mean "this bug does not concern my dictionaries"? Can I search typing a word with a keyboard while using your dictionary?

For me the most annoying issue is marking a word for search while reading a book. Kobo should be able to recognize kanji compounds but it cannot not and selecting more than one kanji with a finger is very difficult

Last edited by andrusz; 12-19-2012 at 07:23 AM.
andrusz is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-19-2012, 07:47 AM   #19
tshering
Wizard
tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 3,489
Karma: 2914715
Join Date: Jun 2012
Device: kobo touch
Quote:
Originally Posted by andrusz View Post
What do you mean "this bug does not concern my dictionaries"? Can I search typing a word with a keyboard while using your dictionary?
This is correct. You have to set the user language of the reader to Japanese in order to use the Japanese keyboard for searching the dictionary.

Quote:
Originally Posted by andrusz View Post
For me the most annoying issue is marking a word for search while reading a book. Kobo should be able to recognize kanji compounds but it cannot not and selecting more than one kanji with a finger is very difficult
This is really a pain. However, in the last weeks I did a lot of testing the Japanese dictionary and therefore I did a lot of marking too. And I am becoming a little better at it. If I want to mark two characters I put my finger slowly in the middle of the two characters and wait without moving until they are marked; if I then want to mark a third character I roll my finger slowly to the right (or down in the case of vertical writing). This works for me better than drawing my finger over the characters.

Last edited by tshering; 12-19-2012 at 08:02 AM.
tshering is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-20-2012, 10:08 AM   #20
andrusz
Member
andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 24
Karma: 476046
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Poland
Device: Kobo Touch, Kindle K3
I have just updated my Kobo to v2.3.1 firmware. Decided also to reinstall Japanese dictionary. It is different! They made a major change to the dictionary files format.

What has changed:
- file modification date is: 2012-11-21
- new dictionary zip file contains 8366 files: words file, words.original file, 3957 kana (readings) and 4407 kanji files. "Kana" files uses the same naming as in previous version, "kanji" filenames contains single(!) kanji character (with html extension, gzipped).
- words.original file contains only readings or only kanji word in a single line, e.g.:
Code:
あ
ああ
あい
あいあいがさ
あいいく
あいいれない
出
出かける
出がけ
出し
出しゃばる
出し入れ
出し惜しむ
- I did not find any major differences in the html definitions format comparing to the old (previous) version, except there is no "kanji" tag now.

Quick verification how it works while reading a book shows no more "stupid" definitions for the kanji And you can also read alternative reading (and meanings) for the kanji on subsequent pages

So it looks like Kobo programmers have been working hard recently and did fantastic job

Last edited by andrusz; 12-22-2012 at 05:37 AM.
andrusz is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-20-2012, 03:15 PM   #21
tshering
Wizard
tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 3,489
Karma: 2914715
Join Date: Jun 2012
Device: kobo touch
Andrusz, thank you for pointing to it. I do not want to update to the recent FW at this point. Therefore, I cannot test it now. The files look really promising. I will certainly merge them with the EDICT.
tshering is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-08-2013, 08:27 AM   #22
tshering
Wizard
tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 3,489
Karma: 2914715
Join Date: Jun 2012
Device: kobo touch
I provide a Japanese-English dictionary replacement for dicthtml-ja.zip of FW 2.3.1 in the first post of this thread.
tshering is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-10-2013, 04:18 PM   #23
andrusz
Member
andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 24
Karma: 476046
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Poland
Device: Kobo Touch, Kindle K3
Good job tshering!

ありがとう。
andrusz is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-10-2013, 05:10 PM   #24
tshering
Wizard
tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 3,489
Karma: 2914715
Join Date: Jun 2012
Device: kobo touch
@andrusz-さん
いいえ、どういたしまして。

Would be nice if it were possible to add custom Japanese dictionaries to the original Kobo Japanese dictionary instead of replacing it. I hoped that filenames like dicthml-ja-es and so on invoke the search engine for Japanese. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Especially annoying is the message that is displayed when you name the dictionary dicthtml-ja-en.zip.
tshering is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-11-2013, 10:16 AM   #25
tshering
Wizard
tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 3,489
Karma: 2914715
Join Date: Jun 2012
Device: kobo touch
I thought I share with you how I use the custom Japanese-English dictionaries in order to get the most out of them.
General situation:

1) I replaced the original dicthtml-ja.zip on the reader by my custom build dicthtml-ja.zip.
2) I renamed japdic01.zip and japdic02.zip to dicthtml-ja-it.zip and dicthtml-ja-es.zip respectively, and copied them to .kobo\dict. (You cannot do this anymore with FW 2.4.0, cf. this post)
3) The language of the epub is set to Japanese in the opf file (<dc:language>ja</dc:language>). Note: Even with epub 3.0 and kepub.epub the reader seems not to accept any language settings in the (x)html files or via css file.
4) The user language of the reader is set to Japanese.
Usage:
1) I select an expression in the book and wait for the dictionary (dicthtml-ja.zip) to pop-up.
If the dictionary does not pop-up or it does pop-up and I am not happy with the result, I have 2 options:
2.1) I select "Translation Dictionary". The "Translate Word" screen appears with "日本語 - English" preselected and shows the highly appreciated information:
Quote:
We cannot translate from 日本語 - English. Sorry, but we don't currently offer a 日本語 - English translation dictionary.
If the selected passage starts with a common Kanji I choose 日本語 - Italian, and if the selected passage starts with a less common Kanji or Hiragana/Katakana I choose 日本語 - Español . In both cases I can edit the searched for term or select from the up to six proposed lexical entries. Editing might be necessary in order (1) to change the grammatical ending, (2) to add something that I was unable to select in the book's text, (3) to delete something that I was unable to unselect in the book's text.
You ask why the whole process is so complicated? The reason is a bug that prevents the editor window of some dictionaries (Japanese, French, Netherlands) from opening. (Edit: I have learned that this is not a bug, but is on account of a specific user licence.)

2.2) The second option: If I am sure that I do not need to edit the searched for text I select the (definition) "Dictionary". Sometimes the dictionary does not pop-up because I moved the finger to much around while attempting to select the passage or for some other reason. Note: dicthtml-ja.zip has more entries than japdic01.zip and japdic02.zip together, cf. the first post in this thread for details.

Even if you do not select Japanese as user language the dictionary files japdic01.zip and japdic02.zip can help you by offering the possibility to delete parts of the searched for string and to select from up to 6 proposed dictionary entries. Sometimes it even happens that you can use the Japanese keyboard, but only sometimes. I did not find by which conditions this is triggered. I have a faint impression that entering the editor screen with the otherwise useless "日本語 - English" selected increases the chances that the Japanese keyboard appears.

Last edited by tshering; 05-10-2013 at 05:28 PM.
tshering is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-29-2013, 04:57 AM   #26
tshering
Wizard
tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 3,489
Karma: 2914715
Join Date: Jun 2012
Device: kobo touch
It happens that the Japanese replacement dictionary, or any other replacement dictionary, gets replaced again by the original dictionary during synchronization. This is not really a big problem, but annoying if you are away from your computer and cannot replace it by your custom dictionary.
I therefore did this. I made a folder "customdict" at the device and copied all my replacement dictionaries into it. Next I inserted the following lines into run.sh.
Code:
DICTPATH="/mnt/onboard/.kobo/dict/"
CUSTOMDICTPATH="/mnt/onboard/customdict/"
for f in $CUSTOMDICTPATH*.zip; do
	if [ ! -e "$DICTPATH$(basename "$f")" ]; then
		cp "$f" "$DICTPATH"
	elif [ $(stat -c%s $f) -ne $(stat -c%s $DICTPATH$(basename "$f")) ]; then
		cp "$f" "$DICTPATH"
	fi
done
Every time I power on my KT now, it compares the zip files of the "customdict" folder with those of the ".kobo/dict/" folder. If any of them does not exist in the ".kobo/dict/" folder, or differs in size it gets copied to ".kobo/dict/".
Note: If you would like to do a similar thing you first have to prepare the rcS file in order to run shell commands, cf. this link .
tshering is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 02-21-2013, 06:04 AM   #27
tshering
Wizard
tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 3,489
Karma: 2914715
Join Date: Jun 2012
Device: kobo touch
Quote:
Originally Posted by tshering View Post
2) I renamed japdic01.zip and japdic02.zip to dicthtml-ja-it.zip and dicthtml-ja-es.zip respectively, and copied them to .kobo\dict.
This does not work anymore with FW 2.4.0. One has now again to sacrifice originally existing Kobo dictionaries.
tshering is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-05-2013, 04:29 AM   #28
andrusz
Member
andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 24
Karma: 476046
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Poland
Device: Kobo Touch, Kindle K3
Hi tshering,

I have upgraded my Kobo to the newest firmware 2.5.2 and your jap-eng dictionary stopped working Did you manage to run it on 2.5.x firmware?

Regards,
andrusz
andrusz is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-05-2013, 05:08 AM   #29
tshering
Wizard
tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tshering ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 3,489
Karma: 2914715
Join Date: Jun 2012
Device: kobo touch
Quote:
Originally Posted by andrusz View Post
Hi tshering,

I have upgraded my Kobo to the newest firmware 2.5.2 and your jap-eng dictionary stopped working Did you manage to run it on 2.5.x firmware?

Regards,
andrusz
If I remember correctly, support for unencrypted dictionaries was broken in FW 2.5.0 and fixed with 2.5.1. Therefore, the dictionary should be working on your Touch. Maybe you could try installing the original Kobo Japanese dictionary via the dictionary manager, and if it works replace it again by my dictionary. (The dictionay is working under 2.6.1 and 2.8.1 too.)

Greetings,
Tshering
tshering is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-06-2013, 10:24 AM   #30
andrusz
Member
andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.andrusz ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 24
Karma: 476046
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Poland
Device: Kobo Touch, Kindle K3
Quote:
Originally Posted by tshering View Post
Maybe you could try installing the original Kobo Japanese dictionary via the dictionary manager, and if it works replace it again by my dictionary. (The dictionay is working under 2.6.1 and 2.8.1 too.)
Yes, looks like replacing Japanese dictionary works! However putting your dictionary as a translation dictionary (jap-en) does not work.

Thanks
andrusz is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
dictionary, japanese, kobo

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Japanese-English Kindle dictionary karunaji Amazon Kindle 39 02-16-2013 11:51 PM
japanese - english dictionary nukito Amazon Kindle 1 12-23-2012 06:52 AM
Touch building custom dictionaries, especially Japanese-English tshering Kobo Reader 0 07-12-2012 06:00 PM
PRS-T1 PRS-T1 Japanese version have japanese-english dic in it? nukito Sony Reader 2 06-14-2012 02:37 PM
English-Japanese dictionary + ebook reader? roquet Which one should I buy? 0 11-07-2007 07:34 AM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:20 AM.


MobileRead.com is a privately owned, operated and funded community.