Monday, April 21, 2008

Japanese Support

This would probably the last update for a while. While I was stuck with the idea for my dissertation, I simply spend some time here and there for the last few days to make minor fixes and feature enhancements to CasualConc. As I posted in the last couple of days, I finally made the download page available to public, though I'm not sure how many will find it, and added support for several different character encodings and file types. Finally, I added very limited Japanese support.

Now CasualConc can read Japanese (and possibly other East Asian Languages) files in two formats. One is a plain format without any space in between words. The other is wakachi-gaki, which has 1-byte space in between words. Wakachi-gaki files can be created with jparser unitility program. To analyze Japanese texts, a proper mode should be selected in the preference. Select Japanese (plain) under Concord options in the preference for the former and Japanese (wakachi) for the latter. If a proper mode is not selected, CasualConc cannot search words/characters. Wildcard search is implemented, but not tested thoroughly. Because of the way wakachi-gaki is written, 1-byte space should be inserted between words in phrase search. Because this is also experimental, CasualConc might crush when you try to analyze Japanese text. Japanese is only available for Text Mode. Once features are set, I will add database file support.

If you happen to find this blog or CasualConc page and are willing to try, please do so and let me hear what you think.

No comments: