This minor version is developing
the new features introduced in JiShop 8.0. First of all, the graphical
structure has been specified for all the 6753 kanji outside JIS X 0208 set. Now these rare characters
are fully-fledged members of JiShop. You can search them by their radicals, draw them in JiPad,
or look up their structure in the "Decomposition" tab. The only thing they still lack is properly edited
dictionary data; so far their entries use the data from KANJIDIC2 file.
Many old decompositions were also revised
and improved. The information for a lot of radicals was re-edited. The total number of radicals
has grown from 1800 up to 2640.
Alternative decompositions of kanji or radicals
which had been hidden from the user and used only for kanji search (when the flag
"Including non-standard decompositions" was on) can now be seen in the "Decomposition" tab.
If a kanji or radical can be decomposed in more than one way, its position on the chart
is marked with a digit: 1 for the standard decomposition and
2 (or, possibly, 3 as well)
for a non-standard one. Click on the digit to redraw the chart.
In addition to three-panel and two-panel modes,
a single-panel mode has been provided. In this mode, everything is packed in one relatively narrow
window, being switched by tabs. The desktop version of JiShop becomes similar to its mobile versions.
This mode is aimed to help the owners of smaller computer screens, especially those who like to
have their Japanese text and the dictionary in one view, without the need to switch between them.
In the single-panel or two-panel mode, you can
use the Tab key to navigate through the tabs. To navigate from right to left, use Shift+Tab.
To go to the previous tab and back, press Ctrl+Tab. If you prefer to use the Tab key for
navigation through text input boxes, change the default setting in the "Options" tab.
With this new mode, JiShop will always perfectly react to
Windows Snap command, putting the application window to the left or right half of the screen
(the simplest way to do that is pressing Win+Left or Win+Right). If the screen is not
wide enough, the application will switch to the two-panel or single-panel mode.
The users of three-panel mode can now swap
the left and right panels by setting a special flag in the "Options" tab. Our feedback shows that
some users find it unnatural when you specify the kanji on the right and get the results on the left.
Actually, this layout is based on the Japanese tradition of writing text columns from right to left,
but there are people who think it's too much.
When you choose hiragana or katakana transcriptions,
a popup hint with a transcription in romaji will come out every time you put the cursor over a transcription.
This will help beginners who can't yet fluently read kana but want to practice. By default this feature
is on; you can turn it off in the transcription settings on the "Options" tab.
One more highlighting mode is provided for the
table of radicals, namely single column highlighting. Right-click on a digit above
a column of radicals (1, 2, 3, etc.) to highlight it. One more right click compresses the table
so that you can see the entire column without the need to scroll it down, and all the other
columns disappear. Alternatively, you can use the hotkeys Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, etc.
Several hundreds of JiPad complaints have been
processed. The quality of written kanji recognition has become a bit better again. The size of
the cells with recognized radicals is now customizable. By default, it is 48x48 pixels, but you
can make them 24x24 or hide them completely.
About a hundred kun readings in kanji
entries have been provided with etymological comments in the form of links to other characters.
They help you understand the internal structure of a Japanese word when it's not explained
in some existing alternative writing of this word. These are words like "mizuumi" ("mizu" + "umi"),
"hadaka" ("hada" + "aka"), "hagane" ("ha" + "kane"), etc.
200 newly edited kanji entries and more than 2000 compound
words have been added to the phonetic dictionary.
Vadim Smolensky