How to use EBView 0.2.1

日本語

Kenichi SUTO

deep_blue@users.sourceforge.net


1. Introduction
2. Preparation
3. Searching
4. Selection Lookup
5. Stemming
6. Playing Multimedia Data
7. Internet Search
8. Keyboard Shortcuts
9. Customizing the View
10. Remote Commands
11. Other Settings

1. Introduction


EBView is a program to display dictionaries in the EPWING format. Notable feature is :
As it uses Japanese you must set the character locale (LC_CTYPE) to a suitable value (ja_JP.EUC-JP). For example, calling the program as follows "env LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.EUC-JP /usr/bin/ebview".

2. Preparation

Getting Dictionaries


First, one or more dictionaries are necessary to use this software. Both free and commercial dictionaries can be used. You can use dictionaries in the EPWING format, and sometimes in the EB, EBG, EBXA and EBXA-C formats. There are some free dictionaries distributed on the internet. For example, there is a list of "Dictionaries that work with FreePWING" here .
Once you have the dictionaries place them in some suitable directory. If you purchased dictionaries on CD-ROM then the manuals that come with them should tell you how to copy them. Normally, you can just copy the whole CDROM as is. Make sure you DO NOT VIOLATE the copyright restrictions of any dictionaries.

Adding Dictionaries


The first time you use the program, add one or more dictionaries using the "Add/Remove Dictionary" entry from the "Settings" menu. Follow the steps bellow:

1. Add a Dictionary Group

You need to add dictionary group. Put the name in the "Group Name" box and click the "Add" button. "EtoJ" or "JtoE" will be fine.

If you want to use "Selection Lookup" feature, you might want to add a group named "selection". If it exists, EBView will always use this group on Selsction Lookup.


2. Identify Avaliable Dictionaries

Then, identify dictionaries in hard disk. Enter the directory that contains the dictionary information (it should contain a file called or ). Then press the "Search Disk" button and it will read the catalog. You can specify the depth of directories to recursively search using the number next to the directory name. "0" means search no subdirectories.

3. Choose Selected Dictionaries to add to the Dictionary Group

Choose the dictionary or dictionaries to add to the dictionary group and click the "Add" button. You can change the name of the dictionary as you desire.

Now, you can start searching. All the information about setting is stored in a file in a directory called .ebview in the user's home directory.

3. Searching


Here is a steps to search.

The Dictionary Selection Toolbar


The Dictionary Selection Toolbar allows you to choose a dictionary group, and then select which dictionaries will be used from within that group. Only selected dictionaries will be searched. If you want to stop searching one or more dictionaries you can toggle them by pushing their buttons. If a dictionary cannot be found, then its button cannot be pushed. In this case, check whether the dictionary file still exists or if its CD-ROM has been mounted. You can change how many characters of the dictionary names appear on the buttons using the Settings/Misc/Bytes in Dictionary Bar.

The Search Toolbar


You can choose the search method either from the search menu or the toolbar. Bellow is the meaning of each methods.

Search Method
 Meaning
Automatic Search
 Execute both "Exactword Search" and "Keyword Search".
Exectword Search
 Entries which exactly matches the search word will be listed.
Forward Search
 Entries beginning with the search word will be listed. For example, when you enter "difficult" as search word, it matches both "difficult" and "difficulty".
Backward Search
 Entries end in the search word will be listed. For example, when you enter "tist" as search word, it matches "dentist" and "systematist" etc.
Keyword Search
 This enables you to specify multiple words, then entries which contain all the words will be listed. For example, when you enter "grow" and "up" , it may matches "grow up".
Multiword Search
 This also enables you to specify multiple words, but each words has a meaning. You may also choose words from the list if available.
Full Text Search
 This lists all the entries which contains search word in its content. It takes times since EBView has to read whole dictionary.
Internet Search
 Lanuch external Web browser to search keywords from Internet.
Menu
 Show menu data if available.
Copyright
 Show copyright information if available.


Entering Search Words


Then you should enter a keyword or space-separated keywords in the text box and hit the enter key, or click the search icon.

Search Result


A list of hits will be displayed in the box on the left of the result frame. The detailed informaiton of the first result will be displayed on the right. You can see more information about other entries by selecting them from the hit list. You can also move up and down the list using shortcut key. When there are so manyu hits, only limited number of hits will be listed. You can tune this number with [Settings]->[Misc]->"Maximum hits to display".

Jumping


Some words are highlighted in blue in the search results. These are hyperlinks to other entries in the dictionary. Your cursor should change as it passes over them, and if you click the left mouse button, you can jump to the hyperlinked entry. Your search history is stored, so you can go back using the back button and then forward again using the forward button.

Selecting Content


You can choose the index word using the mouse to mark a region (such as by dragging the mouse accross a word or double clicking on it). Double clicking will choose all characters of the same type around the cursor (where type is hiragana/katakana or kanji). For example, in the text "このソフトウェアは..." (This software-TOPIC) if you click on the "ウ" it will select "ソフトウェア" (software). In the same way, for the text "辞書の追加と削除", clicking on "追" will select "追加".
The selected text will be placed in the X-selection, so you can paste it into other applications by clicking the middle button (assuming that "Selection Lookup" is off).

Clicking the right button gives a menu with three options: + Search Selected Word + Copy to Clipboard (Ctrl-C) + Display - Menubar - Dictionary Selection Toolbar - Statusbar If you choose "search selected word", EBview will search for the selected word. If you choose "copy to clipboard" the selected word will be copied to the clipboard. You can also do this by hitting Ctrl-c (Holding down the control key and pressing "c"). Once a word is in the clipboard, you can then paste it into other applications (for example using Ctrl-v, or Ctrl-y in emacs. How to paste depends on the application).

4. Selection Lookup


Selection lookup makes it possible to look up words automatically even from other applications. For example, you can look up unknown words as you are browsing.
In general, in order not to get too many useless lookups, it is a good idea to choose "exact match" as the search method, and not select too many dictionaries.

If a dictionary group named "selection" exists, EBView will use that group regardless of the current group.

In addition to getting results in the EBView result window, you can choose to display them in a pop-up window. To do this you must select both "selection lookup" and "pop-up display".
Mouse operation on popup display:
Left Button Close popup window.
Middle Button Back to previous hits.
Right Button Go to next hits.

Clicking on hypertext links with the left button works normally, clicking anywhere else with the left button closes the pop-up window.
You can't look up the same word twice using selection lookup. If you want to look a word up again, you must first select something else, and then select the word you want to look up again.

5. Stemming


When looking up inflected words, such as "dictionaries", we need to search for the base form: "dictionary". The user can check each word and convert them as necessary,but this is tedious and inconvenient for automatic lookup of the X-selection. So, EBview automatically stems inflected words, so that it can lookup the base form. We call this feature "stemming". You can let EBView to only stem if the original form could not be found (this is the default).
EBview looks at the end of a word, and if it matches a set of patterns, converts it to the base form. Therefore, if you turn stemming on, lookup takes more time. You can turn stemming on or off, and customize the patterns used in the Settings menu, Stemming sub-menu. Adding many patterns makes the lookup very slow, so be careful. You can also change the order in which patterns match by dragging and dropping patterns in the Stemming Setting box.
Starting from version 0.1.6, EBView performs stemming for Japanese words. For example, when you specify 「出られない」 as search word,「出る」 will hit. Algorithm used in Japanese stemming is almost the same as that of English, there is a slight difference. When normal stemming resulted in no hit, then EBView will try searching with kanji characters in keyword. Yor cannot customize Japanese stemming pattern for the present.

6. Playing Multimedia Data


EBView supports multimedia data such as sound and movie. References to such data are shown green charancter. Your cursor should change as it passes over them, and if you click the left mouse button, you can play sound or movie.

EBView uses external program to play multimedia, so you need to specify programs which are capable to play actual data. Open [Settings]->[External Program] and enter the name of external program. For example, "playwave %f" for sound. %f is mandatory. Prior to lanuch external program, EBView will store multimedia data to temporally file. %f will be replaced by temporally file internally.

7. Internet Search


EBView can launch external browser to perform searching by Internet Search Engines. It is convenient when you cannot find desired information from your local dctionary, or you want to perform internet search on multiple search engines.

Choose "Internet Search" as search method. Search engines are listed in left frame. Choose one of them, enter keywords, press enter key or start button. Double click on search engine name will also start search. Right clicking on search engine name will popup menus. You can jump to Homepage from here. You may need this when you want to specify detailed optional parameter.

If nothing happens, please check command to launch browser. [Settings]->[External Program] has an entry. Example is "gnome-moz-remote %f". %f is mandatory and will be replaced by URL.

You can customize the list of search engine in [Settings]->[Search Engines]. Final URL will be the conjunction of "Pre string" and keyword and "Post string". If you specify multiple words, each words will be concatenated with "Glue string". Character code of keyword will be converted to specified code, as some search engine requires specific character code. Please note that you can only use search engine which uses "get" method rather than "post" method.

Some search engines such as "英辞郎 on the Web" prohibits these kind of searching. They only permits access from its Homepage.

8. Keyboard shortcuts


You can assign keyboard shortcuts to some function, such as selecting dictionary group. Multiple shortcuts will be assigned to a function. Here is a default shortcuts:

Key
 Function
F1 Choose Automatic Search
F2 Choose Exactword Search
F3
 Choose Forward Search
F4
 Choose Endword Search
F5
 Choose Keyword Search
F6
 Choose Mutiword Search
F7
 Choose Full Text Search
F8
 Choose Internet Search
Return Start searching
Escape clear keywords
Ctrl + p
 Previous hit
Ctrl + n Next hit
Ctrl + c
 Copy to clipboard
Ctrl + h
 Show help
Ctrl + q
 Quit program
Ctrl + Up
 Choose previous dictionary group
Ctrl + Down
 Choose next dictionary group
Ctrl + Number
 Toggle Xth dictionary
Alt + Left
 Go back in history
Alt + Right
 Go forward in history

You can cosutomize shortcuts in [Settings]->[Shortcut] Enter key combination, choose command, then press [Add] button.

9. Customizing the View


You can toggle the display of the following toolbars from the View Menu:

You can also toggle them from a context menu that pops up with a right button click. This is the only way to get the menubar back if you toggle it off.

10. Remote Commands


You can send commands to already running EBView and let it perform some action. You may, for example, assign commands as shortcut for Window Manager or other programs. "ebview-client" is the program to send commands to EBView. Specifying function as a parameter to this client program will let EBView perform it. If there is no EBView running, client program first lanuch one. Formats of parameters are as follows.

ebview-client --search keywords
Perform search with specified parameter. You can pass space-separated words.

ebview-client --selection
Perform selection lookup only once.

ebview-client --popup
Perform selection lookup only once. Result will be shown in popup window.

11. Other Settings

Fonts

Fonts can be customized from [Settings]->[Font]. EBView automatically chooses the size of book-specific (Gaiji) font. Even so, 14 - 16 pt is recommended. Some dictionary only have 16 dot book-specific font.

If you want to use different fonts for different encodings, you can specify comma-separated fonts to construct fontset.

Size Of Popup Window

You can change the size of popup window. As a rule, popup window will be shown at right buttom of the mouse location. EBView moves the popup window when it does not fit in screen.