This minor version has a number of new
interesting features, mainly associated with the phonetic dictionary data.
1. Blocks of dictionary data used in the drill ("drill groups")
can now include Japanese words, not just kanji, as it was already done in the mobile versions of JiShop.
What used to be called "Kanji drill" is now referred to as "Flashcards". "Drill groups" will be called "flashcard groups".
A flashcard group file kotoba.kdg is included in the package.
It contains about 1500 Japanese words split between 16 groups.
The content of a flashcard group can now be viewed in a
more detailed format, with readings and meanings. If a group contains more words than characters,
this format is default.
A special layout is introduced for viewing
two flashcard groups from the same file, with the option of dragging kanji or words from one group to another.
For convenient operations with flashcard groups, various hotkeys are provided.
Read about them in Quick Help (press F2). For example, the simplest way of sending a word from the phonetic dictionary
to a flashcard group is clicking on it with the Alt key pressed.
2. Two thousand Japanese words in the database are classified as the most common words.
They are marked with a small white circle (you can suppress it in the "Options" tab) and
have a default priority in the phonetic dictionary, being listed first, under otherwise equal conditions.
This setting can also be changed.
In future versions, a more advanced classification of Japanese words
by their utility is quite probable, with marking words by circles of different colors.
3. Each word definition is now followed by a
speaker icon for speech synthesis (this also was already done in the mobile versions). You can suppress the output
of these icon in the "Options" tab. The users of Windows 10 can select a particular voice from several provided by the system.
The users of the earlier versions of Windows can only use the online service. It should be noted, however, that the online
service often gives you a better quality of speech synthesis.
4. The search for compound words by their kanji is slightly
modified. The rightmost cell (when the leftmost one is empty) now corresponds not to the 4th kanji in a word
but the last one. The words you specify by their last character can contain two, three, four, or even more kanji.
If the 3rd cell also contains a kanji, it is considered to be last but one.
100 newly edited kanji entries and more than 2000 compound
words have been added to the phonetic dictionary. Also some kanji utility marks have been revised, following the
recent news from the Japanese Ministry of Education who have expanded the School Kanji list, adding 20 characters
used in the names of prefectures.
Vadim Smolensky