2 * Installers for both Windows and Linux now will let you pick and choose
3 which dictionaries and stroke order diagram packages to download and
5 * Addition of Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) grade level tag
7 * New feature: single-key keyboard shortcuts in kanji practice mode.
8 * New feature: customization of kanji practice mode. Users can decide which
9 * New feature: kanji practice mode now has a "show answers" button which
10 uncovers all covered text fields. (Before, the user had to click each
12 * New feature: kanji practice "writing" mode now shows a KanjiCafe.com
13 stroke order diagram after pressing "Show Answers".
14 * KANJIDIC2 is no longer recommended due to memory usage and speed concerns.
15 It works fine on faster systems, but most users don't need the extra
16 information and should be fine with the original KANJIDIC format file.
17 * Several minor bugfixes regarding kanji dictionary output.
18 * Several documentation errors have been fixed.
22 * KANJIDIC2 is now supported and will be used instead of
23 KANJIDIC/KANJD212 if found.
24 * (Windows only) J-Ben has a "mobile mode" for users running off of USB
25 "thumb" drives and similar removable devices. This lets you carry all
26 your settings with you without having to install J-Ben on a system.
27 * The interface has changed dramatically. The dictionary windows are
28 still in the main window, but all the other tabs have been moved into
29 the menus. I think it should have a cleaner feel than before.
30 * Fonts for the dictionary windows, kanji drill mode and some other parts
31 of the program can now be customized. Check the "Edit->Preferences"
32 menu, under the Fonts tab.
33 * A new kanji search window has been added, under "Tools->Kanji Search".
34 It allows users to search for a kanji by stroke count or Halpern SKIP
35 code, and also includes the handwriting recognition from previous
36 versions. Multi-method searching is supported, with more methods
37 coming in later versions.
38 * Copying from dictionary windows should now work properly.
39 * Dictionaries may be gzipped to reduce size.
40 * (Windows only) J-Ben includes HTML documentation in the docs folder.
41 Open the file named index.html.
42 * (Linux only) J-Ben has a "make doc" option, which will make the
43 documentation for you if you have not separately downloaded it.
44 It requires docbook2html. Run "make doc" from the "src" folder,
45 and the docs will be output in the "doc" folder.
48 * The interface is now powered by GTK+/GTKmm on both Windows and Linux.
49 wxWidgets is no longer being used. As a result, the program should look
50 much more similar between the Linux and Windows versions.
51 * J-Ben's directory structure has been changed. Source files are all
52 included in the "src" folder, and make should be run from within "src".
53 Many other changes are present as well, but that's the most important
55 * The "BoostHM" object I used in previous versions has now been replaced
56 by the TR1 unordered_map. This obviously adds the requirement that your
57 compiler includes this part of TR1!
58 * Windows builds now use the combination of MinGW AND MSys. Straight
59 MinGW builds are NOT supported since I'm using GTK's pkg-config in
60 my makefile. Further, since TR1 is required, so is GCC/G++ 4.x,
61 so it will be necessary to grab one of those as well.
65 * New installers for both Linux and Windows.
66 * Linux: Makefile now supports "make install".
67 * Windows: There's now a proper installer program which sets up shortcuts,
68 adds entries to Add/Remove Programs, etc.
69 * Configuration files are now stored in your personal folder.
70 For Linux, this means: ~/.jben.
71 For Windows, this typically means:
72 C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\jben.cfg
74 * Major under-the-hood changes.
75 * Dictionary objects have been renamed and modified for future support of
76 multiple kanji/word dictionary files.
77 * Dictionary files now implemented as singletons.
78 * Almost all code not tied to wxWidgets GUI functionality has had all
79 references to wxWidgets code removed. This will better allow changes
80 in the GUI, including changing toolkits, in the future.
81 * Encoding conversions and multichar/wchar conversions via libiconv instead
83 * New functions for converting between wide/multibyte strings, for replacing
84 substrings, and for splitting strings into list<strings> based on
86 * Preferences object now loads config files based upon the user's home
87 directory, or the current directory in the (rare) case a home folder
89 * Errors are handled through a global ErrorLog object. This object
90 maintains a log of errors, warnings, and informative messages given to the
91 user while running the program, and can also store "silent" messages which
92 are only seen when explicitly queried.
93 * Windows-specific changes:
94 * MinGW's current stable GCC does not have full wide character support in
95 libstdc++. So, I've switched to using STLport, which although it seems to
96 have some issues when running its unit tests, it does seem to at least
97 work for my purposes for now.
98 * Major makefile changes.
99 * Build files are now stored in dep, obj, and bin folders, further broken
100 down into platform (gtk20/windos) and build type (release/debug). This
101 allows us to keep the source directory cleaner and to not have multiple
102 builds walking over each other.
103 * kpengine now has its own Makefile in the kanjipad directory, which is
104 called in turn from the main Makefile.
105 * For Linux: the Makefile now operates in a more "traditional" fashion.
106 "make install" works: binaries go to /usr/local/bin, data to
107 /usr/local/share/jben and docs/license stuff to /usr/local/share/doc/jben.
108 Custom prefix can be specified (ex: /usr instead of /usr/local).
109 * For Windows: the Makefile now depends on NSIS and 7-Zip being reachable
110 from the path, but now "make install" will build an EXE installer and
111 auto-archive .7z and .zip binary folders.
112 * DocBook-based manual written. It currently reflects version 1.1.2, but this
113 is acceptable since the UI has not really changed.
114 * The doc directory in the J-Ben source archives also contains a .dia file
115 showing a general outline of how J-Ben's source code is structured.
118 * Integrated KanjiPad. Code based on or borrowed from the KanjiPad code used by
119 im-ja. Accessible through Kanji -> Find Kanji -> By Handwriting.
120 * Major makefile changes. Now supports normal Linux building as well as win32
121 builds. Win32 builds require MinGW with mingw32-make plus sed and coreutils
122 from gnuwin32. Include/lib dirs must be specified in the Makefile, but this
123 should be a simple matter. Finally, MSYS is NOT used by this makefile; it is
124 run from a regular command prompt using mingw32-make.
125 * Updated EDICT2 and KANJIDIC to newer versions.
126 * Removed all the files in the old_files directory. None of them are relevant
128 * Moved Code::Blocks build files to old_files. With the new Windows make
129 support, I think they're now obsolete, but I'll keep them around for a few
130 more versions at least.
131 * Added README.txt, INSTALL.txt and CHANGELOG.txt to project.