I've just uploaded another one of my Japanese related projects to Google Play. Dokusho is an app that helps users read Japanese texts by giving them a quick and useful pop-up dictionary.

The app contains several novels and stories from Aozora but users can upload their own TXT files, just put them in the App directory (default: Dokusho) on your mobile device (SD Card or Internal storage). Dictionary does basic deconjugation and presents a sorted list of items that best match "clicked" word. Another feature is the ability to quickly export that particular item to CSV file (saved in the App directory) by clicking "+" sign next to it. Similiarly if the item is already saved "+" won't be available, so you know if that particular word was giving you problems before. Another good feature is the ability to choose from two themes (black/white) depending on your taste and screen type (saves energy a bit).

There is basic AnkiDroid export support through Intents (if you have it installed on your device) but it's not very quick/useful, it's better to just import the CSV file in Anki and synchronize the deck.

The app is not free and should cost around 1.95$ for all markets.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...om.dokusho

Now that I've finally published (tons of effort getting the kinks out) I can get back to learning again, just in time for Tadoku

[Zgarbas]

The possibilities of combining this with a rooted nook sound highly tempting. (I really should get around to rooting that thing).

Would that work?

Zgarbas Wrote:The possibilities of combining this with a rooted nook sound highly tempting. (I really should get around to rooting that thing).

Would that work?

It should, as long as you have the APK file or access to Play Store and some Android device you should be able to install and run it without problems.

I've yet to try it on extreme resolutions like Nexus 10 but so far from the tablets I've tested it on it's just a match made in heaven. Generally phones are OK for reading but tablets are just fantastic.

No ruby support? What about EPWING?

Otherwise it looks kinda neat. Just right now, nothing replaces rekaisama in desktop Firefox.

EPWING support would be great!

I've bought it, it's really nice, but I think I prefer JadeRead app. At least the way it shows the dictionary is better. When the dictionary windows shows in Dokusho, it takes the part of the screen where I'm reading, while in JadeRead it shows on the lower part of the screen. I can read with JadeRead when dictionary lookup is visible, with Dokusho, I usually need to close the popup windows first. I'm reading with a smartphone, maybe it would be different on a tablet. The rest is actually the same. JadeRead allows to save the words into txt file, I dont know how should choosing SRS App as AnkiDroid in Dokusho should work, is it supposed to automatically add new cards to a deck? Well, couldn't get it to work anyway.

I would like to hear what are the differences between Dokusho and JadeRead.

[RawToast]

This looks very similar to Jade Reader. Still some competition is good! Picked it up as I feel the effort in simply gathering a few short stories to use is worth the price.

In the same boat as Zgarbas (actually in the process of rooting my Nook Simple Touch -fingers crossed) and if I can get the wifi to work properly, I'll definitely be purchasing it.

What fonts does it support? Would any unicode Japanese read fine with this application? The reason I ask it that I would probably be utilizing a range of unicode fonts in respect to reading .txt files on the Nook. Different strokes for different folks, and all that (sorry, that was a terrible pun).

Daichi Wrote:No ruby support?

Ruby support like in Anki? I didn't think it was some sort of a standard to encode furigana in.

Daichi Wrote:What about EPWING?

EPWING is one of the first features I'd like to implement, generally support for multiple dictionaries (especially some kind of J-J dictionary) would be very useful for language learners. But from what I've gathered its not a trivial task, I can't find good documentation on EPWING format but I'll keep on looking.

Daichi Wrote:Otherwise it looks kinda neat. Just right now, nothing replaces rekaisama in desktop Firefox.

But its pretty hard to take a desktop on my daily commute or vacation

meeatcookies Wrote:I've bought it, it's really nice, but I think I prefer JadeRead app. At least the way it shows the dictionary is better. When the dictionary windows shows in Dokusho, it takes the part of the screen where I'm reading, while in JadeRead it shows on the lower part of the screen. I can read with JadeRead when dictionary lookup is visible, with Dokusho, I usually need to close the popup windows first. I'm reading with a smartphone, maybe it would be different on a tablet.

It's definitely better on a tablet but I understand your point. I think to remedy this I'll add two new options:
1. Dimming of text beneath the pop-up [ON/OFF]
2. Pop-up location [TOP/FLOATING/BOTTOM]

meeatcookies Wrote:The rest is actually the same. JadeRead allows to save the words into txt file, I dont know how should choosing SRS App as AnkiDroid in Dokusho should work, is it supposed to automatically add new cards to a deck? Well, couldn't get it to work anyway.

I didn't test it for a while (stopped using Anki altogether) but the way it worked is, it transferred you to card edit in AnkiDroid with some already filled but it was clumsy and actually took more effort from the user than general import from CSV in Anki.

meeatcookies Wrote:I would like to hear what are the differences between Dokusho and JadeRead.

I wasn't aware something like JadeRead is already available (or maybe it was added recently) but yeah, currently the difference is small and mainly focused on aesthetics. I'll just need to work on Dokusho a bit more, there are tons of stuff I see missing from both apps I'd like to implement.

RawToast Wrote:This looks very similar to Jade Reader. Still some competition is good! Picked it up as I feel the effort in simply gathering a few short stories to use is worth the price.

Thank you, this is exactly the kind of attitude and support I need to keep working on this

uisukii Wrote:What fonts does it support? Would any unicode Japanese read fine with this application? The reason I ask it that I would probably be utilizing a range of unicode fonts in respect to reading .txt files on the Nook. Different strokes for different folks, and all that (sorry, that was a terrible pun).

Currently it uses your default system font, I tried to get it to work with a custom font but the way paging mechanism works made it difficult to do it properly. This one is definitely on the back burner as I'd have to rewrite some major portions of the app (not saying it's not going to happen, just not soon).

thurd Wrote:

Daichi Wrote:No ruby support?

Ruby support like in Anki? I didn't think it was some sort of a standard to encode furigana in.

cb's JNovel Formatter can convert rubys just fine. I have a lot of text files that has furigana rubys in a bracket format like this: "衝撃《しょうげき》自体はたいしたことがなかったのだが、その拍子に妹のバッグが手から離《はな》れ、床《ゆか》に中身をぶちまけた。"

I think parsing this is mentioned a little in the JNovel Formater thread. Displaying it on the other hand might be tricky.

Of course if could just load HTML files that have embedded HTML rubys...

thurd Wrote:

Daichi Wrote:What about EPWING?

EPWING is one of the first features I'd like to implement, generally support for multiple dictionaries (especially some kind of J-J dictionary) would be very useful for language learners. But from what I've gathered its not a trivial task, I can't find good documentation on EPWING format but I'll keep on looking.

I'm really happy to hear EPWING is something you want to have.

thurd Wrote:

Daichi Wrote:Otherwise it looks kinda neat. Just right now, nothing replaces rekaisama in desktop Firefox.

But its pretty hard to take a desktop on my daily commute or vacation

I can mostly get by on paper with an electronic dictionary if I really need to. But yeah, an all in one app can certainly be very handy. Anyway, keep up the good work, I like what I'm hearing so far.

I've just published an update with 2 new options that let you control the position of dictionary pop-up and dimming its background.

It should be available on Google Play in a few hours.

[RawToast]

thurd Wrote:I've just published an update with 2 new options that let you control the position of dictionary pop-up and dimming its background.

It should be available on Google Play in a few hours.

I've updated and much prefer the new dictionary pop-up

How tedious would it be to support epub/mobi formats? I extract them myself, but supporting these formats seems to be the next logical step for a reader.

I just downloaded your app, and it looks like it'll be pretty slick. The Jade Reader and Vertical Text Viewer apps were free, so I grabbed those too, however, there's little help in how to use any of these, so I'm a little lost.

Maybe Jade Reader is fine, but I couldn't immediately see how to load a text, so I gave up.

As for your app, the fact that it comes with pre-loaded texts is nice, even if they are freely available elsewhere. My first question is: how do I load more texts?

Vertical Text Viewer requires the use of Aozoraprovider (青空プロバイダー, available free in the Play store--searching the English title as one word, like I wrote it above, will bring it up). Through that, you can download Aozora texts in Text or XHTML files. It's nice enough, but requires switching to a dictionary (such as aedict) to look words up, and I really like how yours is a pop-up dictionary right in the app. I know nothing of programming, but I was wondering if you could make Dokusho compatible with Aozoraprovider. That would be great. As it is, I tried copying and pasting files downloaded from Aozoraprovider into my folder on Dokusho, but the .txt files rendered as gibberish and the .xml files didn't render at all.

Finally, an option for vertical reading would be nice, but is of far less importance.

Great work so far though! $2 isn't much at all for a great app like this, and once I'm more familiar with how to use it, I'm sure I'll love it. Right now though, I'm a little lost as to how to add my own texts.

RawToast Wrote:How tedious would it be to support epub/mobi formats? I extract them myself, but supporting these formats seems to be the next logical step for a reader.

I've plans to add both of them but first I'd like to implement EPWING support and right now work kind of gets in the way of that.
New file formats are next in terms of priority and along with that there will be better support for pure TXT format (conversion from different encodings) to handle problems like the one that KanjiKami seems to have.

KanjiKami Wrote:As for your app, the fact that it comes with pre-loaded texts is nice, even if they are freely available elsewhere. My first question is: how do I load more texts?

Vertical Text Viewer requires the use of Aozoraprovider (青空プロバイダー, available free in the Play store--searching the English title as one word, like I wrote it above, will bring it up). Through that, you can download Aozora texts in Text or XHTML files. It's nice enough, but requires switching to a dictionary (such as aedict) to look words up, and I really like how yours is a pop-up dictionary right in the app. I know nothing of programming, but I was wondering if you could make Dokusho compatible with Aozoraprovider. That would be great. As it is, I tried copying and pasting files downloaded from Aozoraprovider into my folder on Dokusho, but the .txt files rendered as gibberish and the .xml files didn't render at all.

I think you've put the files correctly but my best guess is that encoding isn't UTF-8. If you can open that TXT file in a more powerful text editor (Notepad++) it should allow you to convert to UTF-8 (you'll know if you converted properly by having the file in UTF-8 and Japanese text showing correctly in the editor).

I'll download Aozoraprovider and try it out myself and put a detailed instruction here.

KanjiKami Wrote:Finally, an option for vertical reading would be nice, but is of far less importance.

Someday yes, but right now there are more significant things to update

[RawToast]

If you have downloaded some text files and they are displaying as garbage in windows too, then you may need to change the character set. I had a similar problem with the 5000 Japanese novels archive.

In Notepad++ (it's free) go to Encoding -> Character Sets -> Japanese -> Shift-JIS. After that I'd set the file encoding to UTF8, as I imagine Dokusho will work better with that encoding.

RawToast Wrote:I had a similar problem with the 5000 Japanese novels archive.

And what, pray-tell, is this? Is it from Aozora? Is it a batch file of some kind?

Also, thanks to both of you for the tip about Notepad++. I think you're right about it not being UTF8, Thurd. I wondered if that wasn't the problem, but I'm not especially savvy in that particular realm yet. I presume I would download the text files from Aozora on my PC, then convert them in Notepad++ and transfer to my tablet? I'll be curious to see what you think of Aozora Provider, because integration with that would be really slick.

Thanks for the replies and keep up the good work, Thurd! You have a nice app here, and I'd love to see it keep growing.

[RawToast]

KanjiKami Wrote:

RawToast Wrote:I had a similar problem with the 5000 Japanese novels archive.

And what, pray-tell, is this? Is it from Aozora? Is it a batch file of some kind?

It's an archive with 5000 novels in text format. I don't know were the original files came from It seems the novels were taken from Aozora in 2009. This thread has details: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10055

Never used Aozora, so I can't help you there.

On another note, I got this working on my newly acquired Nook Simple Touch Would it be possible to add a few more font sizes for the main text? I find even the maximum (26?) is a little small and makes dictionary look-ups difficult. This may be down to the Nook's touch screen not being that great.

So, I decided to try it to prepare for future road trips...
My main issue is font size. Since my vision is horribly low (visus 0.1-0.2), I would love to have the font about twice as large as the current maximum. Coulde you please implement that in a future version?

(It is an excellent app, by the way.)