MacJDic 1.3.2 (Dan Crevier)

System Requirements: JLK, 607KB of free RAM, 5.3MB of disk space
Price: Freeware* available for download at ftp://ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/. The files needed are:
MacJDic1.3.4.hqx, edict, edict.doc, kanjidic, kanjidic.doc.
Review by Atsushi Fukada, Purdue University (IN)

MacJDic is an electronic reference tool with Japanese-English, English-Japanese, and kanji dictionaries rolled into one and much more. The dictionary portion makes use of public domain Japanese dictionariescreated, maintained, and distributed for free by Prof. Jim Breen at Monash University. The user interface of MacJDic is nice and simple. When you open MacJDic, you have radio buttons for switching between the kanji lookup and J E & E-J modes. In the J-E & E-J mode, if you type in an English word, e.g. "open", the program gives you a list of Japanese words which have the word "open" in their meanings. Search words don't have to be complete; you can type in as much as you are sure of. For example, if you type in toke (in kana) it will find tokei 'clock', toketsu 'vomitting of blood', tokeru 'melt', etc. There i s a useful option called "Look up all compounds". If this is turned on, in response to fukai 'deep' , for example, the program will find you utaguribukai, okufukai, shuunenbukai etc. If another option called "Try to deinflect verbs" is selected , and you type in a verb or adjective with kanji+kana, MacJDic will try to deinflect (or unconjugate) the verb. For example, if you search for hanashimasu with deinflection turned on, it will find hanasu. If the AutoPaste feature is selected fr om the Edit menu, every time you switch to the search window, it will paste the contents of the clipboard into the search field. This is useful if you will be copying things from another program to look up. In the kanji mode, you can look up kanji by its reading, meaning, stroke count, Nelson entry number, Heisig index, etc. There is also a button to bring up a list of radicals. Clicking on a radical searches all characters with that radical. Once a character is found, various information is displayed including its readings, meanings, stroke count, JIS code, grade level, etc.

In short, MacJDic is a very useful reference tool that every computer used for teaching/learning Japanese should have a copy of. Since it doesn't require a lot of RAM, it can comfortably run side by side with other programs like a word processor, an e-mail reader, a Web browser, and instructional programs.

CmpLb, RscRm, SlfSt, MatPr

*The author calls it "postcardware"--If you like th e program, you are asked to send him a postcard!