$kNotwork: README,v 1.2 2002/09/28 05:21:05 gotoken Exp $

Ruby/KAKASI extension module

                                              by Gotoken (23 Jan 2000)

0. Note

This document includes Japanese characters (encoded in euc-japan).


1. Introduction

This extension module is a Ruby binding of ``KAKASI'', which is
developed by Hironobu Takahashi.  KAKASI is the language processing
filter to convert Kanji characters to Hiragana, Katakana or Romaji
and may be helpful to read Japanese documents.

The most entries of the kakasi dictionary is derived form the SKK
dictionaries(KaKaSi is opposite of SKK). KAKASI can handle many other
format of dictionaries. See doc/JISYO file which is included in the
source archive of KAKASI for more detail.


2. Usage

This extension module provides a module Kakasi which has a module
function kakasi only.

2.1 Example

  require "kakasi"
  include Kakasi

  puts kakasi("-Ja -Ha -s", "°Æ»³»Ò¤Ê¤Î¤Ç¤¹") #=> "kakasi nanodesu"

2.2 Arguments

1st argument is a option string for KAKASI.  See KAKASI's manual page
for the detail. 

2nd argument is a target string.  If a non string argument is given
kakasi raise an exception.

To be faster, Kakasi::kakasi initializes KAKASI only if the 1st
argument is different from the previous one.


3. Installation

3.1 Install libkakasi.a

Get the latest KAKASI from <URL:ftp://kakasi.namazu.org/pub/kakasi/>. 
KAKASI's tarball is named like as kakasi-2.x.y.tar.gz (x.y stands for 
minor version). Expand it and a directory kakasi-2.x.y is obtained. 
Typically, you can install as follows:

cd kakasi-2.x.y
./configure
make
(Be a super user if you need now)
make install

3.2 Install the extension module

Edit extconf.rb if cpp or ld can't find libkakasi.h or libkakasi.a. 
Then

ruby extconf.rb
make
(Be a super user if you need now)
make install

4. Copying

4.1 Copyright

(C) Copyright 1999-2002 GOTO Kentaro 
Ruby/KAKASI extension module is a copyrighted free software by GOTO
Kentaro.

4.2 Redistributing and Using

You may use or redistribute Ruby/KAKASI under the terms specified in
the COPYING file of the Ruby distribution.

Furthermore, Ruby/KAKASI is a ``Nokoware''. That is, I don't compel
but hope you would listen TANIYAMA Hiroko's songs.  She is a Japanese
singer.  Visit her homepage <URL:http://taniyama.hiroko.com/>.

4.3 Redistributing the binary

KAKASI is distributed under GNU Public License, so be careful when you
would redistribute compiled matters. 


5. Feedback

Comments, or bug reports are welcome: <URL:mailto:gotoken@notwork.org>


6. Acknowledgments

The auther thanks to Masahiko Sato who develops SKK, Hironobu
Takahashi who is the author of KAKASI, Hajime BABA who contributed
Wakatigaki patch and NOKUBI Takatsugu who created libkakasi.  If they
didn't create such great softwares, he couldn't write this extension.
Masato Shiotani contributed immediately a hard disk when my disk was
full.  And, he would also like to express his gratitude to Matz who is
the auther of Ruby, and all Rubyists for the helpful discussions.


7. Superfluous

http://kakasi.namazu.org says ``SKK - simple kana kanji converter''.
In the combinator theory, there is a famous equation `SKK == I', where
`I' stands for an identical combinator. So I think the name of SKK is
a deep joke, maybe :-)