JWPCE
Hello just to talk about this software I use quite often. It allows us to write in japanese (katakana/hiragana) with our keyboards and has a huge kanji dictionary with automatic recognition based on pronociation.
It is made for windows and one can use it very simply with wine (out of the box, 2 seconds install with the .exe). I just discovered it is free software (GPL), so i wonder if it is difficult to make a .deb from the .exe or from the sources and to put it in trisquel's repo.
It seems one must go there https://devel.trisquel.info/trisquel/package-helpers/blob/belenos/CONTRIBUTING.md to contribute to the repos, but I don't clearly understand what are the skills needed to maintain software up to date or to add them. I don't even know if the devs would let me do that.
I cannot find the source code. www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html is supposed to be the homepage (according to Wiipedia) but it is down. I found https://github.com/ThemonChan/JWPCE but there is no code there. There is https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThemonChan/JWPCE/master/_cpright.txt though... and it tells JPWce is proprietary: it cannot be commercially used.
In the section "JWP Main Package":
No part(s) of JWP may be included in any commercial product, nor may any commercial product include portion(s) derived from part(s) of JWP, without the explicit permission of the respective copyright holder(s).
Whenever a specific copyright notice conflicts with the GNU General Public License, the specific copyright provision(s) will take precedence over the GNU General Public License.
In the section "Japanese-English Dictionary" (functional data, obviously):
Any distribution of the files must take place without a financial return, except a charge to cover the cost of the distribution medium.
The files, extracts from the files, and translations of the files must not be sold as part of any commercial software package, nor must they be incorporated in any published dictionary or other printed document without the specific permission of the copyright holder.
Same two sentences in the section "Kanji Information Database".
The commercial utilization of the frequency numbers is prohibited without written permission from Jack Halpern.
SKIP is protected by copyright, copyleft and patent laws. The commercial utilization of SKIP in any form is strictly forbidden without the written permission of Jack Halpern, the copyright holder.
In the section "Radical Lookup":
[Michael Raine] requests that the data files not be re-distributed for use in any commercial product without his express written permission.
In the section "Japanese Format Conversion Routines":
This source code or a compiled version may be bundled with commercial software as long as the author is notified beforehand.
Looks like you checked the rights of JWP.
I took a screenshot of my JWPce copy wich tells it is GnuGPL, with the interface inspired from JWP.
Downloaded it from here http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/extras/jwpce/
Here a port for Nintendo DS providing the sources http://ppcenter.webou.net/my_jwpce/
An article explaining the software history and giving another intersting link https://eugenewoodbury.blogspot.fr/2016/01/jwpce-unicode.html
The tarball on http://ppcenter.webou.net/my_jwpce/ contains, in http://ppcenter.webou.net/my_jwpce/jwpcesrc.zip, the same file, _cpright.txt, I read. There is the GPL too but the additional notices are supposed to take precedence:
Whenever a specific copyright notice conflicts with the GNU General Public License, the specific copyright provision(s) will take precedence over the GNU General Public License.
The distribution of this software is a mess. And it is proprietary software in the end.
Ok thank you for answering me. I'll switch to tagaini jisho for dictionnary and try to find some other way to have asian characters input.
If I understand well, only certain pieces of this software are proprietary. So if I succeed in changing the dictionnary for tagaini jisho, and all that stuff marked proprietary in your post, JWPce would become entirely free software ?
I guess. You could also try to convince the authors of the proprietary pieces to remove the specific provisions (i.e., convince them that commercial uses of functional works, including dictionaries, should always be allowed: the user's works depend on them).
Hello, I found this https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/uim-anthy wich replaces this proprietary software by allowing a system wide japanese input. Every text editor can write in japanese the same way (romaji to kana to kanji by hitting space bar or enter). Uim is in trisquel's repo.