Eclectus is a small Han character dictionary especially designed for
learners of Chinese character based languages like Mandarin Chinese or
Japanese.

Features
--------
  * Supports EDICT and CEDICT style dictionaries,
  * currently supports Japanese, Mandarin Chinese (traditional and
    simplified), Cantonese and Korean,
  * works without a background dictionary (though limited),
  * supported romanisations/character readings: Kana, Pinyin, Wade-Giles,
    Gwoyeu Romatzyh, IPA, Jyutping, Cantonese Yale, Hangul,
  * modular support for adding further character readings,
  * fuzzy search (wildcards), mixing of characers and pronunciation,
  * integrated search for headword, pronunciation and translation at the
    same time,
  * search for similar pronunciations,
  * Kangxi radical table,
  * component (aka multi radical) search,
  * handwriting recognition,
  * vocabulary list,
  * sensitive towards similar characters, writing variants, infrequent
    readings,
  * small mode (aka mini mode) with clipboard lookup for integration with
    other software,
  * character/word related information, character component tree,
  * stroke order and pronunciation as audio,
  * dictionary update function.

Dependencies
------------
  * Python
  * SQLalchemy, SQL library
  * Qt4, Cross-Platform GUI and Framework
  * PyQt4, Python bindings for Qt
  * KDE4, libraries including kdecore, kdeui, kio
  * PyKDE4, Python bindings for KDE
  * cjklib, Han character library

Installing
----------
Once downloaded/extracted Eclectus can be installed on the system by running:

# python setup.py install

This step isn't needed when installing from a binary package (.deb, .rpm).
It is possible to run Eclectus from the source directory.

Make sure the user running Eclectus has write access to the database. Otherwise
run the following as root:

# ./libeclectus/buildtables.py build base

To install optional data used by Eclectus run
# cd libeclectus/files
# make chi-balm-hsk1_ogg
# make bw.png.segment
If you haven't installed the Kanji stroke order font or you prefer another
source you can choose between
# make red.png
or
# make order.gif

If you installed Eclectus using the first step you also need to install
these files:
# sudo make install

Contributing
------------
If you are interested in contributing to Eclectus or have any comments, please
contact <cburgmer@ira.uka.de>.
