Introduction
  • Notation Used
  • What is JFC and what can it do for me?
  • Why this Program got Written
  • The GNU General Public License
  • Disclaimers
  • Acknowledgments
  • Copyrights and Trademarks
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • JFC Features

  • INDEX: Contents
  • NEXT: Installation

    • Notation Used

    Before we get started with the actual manual, here are some terms used throughout this manual:
    WindowsRefers to all versions of Windows after 95 (this currently includes 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, CE, CE Pro, and PocketPC).
    Windows 95Refers to Windows 95 or higher (currently 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP), not CE.
    Windows CERefers to all variants of the Windows CE operating system (CE, CE Pro, and PocketPC).

    What is JFC and what can it do for me?

    JFC is a freeware Japanese flash card program, available free to anyone under the terms of the GNU General Public License. You are welcome to make a copy of JFC for your own use, as well as to distribute it to other people. The GNU General Public License binds you to the agreement that you always distribute full copies of the program, and that you may charge a distribution fee for distributing it. However, no part(s) of JFC may be included in any commercial product, nor may any commercial product include portion(s) derived from part(s) of JFC, without the explicit permission of the respective copyright holder(s).

    JFC is a basic Japanese flash card program designed to aid students learning Japanese. Much of JFC is designed to basically mimic what one would normally do with paper flash cards, except on a computer. There are a number of potential advantages to using a computer flash card program over a normal paper system:

    1. One does not need a big stack of paper cards to keep track of. The disadvantage is that one needs to have access to a computer, but since JFC runs on Windows CE systems this is not a significant limitation.
    2. JFC is integration with JWPce, allowing sharing of files and resources.
    3. Because JFC is integrated with JFC it can use your color-kanji list from JWPce to determine what kanji you know and adjust the flash cards automatically for known kianji.
    4. JFC can also use dictionary files to automatically supply kanji reading, kanji meanings and definitions of words.
    5. The computer flash card system can keep track of cards that you frequently miss and adjust the flash card list automatically to emphasize words/kanji that are often missed.

    Why this Program got Written

    I used flash cards heavily when I began learning Japanese. These provided a simple way to keep track of vocabulary, kanji, and grammar points to be learned, could be taken anywhere, and allowed for easy randomization (lists don't work well for me, since I tend to simply memorize the order of things in the list).

    One problem with flash cards is that one tends to accumulate a large number of them, and although the actual making of the card is a good exercise for the student, storing them can be a problem. Additionally, they weight a lot, so they can be a problem to carry around. Further, if you review your old flash cards, one often finds that they need to be updated to match your current knowledge.

    Out of curiosity I looked at some Japanese flash card software for computers, and found that there were a number of programs, but all of the programs were somewhat limited. Few or none of the programs supported Windows CE (flash cards are really useful when standing in line at the DMV, and carrying a full Windows machine can be somewhat limiting). Further, none of the programs supported a particular philosophy for learning kanji that I have.

    Having already written JWPce, and somewhat on a whim, I decided to see what I could come up with for a Japanese flash card program. The result is JFC.

    The GNU General Public License

    A description of the GNU General Public License is shown below, taken directly from the license document. Your distribution kit should contain a copy of GNU General Public License in the file: GNUGPL.TXT (straight text).

    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

    Version 2, June 1991

    Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA

    Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

    Preamble

    The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.

    When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

    To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

    For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

    We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

    Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

    Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

    The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

    TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

    0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

    Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

    1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

    You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

    2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

    a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

    b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

    c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

    These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

    Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

    In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

    3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

    a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

    b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

    c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

    The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

    If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.

    4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

    5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.

    6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

    7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

    If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

    It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

    This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.

    8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.

    9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

    Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

    10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.

    NO WARRANTY

    11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

    12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

    All this basically means that you are free to get a copy of the program if you want, including the full source code.

    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.

    No part(s) of JFC may be included in any commercial product, nor may any commercial product include portion(s) derived from part(s) of JFC, without the explicit permission of the respective copyright holder(s).

    Disclaimers

    Because this program is free software, it is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. This means that if you lose millions of dollars because you used the program, tough. So there!

    If you encounter any bugs, have suggestions, or want to make a comment, you should e-mail the information to me and I will attempt to respond.

    Acknowledgments

    The creation of JFC is based heavily on the code developed for JWPce. JWPce development was directly or indirectly the result of a several people. I would like to take the time to thank them for their effort, because without such effort JWPce and JFC would never have been created!

    Copyrights and Trademarks

    The following is copyright information for code and data files contained in the JFC distribution:

    JFC Program and Documentation

      All files distributed with the JFC package with exceptions as stated below.

      Copyright (c) 1999-2004, 2005, glenn rosenthal

      JFC is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

      This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

    Japanese-English Dictionary

      File Names: EDICT, EDICT.JDX, KANJIDIC (used to generate kanjinfo.dat)

      Copyright (c) 1994 James William Breen

      This license statement and copyright notice applies to the EDICT Japanese/English dictionary file, the associated documentation file EDICT.DOC, and any data files which are derived from them.

      COPYING AND DISTRIBUTION

      Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of these files provided this copyright notice and permission notice is distributed with all copies. Any distribution of the files must take place without a financial return, except a charge to cover the cost of the distribution medium.

      Permission is granted to make and distribute extracts or subsets of the EDICT file under the same conditions applying to verbatim copies.

      Permission is granted to translate the English elements of the EDICT file into other languages, and to make and distribute copies of those translations under the same conditions applying to verbatim copies.

      USAGE

      These files may be freely used by individuals, and may be accessed by software belonging to, or operated by, such individuals.

      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.

      COPYRIGHT

      Copyright over the documents covered by this statement is held by James William Breen.

      Other Related Copyrights

      Copyright over the documents covered by this statement is held by James William BREEN, subject to the exceptions outlined below.

      The following people have granted permission for material for which they hold copyright to be included in the files, and distributed under the above conditions, while retaining their copyright over that material:

      Jack HALPERN: The SKIP codes and Frequency codes in the KANJIDIC package.

      With regard to the SKIP and Frequency codes, Mr Halpern stated as follows:

      "The commercial utilization of the frequency numbers is prohibited without written permission from Jack Halpern. Use by individuals and small groups for reference and research purposes is permitted, on condition that acknowledgment of the source and this notice are included."

      "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."

      Christian WITTERN: The PinYin information in the KANJIDIC file.

      Urs APP: The Four Corner codes and the Morohashi information in the KANJIDIC package.

    Trademarks
      The following trademarks are used within this document or within the JWPce distribution:

      Windows, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows CE, Microsoft Word, Notepad, and Internet Explorer are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

      Netscape is a trademark of Netscape Corporation.

      Velo is a trademark of Phillips Electronics Incorporated.

      Freestyle is a trademark of Everex Corporation.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Here are the answers to some of the most common questions people ask.

    JFC Features

    JFC has a large number of special features. This is a list of some of the highlights.

    Next Chapter: Installation