Subject: Available: Wnn Programming Library (in C)

From: Mark Leisher <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 13:58:24 MDT

I've been meaning to finish and release this for a year or more, but
never quite got around to it, so here it is in all its rough-edged
glory! :-)

For those of you unfamiliar with Wnn/cWnn, basically they are (Unix)
network based conversion servers for converting
Hiragana/Katakana->Kanji and Pinyin/Zhuyin->Hanzi available in the
X11R5 distribution as part of the contributed i18n support.

This code still needs work, but it has been in use here for quite a
while.  We have only used this code on SunOS systems so I don't know
how many changes will be needed for other systems.  The documentation
is very poor at the moment, so please feel free to send questions.

Improvements, additions, and bug fixes of any kind are welcome!

You can get this code from:
crl.nmsu.edu:pub/misc/wnnpi-0.4.tar.Z

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                    The Wnn Programming Interface

This software is based on the original version of Wnn developed by
Kyoto University Research Institute for MaFrom @UGA.CC.UGA.EDU:[email-masked] Mon Aug  9 15:02:08 1993
Date:         Mon, 9 Aug 1993 13:58:24 MDT
Reply-To: [email-masked]
Sender: Chinese Computing Network <[email-masked]>
From: Mark Leisher <[email-masked]>
Subject:      Available: Wnn Programming Library (in C)
Comments: To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
To: Multiple recipients of list CCNET-L <[email-masked]>
Status: R

I've been meaning to finish and release this for a year or more, but
never quite got around to it, so here it is in all its rough-edged
glory! :-)

For those of you unfamiliar with Wnn/cWnn, basically they are (Unix)
network based conversion servers for converting
Hiragana/Katakana->Kanji and Pinyin/Zhuyin->Hanzi available in the
X11R5 distribution as part of the contributed i18n support.

This code still needs work, but it has been in use here for quite a
while.  We have only used this code on SunOS systems so I don't know
how many changes will be needed for other systems.  The documentation
is very poor at the moment, so please feel free to send questions.

Improvements, additions, and bug fixes of any kind are welcome!

You can get this code from:
crl.nmsu.edu:pub/misc/wnnpi-0.4.tar.Z

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                    The Wnn Programming Interface

This software is based on the original version of Wnn developed by
Kyoto University Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences
(KURIMS), OMRON Corporation and ASTEC Inc (see COPYRIGHT file in WnnPI
distribution).

Note00: Some familiarity with the Wnn family of network based
        conversion servers is assumed by this document.

The WnnPI library is a library of functions for working with the Wnn
family of conversion servers.  The code in WnnPI is based primarily on
the libraries that are provided with the Wnn distribution.  Most of
the WnnPI code doesn't look anything like the code in the Wnn
libraries, but all of WnnPI was written using the Wnn JS and JL
libraries as references.

For most conversion needs, WnnPI can be used instead of
libwnn.a/libcwnn.a or libjd.a, which are provided with the Wnn
distribution.

The libraries that come with the Wnn/cWnn distribution are set up to
be used by both the server and by other programs.  As a consequence,
they are necessarily larger than a library like WnnPI which is devoted
to accessing the Wnn conversion servers via client programs.  The two
main motivations for writing the WnnPI library were to gain a better
understanding of how the Wnn family of conversion servers work and to
provide an enhanced, general purpose interface to these servers for
application programming.

The main enhancements WnnPI provides that the Wnn libraries don't are:

      o  Code heavily documented in English (easier to modify)
      o  Code separated into small modules based on functionality
      o  No global variables (pretty much reentrant)
      o  Manages multiple environments per connection
      o  Many more environment related functions
      o  Easy access to results of conversions and candidates
      o  Chinese Pinyin/Zhuyin <-> Yin code converters (see Note01:)
      o  Error messages in server "language" and "local" language (see Note02:)
      o  Based primarily on the wchar_t type
      o  Much smaller than the libraries provided with Wnn/cWnn

Note01: There are Pinyin/Zhuyin <-> Yin code conversion functions that
        come with Wnn, but they are not compiled into the programming
        libraries: libcwnn.a, and alternatively libjd.a with the
        Chinese code added (as of version 4.10).

Note02: The Wnn/cWnn message catalogs are used and an English message
        catalog (translation of Wnn message catalog) is provided.
        However, the message handling code and structures are set up
        to allow 2 message strings to be specified for each message.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[email-masked]
Mark Leisher
Computing Research Lab                    "Elegance is not optional!"
New Mexico State University                  -- Attributed to Richard O'Keefe
Box 3CRL, Las Cruces, NM  88003