tlug: Re: Electronic Book Readers for Lignux

[jwb@example.com (Jim Breen)]

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tlug note from jwb@example.com (Jim Breen)
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On Jun 23, 12:49pm, Dennis McMurchy wrote:
} Subject: Re: Electronic Book Readers for Lignux
>> On Mon, 23 Jun 1997, Jim Breen wrote:
>> 
>> > Yes, it all got a bit heavy. Since the few EBs I have are already
>> > converted to EDICT format, and are firing away as alternative dictionary
>> > files under xjdic, I didn't have the energy to wade in too far.
>> > (BTW, those EDICT-format files are strictly personal-use-only. I'd be
>> > crucified if I let them out.)
>> 
>>   Yes, there are presumably copyright considerations to observe concerning
>> the files themselves.  But there would be no such restrictions on
>> sharing your conversion algorithms with people on the list, would there?
>> 
>>   I for one would be quite interested in seeing what approach you took
>> (however ad hoc it may be), since this would offer a technique for
>> making all sorts of things  available through the xjdic interface.  

Mine have been hand-tailored efforts for each EB, so I haven't pushed too 
hard at the general format. If you poke around in them with a dump
program you'll see a lot of records with funny-looking Japanese coding;
basically JIS (ISO 2022) without the escape sequences, and with a lot
of special characters as separators, etc. If you look in the dicserver
code you'll see typical code to handle them.

There was a discussion a while ago with some people who had bought the rights
to the contents of some EBs for R&D purposes, and had written some 
general-purpose software for undoing them. They were asking me & others 
about the ethics of releasing or selling this code. My advice, along with
that of some others, was that it would be safest not to do that. One would
not want to selling dynamite to safe-breakers, and while there may be a
good defence if there was ever an action, better to avoid it from the 
beginning.

The mesage is that EB contents are wide open to extraction programs; it
just takes a bit of effort. For personal use, doing this is safe. Giving the
contents to others is probably a breach of copyright.

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen                            Department of Digital Systems
Email: j.breen@example.com                 Monash University
http://www.dgs.monash.edu.au/~jwb/      Clayton VIC 3168 Australia
P: +61 3 9905 3298 F: 9905 3574  $@%8%`!&%V%j!<%s(J@$@%b%J%7%eBg3X(J
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