FlashCan is copyright (C)2005-2011 Michael McConnell.

Licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence V2.

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FlashCan is a Tcl/Tk application.

It requires Tcl/Tk 8.3 to display the Chinese characters, earlier versions
may work but won't try to display the characters without a source
modification.

Uses a file "flashcan.dat" in the same directory as its vocabulary.

This file is built up as I work my way through the "Teach Yourself Cantonese"
book, by adding its chapter vocabulary as I come to them.

On startup or clicking "Random", the Chinese characters (if available) and
the Yale romanised form of the Cantonese are shown. Clicking "Show" reveals
the English meaning of the word.

The font for displaying the romanised text is implemented as embedded GIF files
for each character; this is to get round the issue of some combinations of
characters and accents not being readily available within Unicode space.

Although this program was written for learners of Cantonese, it also supports
Mandarin pinyin romanisation.  Although untested for this it could well be
useful for students of Japanese and Korean too, though of course the only
dictionary supplied is Cantonese.

flashcan.dat format:

1|2|3|4|

1 = Unicode representation of Chinese character(s), in hex, space-separated.
    (e.g. 5341 4E8C for sahp-yih (12))
2 = Romanised Cantonese or Pinyin text. Lowercase only a-z, - ? . / [ ] and
    space are valid.
    Accented characters as used in the Yale romanisation scheme are input as
    (xr) for rising, (xh) for high level and (xf) for falling tone.
    x = a, e, i, o and u, also (mf) and (nr) are valid.
    (xd) is the Pinyin falling-then-rising (dipping) tone, and (uu) is a
    'u' with a diaresis. A falling or rising tone variant is (uuf) and (uur).
  * As of version 0.8.2, if the first line is set to "## CANTO_DICT 1"
    (see below) then Numeric Yale is also supported in this field.
3 = English text, first line.
4 = English text, second line.

Any field may be blank, though this isn't very sensible for fields 2 and 3.

Any line can start with a # and this will be ignored as a comment.
With one exception: If the first line is "## CANTO_DICT 1" (or 0) then
this is used to set the "Cantonese Searching" option.

(The donated Mandarin dictionary file has been updated to include this set
to 0.)

Known Bugs:
- (UNIX) When a character that isn't in the font is referenced, FlashCan
  (actually, Tk) may crash with an X_OpenFont error.  This seems to be system
  dependent in that it will fall over in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4WS, but
  Fedora Core 4 and 6 will just not display the character in question.
  Unfortunately this is not a trappable error, and there are just too many
  characters in Unicode space to try to embed them all like the romanised ones.
- Unicode characters beyond U+FFFF cannot be displayed.

ChangeLog:
0.8.4 (2011-10-25): Fixed a bug in the Numeric Yale conversion.
  This one would occasionally render tone 4 as tone 7.

0.8.3 (2011-05-04): Fixed a bug in the Numeric Yale conversion.
- The Cantonese dictionaries are now in the Numeric Yale format.

0.8.2 (2011-04-23):
- Many bug fixes to the Numeric Yale conversion. It actually works now.
- When searching for Romanised Cantonese using Numeric Yale, if tone 1 is
  searched for, tone 7 is also checked, since many books and references do
  not distinguish between the two.
- The Cantonese Searching menu option is now hidden if a non-Cantonese
  dictionary is used.

0.8.1 (2010-06-06):
- The search box now correctly handles pressing Enter/Return to perform the
  intended search.
- Dialogue box windows now correctly get the focus. (This only seemed to be
  a problem on Windows.)

0.8.0:
- Searching by English meaning is now case insensitive.
- Searching by Cantonese now also recognises the numeric Yale form.
- Fixed the accelerator key for "Reverse Quiz" menu option.
- The tone-insensitive search is now completely tone-insensitive but
  this will of course only work for a Cantonese dictionary. Untick the 
  "Cantonese Searching" option under Tools to use the older algorithm that
  will work with Mandarin and other languages.
  The dictionary file can contain this setting with the "## CANTO_DICT X"
  entry as the first line. Older versions will ignore this line.

0.7.3:
- A small tweak to the font display.
  The Help->About window now shows the number of entries in the currently
  loaded dictionary.

0.7.2:
- New almost tone-insensitive search (still matches 'h' though) and romanised
  searches now show the romanisation properly.  Searches now return a maximum
  of 20 results (was 10).

0.7.0:
- New "Reverse Quiz" mode. Like the regular quiz mode, but presents the
  English and offers a selection of Chinese words (and romanisation if
  switched on, as is by default).

0.6.5:
- Quiz mode now writes missed dictionary entries to 'missed.dat' when running
  from the flashcan.dat, and on start-up if missed.dat exists queries the user
  whether they want to use their missed file or the regular dictionary.
  If the missed file is chosen it is not updated when quiz mode is run.
- If for some reason duplicates are shown in quiz mode, the duplicates are now
  linked so choosing any one will be considered correct.

0.6.0:
- Changed the default UNIX font to "mincho" - it seems to be the best looking
  font for Chinese characters. If this font isn't available Tcl/Tk will fall
  back to using the font previously used, though it looks horrible.
- Display of romanised text can be switched off.

0.5.1:
- Added support for Mandarin pinyin romanisation (or, at least those extra
  characters I know about!) and renamed some dialogues from "Yale" to
  "Romanised".  Note I will not be supplying a Mandarin dictionary file,
  the support is there for those who wish to use this program for Mandarin
  with their own dictionary file.
- It's possible that no extra changes are required for FlashCan to be
  useful to those learning Japanese too, though of course they will need to
  create their own dictionary file..

0.4.4:
- Added new Tools->Show Unicode menu option.
  This only affects flashcard mode, and will cause unicode hexes to be
  shown underneath the English.  Irrespective of this setting, Unicode
  is still shown when a card is shown using Find mode, and is never
  shown in Quiz mode.

0.4.3:
- Added support for a / character in the Yale text.
  (Use 2F in the Unicode field to show / in the Chinese.)

0.4.2:
- Cosmetic change: the Difficult quiz no longer offers a Go button, and also
  now fits on a 1024x768 screen.

0.4.1:
- Added difficulty levels to the quiz:
  Easy -- multiple choice of 5
  Medium -- multiple choice of 10
  Difficult -- multiple choice of 20 - and your first answer is automatically
               taken!

0.4.0:
- Added a Quiz Mode. Uses a multiple-choice mechanism with 5 possibilities.

0.3.1:
- Refined (and bug-fixed) the look-up.

0.3:
- Added look-up support.

0.2:
- Added support for Chinese characters from Unicode. Stored in text file
  as Unicode-in-Hex representation.
- Tcl version check added, if < 8.3, Chinese character display is not performed.

0.1:
- Initial version.