Proceeding of the Workshop on Enhancing and Using Electronic Dictionaries

Kanji dictionaries, which need to present a large number of complex characters in an order that makes them accessible by users, traditionally use several indexing techniques that are particularly suited to the printed medium. Electronic dictionary technology provides the opportunity of both introducing new indexing techniques that are not feasible with printed dictionaries, and also allowing a wide range of index methods with each dictionary. It also allows dictionaries to be interfaced at the character level with documents and applications, thus removing much of the requirement for complex index methods. This paper surveys the traditional indexing methods, introduces some of the new indexing techniques that have become available with electronic kanji dictionaries, and reports on an analysis of the index usage patterns in a major WWWbased electronic kanji dictionary. This is believed to be the first such analysis conducted and reported.