KanjiVG – SVGs of Kanji character strokes including order, shape and direction

Resulted in some pretty gnarly code using kanjivg, pygame and ankiconnect: https://github.com/eshrh/anki-kunren

Well "kanji" literally means "Han character".

https://kanjivg.tagaini.net/viewer.html

Credit for the project is at the bottom of the page.

One thing that IMO is missing is the audio playback option for readings. This would've greatly facilitated remembering readings. AWS Polly is very easy to integrate with and it costs next to nothing. /nudge /nudge.

I have serious doubts whether this kind of data is even copyrightable, as long as you're not redistributing it verbatim.

A specific selection of words with pitch data (e.g. the NKH pitch dictionary) might be copyrightable as there was creative expression involved in picking which exact words to put into the dictionary and in what order. But the data itself? A 猫 is always going to have a HLL pitch accent (in the standard accent). That's a fact. And facts itself are not copyrightable.

You can't copyright a phone book[1]. Quoting from the case:

> "Notwithstanding a valid copyright, a subsequent compiler remains free to use the facts contained in another's publication to aid in preparing a competing work, so long as the competing work does not feature the same selection and arrangement"

Sounds exactly like the pitch accent data dump that's been floating around which a lot of people use. (Not the verbatim NHK one; the other one.) They probably used the data from NHK's pitch dictionary to compile it along with a few other dictionaries. But does it feature the same selection and arrangement? Nope.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications%2C_Inc.%2C_....

Edit: Found https://mizoru.github.io/blog/2021/12/25/Japanese-pitch.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20040925183635/http://kanjicafe....

For example, think about writing a capital A. It’ll look different if you draw the middle bar first or if you draw the outer two lines first. F will also look different depending on whether you draw the vertical line or one of the horizontal lines first. Try a Q with the little bottom dash before drawing the circle. It’s not only weird but more difficult.

The difference in these characters is subtle, but you can notice it with your own writing. Now instead of 3 strokes to write a character, imagine those with 15 or even 28 strokes. The odd balance and proportions have cascading effects.

1) Chinese characters are traditionally/historically written with a brush, not a modern pen or pencil. Because brushes don't create uniform lines, there is a connection between the specific series of movements and the final appearance of the character (sort of like calligraphy pens). Basically, inconsistent movements tend to produce inconsistent-looking characters, so an agreed-upon standard aids in legibility.

2) Various components (most notably the "radicals") reoccur across many characters. Having a (mostly) consistent set of rules for how each component is written and in which order aids memorization because you're not learning every new character "from scratch".

3) Stroke order affects how mechanically efficient it is to write the character, which can be a pretty big deal when some of the more complex characters are upwards of a dozen strokes.

If, for example, you are taking handwritten notes on an ipad, and want software to convert the notes into text... well, knowing the order of strokes and having an agreed upon order helps considerably over just trying to match shapes.

Digital dictionaries also usually have a "handwritten input" mode to look up a character, and that mode will also recognize characters much more accurately when input with correct stroke order.