Carbonless Copies Japanese Word Mage Case Study:

A Brief Description of Japanese WordMage

Japanese WordMage is a comprehensive system for learning Japanese characters and vocabulary. Based upon sound educational research, the system is comprised of nine tightly integrated programs designed for optimum learning, retention and use of the Japanese language, including:

• Lessons and drills
• Japanese fonts
• Japanese character dictionary
• Multi-lingual translation dictionary
• Multi-lingual word processor
• Multi-lingual web page editor

You can learn more about Japanese WordMage at: www.lavasoft.com

Visit the Screen-Shot Gallery

Compare the appearance of Japanese WordMage running on Macintosh, Windows and Linux.   <-- This way to the Screen-Shot Gallery

Why LavaSoft chose Carbonless Copies to create the Windows and Linux versions of Japanese WordMage:

"In the distant past (around 1992), we chose to develop on the Mac because Windows was very limited at that time and did not support much in the way of multimedia. Some years later, the functionality of the Windows platform became a comparable match to the Mac. The market for Windows software also became significantly larger, though very competitive.

We began looking for an effective way to develop Windows versions of our products without recoding from scratch. We also wanted to have a common codebase for all platform versions of our products, both to remove parallel development time and expense as well as eliminating the possibility of having to fix bugs under two development environments on two different platforms.

Executor looked like it could fulfil both these needs. We contacted ARDI and were offered licensing terms which made the use of the technology affordable. We subsequently obtained that license and commenced the process of developing a Windows version of Japanese WordMage. ARDI's technical support was excellent...

In those early days (around April 1997), Executor did not offer a way to display a true Windows user interface; ie. our Macintosh application still looked like a Macintosh application running on Windows. To fix this, we wrote code for drawing windows, drawing controls, etc. which made the user interface look much more like a regular Windows application. This code now forms the core of the Carbonless Copies technology.

Carbonless Copies technology offers an excellent way to port applications quickly to the Windows platform, so long as you code for the older Mac Systems (we code for System 6.0.7). Executor also has the added bonus of working under Linux, which basically means all major desktop platforms are supported. The generous licensing terms we received meant we could charge the same price for all the different platform versions of our products.

We have a good number of customers now using the Linux version of Japanese WordMage, and about half our customer base are Windows customers. These extra sales have certainly helped our bottom line. We receive very few technical bug reports now, meaning that Executor is working very well under all flavors of Windows: Win95, Win98, Win2000 and WinNT. This is an excellent result and demonstrates a high level of Windows system compatibility."

--LavaSoft

What users say about Japanese WordMage:

"JWM is the only Kanji program worth your time. Trust me, I've tried them all. It is flexible, powerful and intelligent. I'm using it daily to help translate Japanese news articles and other materials downloaded from the Net."
J. Eldridge, Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan

"WordMage is far and away the best Japanese learning program that I've seen...."
M. Benton, Nishinomiya-shi, Hyogo-ken, Japan

"As a Japanophile, I lived, studied and worked in Japan for the better part of 5 years. Since returning to the United States, I have tried at least 10 Japanese learning programs (not an exaggeration; I am a voracious power downloader). Wordmage is by far and away the best of these."
J. Garrity, New York City, USA

"This beautiful system is a pleasure to use, and the 'artificial intelligence' pattern of presenting learned and mastered Kanji feels like it is optimizing initial learning and retention."
D. Ewing, San Francisco, USA

What reviewers say about Japanese WordMage:

"[JWM version] 4.0 is an important advance for Japanese language users here in the US. I think you have made the single most useful tool available in the Japanese language/computer world that I am aware of."
J. Rose, Massachusetts, USA ('Joyo 96' Japanese language learning web site )

"For students who want to build their vocabulary and character reading ability, Japanese WordMage has a superb exercise system which may be without equal in Japanese language education."
R. Baskin, 'The Language Teacher' (a JALT publication), Japan, 3/96.

Japanese WordMage is a powerhouse language learning tool.... The software is cross-platform-compatible, so MacOS and Linux users can work as readily as PC folks. The necessary Kanji fonts are included, so no supplemental downloads are required.
--ZDNet

Japanese WordMage offers nine highly integrated applications in one package, including a multilingual word processor, an HTML Web page editor/viewer, various study systems with authoring abilities (interactive storybooks, auto-revision flashcards and the Kanji Safari multi-player game, as well as reading, aural and visual comprehension exercises), a powerful Kanji reference dictionary, a grammar library builder and a text-translation aid.
--Tucows