Note: this is for non-Docker users studying Japanese only (or devs who are working on Lute)

Lute users who are studying Japanese will need to install MeCab and an appropriate dictionary for parsing Japanese text. If MeCab is not installed or not on your PATH, you will not be able to parse Japanese texts.

Installation

Mac

You can install MeCab and a dictionary using homebrew.

If you don't have homebrew installed, then first get homebrew. Then:

brew install mecab
brew install mecab-ipadic

Windows

The link https://taku910.github.io/mecab/ has a link under Binary package for MS-Windows: mecab-0.996.exe: ダウンロード. Verify this link and download.

If your system is 64 bit, or the above MeCab is not working, try downloading from this link instead: MeCab 64bit

Here's a video on installing MeCab for Lute, kindly put together by a Lute user:

When installing MeCab, choose the UTF-8 charset (I'm not sure if another charset will work).

After installation, add the MeCab bin path to the PATH environment variable. If you don't know how to edit the Environment Variables, see this video: How to Set Environment Variables in Windows 11. Usually the MeCab bin path as C:\Program Files\MeCab\bin, but it might be C:\Program Files (x86)\MeCab\bin ... make sure you use the right one!!

Verifying on Windows

To check that your installation and PATH are correct, open up a new command window, and type mecab at the prompt.

• If anything is wrong, you'll get an error like The term 'mecab' is not recognized or similar. Fix your PATH and try again.
• If you type "mecab" and hit return and nothing happens, then your mecab is actually installed correctly, as mecab is waiting to parse your input. Hit return, and you should get an "EOS" message -- that's mecab responding with "end of sentence". Hit Control-C to quit mecab.

Continuing on

After installing MeCab, you may need to shut down Lute if it's running, open a new Terminal (command window), and restart Lute, for the PATH changes to take effect.

Linux

Use apt-get:

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y mecab mecab-ipadic-utf8

Verification

Test mecab from the terminal:

$ mecab
すもももももももものうち
すもも    名詞,一般,*,*,*,*,すもも,スモモ,スモモ
も    助詞,係助詞,*,*,*,*,も,モ,モ
もも    名詞,一般,*,*,*,*,もも,モモ,モモ

Lute configuration

If everything is installed correctly, you will see a Japanese sample story when you start Lute. If you don't see that story, then either your MeCab isn't set up correctly, or Lute can't find it.

Lute uses a library called natto-py that usually finds and uses MeCab automatically. If it can't, you'll need to specify the path to your MeCab library in Lute's Settings (top right menu bar). There is a box for you to enter your MeCab path and do a test parse. If that test succeeds, you're good to go. If not, jump into the Lute Discord.

Sample MECAB_PATH values

The natto-py gives a few possibilities for the path, which may just be examples and not really valid.

Finding the mecab library

These are various notes about finding MeCab, hopefully it will help you find your MeCab library.

When setting up MeCab in Docker and GitHub, I found the mecab library like this:

which mecab

# make note of the path, then:
ldd </path/returned/by/which/mecab>

returned:

linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffd280a8000)
libmecab.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmecab.so.2 (0x00007f9fe7cdf000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f9fe7a00000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f9fe7600000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f9fe7919000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f9fe7dc4000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f9fe7cbb000)

For this OS, the correct library was actually libmecab.so.2.