Pleco for Android 3.2.13 Beta

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Another minor-update-with-a-lot-of-nice-little-improvements, a few of which necessitate some beta testing.

If you previously signed up for beta testing through Google Play, this new beta should show up as an update within a few hours. Otherwise, you can get it:

a) Through Google Play. Sign up for our Android Beta Testing group at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pleco-android-beta-testing

And then sign up for beta versions of Pleco at:

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.pleco.chinesesystem

after which you should be able to get it right from them.

b) Directly from our website; APK at:

http://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-150628m.apk

The Google Play version is probably better if you can get it, since it includes that frequent CC-CEDICT updates feature.

Changes:
  • Added support for Ruby Zhuyin display (small Zhuyin text next to individual characters), in honor of / preparation for the release of the Taiwan MoE dictionary alongside our finished 3.2.13 update. (we've been told this is the biggest missing feature in Pleco compared to the standalone MoEDict app)

    We've done this pretty comprehensively - can be enabled not only in dictionary entry headers but also in search results, example sentences, flashcards, and the popup reader - and are planning to do a lot more with it in the future (automatically adding it to reader documents, e.g.) and to extend it to not only Zhuyin but to Pinyin and to Jyutping/Yale for Cantonese (though these would appear above/below rather than next to characters). Enable it in its dedicated options screen in Settings / Languages. Note that this will prevent regular Zhuyin from displaying if you've set that as one of your pronunciation systems, but if you use Pinyin as your pronunciation system and also enable side Zhuyin the two will happily coexist.

    Please let us know if you notice any weird behavior with this or if you have any aesthetic objections to the way we display Zhuyin (have checked against several apps that we've been told are good examples of it and we think we've got it working pretty well now, but can easily tweak it if not since it's totally custom drawing code, and even if it's working perfectly on our devices it may be that a particular manufacturer has screwed up font rendering in such a way that it displays much less nicely on their devices).

    Also, please let us know which specific places you end up enabling Ruby Zhuyin - we'd really like to have less than 5 checkboxes for this but we're not sure yet where it will work well / badly.
  • Added native x86 code libraries for the sake of people with x86-based tablets or using desktop emulation solutions like ARC Welder - Pleco should be screaming fast on those now. Note that the text-to-speech add-ons are still ARM-only, so if your device can't run ARM code in emulation, most of Pleco should work (including handwriting and OCR) but text-to-speech will probably still refuse to load.
  • Also for the sake of our ARC Welding friends, added three new control key shortcuts; control-F jumps you back to the search screen with an open empty search bar regardless of where you are in our app, control-D adds the current word to flashcards and control-O plays audio.
  • Added an option in settings to use old-fashioned file open / save dialogs even on devices that are running Android 4.4 or later and ought to have access to the newer SAF ones, since those don't work correctly in some forked versions of Android. Automatically enabled them on ARC Welder since they're currently broken on that.
  • Added a male Cantonese audio add-on, and a new Cantonese audio gender preference in Settings / Audio.
  • Did some preliminary optimization for Android M, including a few bug fixes, support for more gracefully handling denied permissions (though we can't ship all of that until they release a final Android M developer kit), and a migration away from the now no longer supported Apache HTTP framework for network connections.
  • Added an item to the Categories section of Card Info to let you add a card to the current default category with a single tap, and made Card Info an option for duplicate handling in settings / flashcards, this as part of a longer-term plan to replace the duplicate prompt with Card Info altogether by making all of the prompt's features available in Card Info.
  • Made the color of full-text highlights lighter for better visibility against tinted example sentences.
  • Moved the loading of user dictionaries to a background thread, which should mean faster startup and a fix for the annoying bug that sometimes caused user dictionaries to be buried at the bottom of Manage Dicts even if you'd previously put them elsewhere.
  • Migrated to a new settings storage system which we hope will make settings / history a bit more immune to accidental deletion on buggy or misbehaving or extremely-short-on-memory devices.
  • Added long-click category selection support to the optional + buttons next to example sentences in definitions and the optional ones in individual dictionaries' definition headers. (you can enable both of those in Settings / Definition Screen if you didn't know they existed before)
  • Completely overhauled the way we handle text selection in our search field - now, long-pressing it will always (and we hope reliably) bring up a Pleco edit menu with copy / paste / select all as appropriate, mimicking the behavior on Android M and doing it in a more consistent way than we've managed to achieve relying on Android itself to produce that behavior.
  • Added the ability to deliver updated versions of CC-CEDICT through Google Play without updating the rest of our app, which should let us update it for GPlay users much more frequently than we could otherwise. (we're going to make these available to other users too, but probably with some sort of opt-in registration process since otherwise every time we updated it we'd rack up a few TB worth of CDN bandwidth bills)
  • Added tone coloring in a few places it didn't appear before, most importantly in English-Chinese dictionary definitions - this requires a database update, we've got one available for NWP right now and will have one for ABC E-C shortly too.
  • Added internal support for masking Registration IDs for use in school / institutional copies of Pleco where you don't want your users to be able to see them (contact us if you'd like to set that up for your institution).
  • Made the number strings after flashcard backup files appear as sensible year-month-day-hour-minute numbers instead of Unix epoch times, and added them to flashcard exports by default (now that we have an option to remove them in settings / miscellaneous).
  • Got rid of the annoying "tap with two fingers" text in the non-handwriting-input flashcard sketch box.
  • Made Pinyin/Zhuyin no longer display in "VARIANT OF" items with pronunciation system set to "none," and updated "YY" in Cantonese variants to "YL"/"JP" to match how they appear in dictionary headers.
  • Added a new URL scheme for direct access to the dictionary definition screen:

    plecoapi://x-callback-url/df?hw=(characters)&py=(pinyin, optional, used to differentiate)&sec=(tab to jump to,dict|stroke|chars|words|sents, optional)

    If you want to fall back on the old search result scheme q?s for people with older versions of Pleco, use:

    plecoapi://x-callback-url/q?s=(characters)&mode=df&hw=(characters)&py=(pinyin, optional, used to differentiate)&sec=(tab to jump to,dict|stroke|chars|words|sents, optional)

    Both identical to our iOS app for easy use by website creators.
  • Also added a new URL scheme for direct download and import of flashcard lists:

    plecoapi://x-callback-url/fl?u=(URL-encoded URL of the list to download)

    Currently only UTF-8 encoded text lists are supported. And again, identical to our iOS app.
  • Moved to a new system for saving / opening still OCR photos taken with "take picture" which we hope will work more reliably on some forked Android versions (and on Android M).
  • Added 'conceal handwriting until done' and 'Enter concealed immediately' options in Test Settings for fill-in-the-blanks handwriting tests, letting you prevent the handwriting recognizer from giving you hints to the correct character; with the former option enabled, you'll only see results in the recognizer when you tap with two fingers to clear, and with the latter, the resulting character will also be entered immediately so you don't have a chance to correct it if you screwed up.
  • Made the definition screen refresh itself correctly after adding or deleting a user dictionary entry.
  • Made incorrect answer characters in flashcard fill-in-the-blanks tests tappable so you can get to their definition screens and find out more about them.
  • Made font sizes in the sidebar menu scale up if your overall Android font size setting is set to something higher than the default.
  • Added an option in Settings / Miscellaneous to put a clipboard monitor toggle at the top of the drawer menu for more convenient access.
  • Hid stroke order for the opposite character set if Pleco is only configured to display one set in the headword.
  • Fixed a bug that kept the initial file download dialog from being correctly themed for Android 5.
  • Fixed a bug that made the text editing cursor in the search field invisible on some devices.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause flashcard export files that were overwriting previous files with the same name to leave behind some data from the older file.
  • Fixed a bug that made the onscreen back button in OCR fail to trigger correctly after rotating the screen.
  • Fixed a bug that made the onscreen back button appear white even against light-colored themes on Android M (and sometimes on 5.1).
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the edit entry screen to prompt you to save changes even if you hadn't made any.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the contents of flashcard edit fields to be reset on returning from another screen.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented XML flashcard files from importing correctly on newer devices.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause custom entries / flashcards with numbers in them to lose their correct tone coloring after an edit.
  • Fixed a bug that could prevent headwords in Hangul or Kana in C-E flashcards from being magnified correctly.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented super-rare / image characters like old character forms in Grand Ricci Histoire from rendering correctly in Night Mode.
  • Fixed a bug that made Zhuyin characters enlarge along with Chinese characters with the "larger Chinese" option enabled.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented copyright strings in user dictionaries from saving correctly.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a user dictionary to fail to be created if its name was identical to that of a previous user dictionary.
  • Made the "full-text only" flag for dictionary groups work regardless of the "Integrate C-E Fulltext" / "Integrate E-C Fulltext" settings, part of our long-term transition to a simpler and more group-driven dictionary management system.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented punctuation and extended Unicode characters from carrying through to the other fields in an auto-filled custom card / dictionary entry composition screen.
  • Fixed (we think) a bug that could sometimes cause the input method selection bar to fail to reappear on returning from a definition screen.
  • Fixed a bug that kept flashcard test definitions from updating immediately after changing the dictionary a flashcard is linked to via the separate dictionary screen.
  • Fixed a bug that could prevent categories in text exports from exporting in the correct order.
  • Fixed a bug that made the flashcard session switch dictionary option remain grayed out and unaccessible for custom cards for which exactly 1 dictionary match was available.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a UNI entry with the wrong pronunciation to display when searching for a particular Mandarin or Cantonese syllable. (character would be correct but it would be a different pronunciation for a 多音字)
  • Fixed a bug that could cause statistics to be included in XML flashcard exports even with the option for that disabled.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect counts of correct/incorrect cards to appear after undoing a card score when repeating incorrect cards.
  • Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause full-text highlights in the result list to not match up with the words being highlighted. (most often with full-text English searches in E-C dictionaries)
  • Fixed a couple of minor bugs relating to headword / pronunciation text formatting.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the creation of flashcards from example sentences in English-Chinese dictionaries.
 
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Taichi

榜眼
I think tone mark of ruby zhuyin is too small.

It's odd to see mainland pronunciation in zhuyin.
Any plan to show taiwan-version of pronunciation in headword section?
期待qi1dai4 [期待ㄑㄧˊㄉㄞˋ]
 
Last edited:

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Thanks.

We're working on a separate Taiwan band for headwords - that one is waiting on the MoE conversion to be ready (in a few days); even without that, if you simply put MoEDict as your first dictionary then you'll get Taiwan readings from that automatically.

Also have a nifty new Android-5-specific OCR feature which we think we're going to move up to this release instead of saving for 3.3, so there'll be a Beta 2 with both of those soon. (Ruby Zhuyin was originally a 3.3 feature too but got moved up once they dropped the non-commercial restriction on MoEDict)
 

Taichi

榜眼
I see.
One feature request for the reader ruby is to make it easy to toggle the ruby (e.g. use right bottom button just like the current + button). It's going to be super convenient way to check the pronunciation while not affecting readability.
 

Abun

榜眼
I think the ruby is a good idea. However I personally find ruby on the right side of the character intrusive in left-to-right text. (Of course I have the same problem with the MoE's app) Would it be possible to (add the option to) move it above the characters?

We're working on a separate Taiwan band for headwords - that one is waiting on the MoE conversion to be ready (in a few days); even without that, if you simply put MoEDict as your first dictionary then you'll get Taiwan readings from that automatically.
In fact, that would not always work, at least not with the current inofficial version of the MoEDict because sometimes the MoEDict entry is listed as a seperate hit to the rest during search. I have so far not been able to determine the exact circumstances under which this happens (for example the entrance for 期待 comes out together with all the other hits despite the tones being different, whereas 好看錢 for example gives two seperate hits for HDC and MoE). It usually occurs only in multi-character words, so I guess the spaces between syllables in MoEDict pronunciation lines might play a role, although it's probably not the only factor or else every multi-syllable word would have a seperate hit for MoE.
 

Taichi

榜眼
+1 for ruby above the characters, esp for example sentense and reader. However for headwords, right hand side ruby is better IMO as it can save vertical space, and users tend to watch the word char by char.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@Taichi - that makes sense, though we'd definitely need a bottom ruby option if we made it toggleable; otherwise, we'd either have to keep space for it and have characters annoyingly widely spaced, or re-flow the whole document when you enabled it and cause you to lose your place.

@Abun - yeah, planning that anyway for Pinyin and Cantonese ruby. Regarding MoEDict merging, the tentative plan is actually to have a separate field with the non-Taiwan version for any words that our other dictionaries cover so that the software knows they're the same word and can be merged; however, we may not have that ready in time so this may remain a bit rough in 3.2.13 before stabilizing in 3.2.14 or a later update.
 

Taichi

榜眼
play audio button is gone when I select language -> mandarin pronunciation -> zhuyin and turn on ruby

When there are four zhuyin chars for one hanzi, the first one disappears for list view and popup (e.g. · is not shown for 噁心 ㄜˇ ·ㄒㄧㄥ)
 
Last edited:

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@Taichi - audio button should show up at the end of the character headword instead, but it looks like that's now broken - thanks, will fix in beta 2.
 

Taichi

榜眼
Not sure if this is a new bug, but 為 doesn't hit GF dictionary while 爲 does.
Another example is 突飛猛晉 doesn't'hit CY (突飞猛进/晋〔-飛-進/晉〕)
It seems this happens when there are more than two versions of traditional char.
 
Last edited:

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@Taichi - that's a relic of our conversion process with dictionaries that were originally jianti-only; we don't yet try to cover multiple traditional variants in cases where they're totally interchangeable. But we're hoping to take delivery of data files for the new 3rd edition of GF sometime this week or next week and will try to do a better job on this with that new version.

@ACardiganAndAFrown - we were kind of planning to wait on that until we actually had something ready to release :)
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
That's a mistake, actually, the iOS price was supposed to come down - I've gone back onto iTunes Connect and re-lowered it now so if you check again in an hour or two it should be back to $5. Thanks for pointing that out.
 

giokve

进士
If I copy a long text from another app, Pleco clip reader starts normally as expected; but if I try to go to the dictionary after this, the whole dictionary page is blank.

EDIT: this should have been written in the other thread (3.2.13 Beta).

01.png 02.png
 
Last edited:

HW60

状元
If you paste text from the clipboard anywhere in Pleco, you normally get the country specific "EINFÜGEN" or "Paste" or whatever. In 3.2.13, entering text in the dictionary only is followed by "Paste", while at any other place still "EINFÜGEN" is displayed - not the biggest problem ...
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@giokve - to clarify, is this happening with Pleco set to search for the contents of the clipboard on startup? And does it happen regardless of whether or not Pleco is already running in the background?

@HW60 - Yes, that's because we now generate that menu entirely within Pleco for greater reliability; we're no longer using the Android system copy-paste menu in the search bar at all. (we do plan to localize all of our strings in German eventually though)
 

Taichi

榜眼
I can reproduce the bug reported giokve when clipboard monitoring is on. This seems only happens when pleco is running in background with the search screen active. If I tap back button till pleco closes, subsequent clipboard monitoring (reader) works without the blank search screen (probably because search screen in not active?).
 
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