Pleco for Android 3.2.24 Beta 2

Second beta now available, see below for links. (no big changes, just bug fixes on the first beta)

Relatively modest update, the main focus of which is revamping Add-ons (which were really getting ridiculously hard to navigate after our latest batch of dictionary releases) but we covered a few other requests in there too along with some bug fixes.

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 that at:

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

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

b) Directly from our website; APK at:

http://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-160211-website.apk

• Totally redesigned the Add-ons screen, adding hierarchical navigation, rich text / links / custom fonts / screenshots in product descriptions, buttons to conveniently scroll through multiple products, hiding the Updates tab when there aren't any updates available, automatically reloading the catalog when you re-enter Add-ons after being away for a while, more reliably refreshing the catalog on a reload (so you won't still have old product descriptions stuck in there refusing to update), listing of bundles that individual add-ons belong to, update notes, and more consistent offering of the option to buy items from our website if you can't buy them in-app.
• Finally stopped requiring activation for our free basic HWR, so now our Android users can share with our iOS users the assurance of having some basic level of Chinese handwriting input even if Pleco loses all its settings in a situation where you don't have any internet access.
• Added TTS buttons to example sentences in flashcards, though we don't highlight the words being played yet.
• Added Sidney Lau romanization support for Cantonese (Settings / Languages), but we're calling it 'experimental' at the moment since there are like 8 different versions of Sidney Lau romanization floating around the internet and we probably didn't pick the one that you lot prefer to use. (next up: Guangdong romanization, which will take a bit more doing since we need to handle ê's e.g. differently from regular e's and come up with a way for people to input them on whatever random terrible default keyboard their phone shipped with)
• Made PDFs invert their colors in Night Mode (both in OCR and Reader).
• Added page jumping support to PDFs (just long-press the next or previous page button). (both in OCR and Reader)
• Brightened the overly dark highlights in PDFs in Reader.
• Made the "Translate" feature in search results come with an edit button in the popup translation; tap on that to create a custom flashcard prepopulated with the word + that translation. (will make a user dictionary entry instead if you've created one + configured Pleco to offer to create a user dictionary entry on an incomplete search)
• Added a 'jump to dictionary' button in Card Info, and a new option in Settings / Flashcards to have tapping on items in Organize bring you to the dictionary definition instead of the Card Info screen (for cards that link to dicitonary entries) (you can still get to Card Info via a long press or via the [+] button).
• Added fully customizable text + background colors in the clipboard / text file reader; configure in Settings / Reader.
• Greatly increased the maximum search length (to 8x was it was before).
• Added separate volume adjustments for recorded Mandarin audio, recorded Cantonese audio, Pleco TTS, and System TTS to Settings / Audio, so you can get their volumes to be consistent regardless of the particulars of your audio playback configuration.
• Made system TTS play through the "Music" stream like our other audio does, so it should match volume / playback device / etc a bit better in general with other Pleco audio.
• Made the Screen OCR icon automatically appear in the Screen Reader control buttons if you download OCR while Screen Reader is running.
• Added a one-time alert to download Google TTS if you have a Google Play version of Pleco and it's not installed.
• Added a one-time alert in the reader telling you how to use it. (which should only show up for new users)
• Started using a standard audio emoji instead of a coffee cup icon for TTS when a custom English font is active.
• Reduced RAM usage somewhat, especially on devices with a lot of add-on databases installed.
• Fixed a bug (actually working around a 3-year-old still-unfixed Google bug) that caused text in Duogongneng Chengyu Cidian entries (and a few other places) to go past the edge of the definition area in the popup definiton bubble.
• Fixed a bug that could keep the E/C icon from being filled in accurately (or not) after clearing the input field.
• Fixed a bug that kept our region-distinguishing arrows from appearing correctly in the new Cross-Straits dictionary.
• Fixed a bug that made fill-in-the-blanks fields in flashcards become locked and un-editable after going into / out of the dictionary definition screen while backtracking.
• Fixed a bug that kept entries for the same word from the same dictionary from merging in English-Chinese searches if only one E-C dictionary is installed but you're searching with the [E] (or another English dictionary group).
• Fixed a bug that kept the option to tint instead of tone coloring headwords from working correctly.
• Fixed a bug that made it impossible to open some perfectly valid PDF files in OCR.
• Fixed a bug that caused corrupted example sentences for a few specific characters.
• Fixed a bug that kept the import cards screen from offering a list of English-Chinese dictionaries when in English-Chinese flashcard mode.
• Fixed a bug that made it possible to accidentally dismiss the startup file download box by tapping outside of it.
• Fixed a few crashing bugs.

The new Add-ons screen makes things very clear, but now I have some questions:

There is free Audio Pronunciation male and female as a Feature (with 7,6 and 8,4 MB) and installed (with 8,7 and 9,2 MB). Which one is better? Do I need them when Extended Audio male and female is installed?

Are the new (?) free fonts a matter of design or a matter of function, i.e. number of characters displayed?

A little bit inconsistent, but not too important: some of the lists of the Add-ons screen show only the items which still can be bought (like the By Category lists), while other lists show all items with the already bought items in grey. I prefer the latter.

Thanks!

First two items are actually a glitch in the catalog file; I just uploaded a fix - it was based on the catalog file we use on iOS and some Android-specific changes seem to have gone missing. The extra audio shouldn't be showing up at all (you already have it installed) and the alternate fonts are iOS-only. (our iOS app lacks the "install custom font" option that our Android one has)

With the list format inconsistency, that's actually intentional - we want to hide already bought items in some places (the main screen, say - don't want to put OCR right on top of the front page if you already own it) and gray them out in others. Generally we go for graying out in the deeper levels of hierarchy.

With Adsotrans I have a problem: In Available there are 200k entries, and it is greyed out (=installed?). In Installed there are 140,000 entries. This looks different. Which one is new or better and how do I get it? I think there was a download arrow in the installed tab which made things clear and which is missing now. The same problems with CC-CEDICT and Unihan.

Hide example pronunciation isn't working properly anymore for me on Android. It's never hidden, no matter what I do.

@HW60 - old package descriptions; 200k is the correct number and it's actually the number in the file you already have. Unihan / CC are out of sync with the versions built into 3.2.24 but we'll fix them shortly, thanks.

@giokve - not seeing this here; could you email or PM me a backup of your settings?

Thank you very much for the continued improvements to Pleco. The latest changes are very useful!

• Added separate volume adjustments for recorded Mandarin audio, recorded Cantonese audio, Pleco TTS, and System TTS to Settings / Audio, so you can get their volumes to be consistent regardless of the particulars of your audio playback configuration.

There seems to be a bug regarding the "Recorded Mandarin audio volume" setting.
Before I made any changes to the default settings, I noticed it was set to 10%.
If I set it to 100% it appears to stay at 100% if I just use to playback words/sentences in Dictionary.
However, it I playback audio in the Flashcards it reverts to 10% immediately.

As a workaround until it is fixed, I have set the other sound levels to 20% to reduce the difference between the different audio levels.

My bad - it's not that, it's the play audio icon. It is everywhere (next to headword and example sentences), while before the update it wasn't anywhere. I would like to have it always hidden since I don't use that feature.

@leguan - ah, looks like the problem was a 9-year-old bit of Palm OS code from the last time we supported volume adjustments like this; fixed for the new build we'll be uploading shortly, thanks.

@giokve - thanks, looks like the 'none' TTS Engine setting wasn't doing what it was supposed to.

Second beta now posted, see above.

Is there a new version of Pleco? Sorry for my asking. I’m struggling with a new phone and the version on my old phone, and new phone doesn’t seem to be the same (.24 vs .25?)

Ah, yes, now it's .25 with some bug fixes. Will update subject momentarily.