Edit dictionary entries

[daal]

Hi, I have imported a flashcard set of the characters in the Heisig books, Remembering Simplified Hanzi. It came as a text file, and when I imported it, I chose to store it as a user dictionary. There is however a problem with quite a few of the entries that I would like to correct: the pinyin field is often erroneously capitalized, which seems to mislead Pleco into viewing the entry as a different character than the one other dictionaries use.

My question: Can I edit these entries within Pleco and keep them in the same dictionary and if yes, how, or should I edit the original text file and re-import the dictionary and if so, how can I make sure I don't lose my flashcard scores?
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

[Shun]

Hi daal,

it's probably easiest to edit the faulty dictionary entries within Pleco and later re-export the user dictionary back into a text file. Editing the dictionary entries is easily done:



Observe that the editing pen only appears for user dictionaries, not regular ones.

When all the faulty entries have been corrected, you can re-export the user dictionary in Settings > Manage Dictionaries to have a corrected text copy. You could also go through and edit all faulty entries in Settings > Manage Dictionaries > Your userdict > Browse user dictionary.

I have a feeling that the flashcard scores would be lost if you corrected the faulty user dictionary entries in the Mac/PC source file and imported them into the user dictionary again—even if the user dictionary keeps the same name—because the links from flashcards would still point to the older dictionary entries, which you would need to remove from the user dictionary first to avoid duplicate entries.

Cheers,

Shun

 

[daal]

Thanks, Shun, that works!

Do you know of any way to do this with some kind of batch command? I have over 3000 entries to check for this mistake, and there were already 5 or 6 just for ai...

 

[Shun]

You're welcome! Not directly in Pleco, but there happens to be a simple "Change Case" command in MS Word:

You could run it on the second column of the input file. (by copying the list from the text edtior to Excel, the second column from Excel to Word, changing the case, then copying back to Excel's second column and then copying back to the text editor and sending to Pleco)

The problem then is just that you would probably lose the flashcard studying history, as you'd have to import the list again. But since there are many corrections to be made, it may be the better solution to bite the bullet and start over in Flashcards.

Cheers, Shun

 

[daal]

Wow, thanks for your thoughts! That would be quicker, but I think I'm not ready to lose the two months work of learning the first 650 cards, so I guess I'll just drudge through it.

 

[Shun]

You're welcome! That surely makes sense.

In this case, if you were to re-import the list, the corrected cards wouldn't be duplicates, anyway, because of their changed pinyin.

 

[mikelove]

You could try exporting the user dictionary to a file, fixing this problem, then reimporting it into a brand new user dictionary and remapping your cards to that new dictionary (make sure to back up your flashcard database first in case this gets garbled somehow); the study history should be preserved that way since it'll still be the same cards.

 

[Shun]

Good point, but won't remapping be unable to match the dictionary entries to the flashcards if the pinyin field of the new dictionary entries is different from that of the old ones? (change of case) I had thought that for the remapping to work, the Simplified and Traditional Hanzi, as well as the pinyin fields need to match.

 

[mikelove]

It's case-insensitive, generally. If it doesn't work that way, another option would be to use the batch command to erase the existing cards' pinyin before the remap - if there's no pinyin then the remap will be based solely on characters and of course as usual it'll prompt in any ambiguous cases.

 

[Shun]

Interesting! That's a great idea. Then Batch restore the pinyin at the end, if necessary.

 

[daal]

You could try exporting the user dictionary to a file, fixing this problem, then reimporting it into a brand new user dictionary and remapping your cards to that new dictionary (make sure to back up your flashcard database first in case this gets garbled somehow); the study history should be preserved that way since it'll still be the same cards.

Seems more efficient than changing each by hand (so far I've made it through the b's). What does "remapping (my) cards to that new dictionary" entail?

 

[Shun]

Hi daal,

I'll let Mike answer in more detail. Briefly, you reassign all flashcards to the new, corrected user dictionary in Organize Flashcards inside the Batch screen.

Cheers, Shun

 

[daal]

Hi daal,

I'll let Mike answer in more detail. Briefly, you reassign all flashcards to the new, corrected user dictionary in Organize Flashcards inside the Batch screen.

Cheers, Shun

Ah, I see. There's a "remap to dictionary" function there. That should be enough info for me to do it. Thanks!

 

[daal]

Looks like it worked! Thanks for your help!

 

[Shun]

Marvellous, happy to hear it! You're welcome!