Pleco for Android 3.1 Beta 3

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Released this one quickly to deal with that bug that was preventing a lot of tablet owners from using Pleco successfully.

If you already have it and you got it through Google Play, it 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. (this isn't up yet but should be in a few hours)

b) Directly from our website; APK at:

http://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-140504-310b3.apk

The Google Play version makes it easier for us to collect crash reports, so please use that one if you can.

We've managed to fix pretty much every other bug reported in the last two days too - all of the other crashes sent in via GPlay (we think) or emailed (flash session starts, e.g.), missing extended audio + individual flash + buttons, weird behavior backtracking through fragments, keyboard appearing when it shouldn't, and the dictionary launcher not reliably bringing you back to the dictionary + opening the keyboard.

We also made the new back navigation behavior that we added in beta 2 optional and off by default - you can change it in Settings / Miscellaneous.

We're hoping to only have to do one more of these (tidying up the various bits of UI we've been neglecting) but of course we'll do as many as it takes to get it right.
 
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neilperks

进士
Great it generally seems to sort all my outstanding issues. Works good now on tablet as well as phone.

One small thing I noticed was when using second option to go back to the dictionary screen before exiting it briefly
flashes random lines on the screen (like a brief flicker) as it changes back to dictionary level. No big deal just worth mentioning.

Apologies for being first again :), your update posts just seem to coincide with me settling down after dinner here in Beijing......
 

many

秀才
Clip reader (immediately) and file reader (after selecting a file) are dumping me to the home screen but without crashing (clicking on the pleco task takes me back to the previous activity). Using Android 4.1.1 on Transformer Prime pad. More generally, I like the new look and interface!
 

kiraven

举人
If I search for "fumian" and then select the topmost entry, 负面, Pleco crashes. If I select any of the other entries, it opens the defintion. Only difference I can see is that I added 负面 as flashcard, and other entries not, but for other search terms, I can open entries with flashcard status without problems.
 

浩天

Member
Love the new UI, guys!

Two issues I found in the beta 3.1.0b3:

1. Icons in Widgets list are all the same for Pleco widgets (screenshot attached). Once the widgets/shortcuts are created in the "desktop", each of them have their own icon, so not a big problem at all.

2. Plexo OCR still image mode shortcut doesn't work properly (current result after selecting this shortcut is "Pleco starts with the last open screen").

BR.
 

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Yiliya

榜眼
I'm sorry, but these betas really give off an impression of a shoddy port of an iOS app. It doesn't follow any of Android UI design guidelines, it looks like iOS7 and it lags and crashes (the last beta wasn't even working on the majority of tablets).

I'm assuming this is the reason:
mikelove said:
a considerable part of the financial justification for our Android app's continued development is that it eventually leads people to our iOS app (which is where we make most of our money)
Yeah, because 80% of smartphone market being Android is not a good enough incentive for you. I'd rather there was no Android version of Pleco at all than this abomination for which we waited 6 months (Pleco 3 for iOS7 was released in November). This is just an unacceptable business strategy. Your app got hot on the iOS back in the day, so you have most of your customers there, but it's hardly a justification for labeling Android users as "third world citizens" and giving them these poor offerings. Just unacceptable.
 
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kiraven

举人
Today the popup definition bubble appeared at wrong positions several times, i.e. not connected to the clicked word. Also, the word isn't selected. I attached a screenshot - when I touch 站稳 the defintion popup is displayed at the wrong place, when I touch 停住 everything is as it should be.
Haven't discovered a consistend rule yet.

Screenshot_2014-05-05-22-28-53.png
 

ckatt

状元
W
I'm sorry, but these betas really give off an impression of a shoddy port of an iOS app. It doesn't follow any of Android UI design guidelines, it looks like iOS7 and it lags and crashes (the last beta wasn't even working on the majority of tablets).

I'm assuming this is the reason:

Yeah, because 80% of smartphone market being Android is not a good enough incentive for you. I'd rather there was no Android version of Pleco at all than this abomination for which we waited 6 months (Pleco 3 for iOS7 was released in November). This is just an unacceptable business strategy. Your app got hot on the iOS back in the day, so you have most of your customers there, but it's hardly a justification for labeling Android users as "third world citizens" and giving them these poor offerings. Just unacceptable.
Who are you to poor so much venom toward the android version? If you don't like it don't use it. Don't you understand what a beta is? I've been using this product since version one on the palm pilot when it was just called the Oxford Chinese dictionary. I don't want an iPhone and I am thrilled that I can keep using this great software without having to buy one.
 

Taichi

榜眼
-as I scroll results on vertical 2-pane mode, I get wired result highlights. If I try to take a screenshot they just disappears (maybe because of the refresh?), so I took a photo and attached it.
-The search launcher now focuses the search box, but doesn't select all the texts in the search box.
 

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mfcb

状元
mike, love the new 3.1 UI and the additional functionality (like synonyms, antonyms)
severe problems i found so far (in prev. version) all have been reported and seem to be fixed now.
starting pleco reader with clipboard seems to take very long time and also selecting words in the clip is laggy.

just one more thing, dont know its intentional or not, but when looking up words like 看看,do we need the 看 twice in CHARS? looks even stranger with chars, that have a traditional alternative...
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@neilperks - thanks!

@many - that one's news to us; are you using the gPlay version? Could you submit a crash report? If you're using the website version, could you download / install aLogcat, run it, get Pleco to crash again and then send us the log output? Thanks.

@kiraven - as above, could you submit a crash report? Also, which dictionaries are you using, and what hardware / Android version?

@浩天 - thanks. Which version of Android is this? Not immediately recognizing this screen.

@Yiliya - the lag in WORDS / CHARS / etc is similar to the iOS version; if you find it unacceptable then I'd suggest disabling some dictionaries in compound searches (Settings / Manage Dicts) as I mentioned earlier. For any other lag / crashes, please provide more details and we'll be happy to investigate further. Please bear in mind this is a beta version - the 3.0 beta on iOS had far more crashes / lag than this.

How exactly is this "abomination" violating Android UI guidelines more than our old app did? The two major UI changes were the sidebar menu - something that Google themselves push aggressively and use in most of their apps - and the more streamlined definition screen UI, which I don't believe is any more or less Android-like than the old one. We've adopted the two modern Android UI development patterns of Action Bar and Fragments much more widely now than we did before.

As for delays: this is a port of 3.1, not 3.0, and 3.1 came out in February. Since that came out we've been working on pretty much nothing but this Android port. We could have ported 3.0 before we released 3.1, but since 3.1 was essentially addressing user complaints with 3.0 we thought it more prudent to give Android users the complaint-addressed version from the get-go. And in this mere 3 month period we've actually managed to cover a lot more functionality than we had even promised to bring to Android at all. (on numerous occasions I said we probably wouldn't be able to port over most of the new type design, but we finally worked out a way to do it)

As for platforms, market share is meaningless, particularly given how many people are simply buying smartphones to replace dumbphones and aren't using them for much but SMS. The question is whose users are more willing to spend money on your app, and for us that's iOS. Our iOS sales dwarfed our Android sales even after Pleco 2.4 came out (exclusively on Android), at which point our Android app had a brand new UI and our iOS UI was about three years old - lavishing attention on Android has never made any difference. There has literally never been a single day since we launched our Android app where Android sales exceeded iOS sales; in the aggregate, we made about 4x as much money last year on iOS as on Android.

I'm sorry if you interpreted my comments as dismissive of Android users - that's certainly not how I feel. But I'm not going to lie about the business reality - iOS is what keeps us going, and if we're forced to favor one platform over the other in new feature developments (as for the moment it seems like we are) then we have to favor iOS; Android sales could drop to zero tomorrow and our business would pretty much carry on as it is now, but if iOS sales vanished we'd have a very rough time. I don't want to make anybody feel second-class, but I can't hide the fact that we're releasing things on one platform before the other, and I'd rather level with everyone as to the actual reason than make up a bogus technical one.

@kiraven - that's an odd one; thanks. So 站稳 was definitely the word you had selected there? (rather than some other word, which would suggest a different sort of bug)

@Taichi - hmm, seems like they're not being correctly un-checked along with un-highlighted - thanks. Does the search launcher always refuse to highlight text in the box, or does it at least work correctly if (for example) you run it without Pleco already active in the background?

@mfcb - thanks! So there's a long delay if you tap on a word in the reader? 看看 is sort of a problematic UI question - in longer words like 见树不见林 it seems like a no-brainer to keep both characters so that the structure of the word is preserved, so while it seems kind of repetitive in 看看 I'm not sure if that bit of extra clarity is more important than remaining consistent.
 
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many

秀才
It is the gplay version but it seems there is no crash as such: no "forced to close" message and so no option to submit a report. I did send a couple of crash reports for Beta2 (not for this problem) and so I think I know what to expect. For an example of what happens with Beta3: I start the dictionary and copy a character using the pop-up screen (or otherwise), then click on Clip Reader from the sidebar and I am immediately returned to the home screen with no warning/message. If I now click on Recent Apps, I find Pleco dictionary is still there and my dictionary session can be continued. If I click on File Reader then similarly dumped to the home screen once I select a file. If I click on the Pleco Read launcher icon from the home screen the screen goes momentarily black, Pleco Reader (and the fish icon) briefly appears at the top left, the screen briefly goes black again, Pleco and the fish (not Pleco Reader) briefly appear at the top left, and then I am back on my home screen, all without touching anything. No other problems yet with Beta3 (very happy with it, many thanks), just the Reader (which was fine for version 2.4)! Using Android 4.1.1, Asus Transformer Prime, with Pleco basic bundle. For beta2 I had uninstalled and reinstalled Pleco but for Beta3 I got the automatic upgrade.
 

Taichi

榜眼
highlight text in the box works if I swipe pleco out of the recent apps list. Also, this bug happens only in 2-pane mode.
 

HW60

状元
With "use in compounds" you can select a dictionary to be used in WORDS. Do you think there is a chance that cycling through dictionaries like in 2.4.18 becomes possible again with the WORDS function?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@many - this might be a crash in native code, which Google Play didn't collect prior to Android 4.3; could you please download aLogcat, run it, get the reader to crash again and send us the log output?

@Taichi - thanks. 2-panel mode helps narrow it down considerably.

@HW60 - if we get a lot of requests for it, maybe, but it's generally a direction we're trying to move away from; for dictionary-specific compound searches we would suggest simply using the regular search box instead, enter a * followed by your character and you can view those results in whatever dictionary you like.
 

skripp

举人
Why doesn't the menu button do anything? Sure google is moving away from it, but the biggest player (Samsung) is still using it. Can't see a reason not to add this as a feature, it won't bother anyone without a menu button and be beneficial for the ones with.

As for bugs, this one isn't new (same in 2.4) but if there is a link to a idiom that has a comma in it, it just link to the first word.

See for example cc diet entry of 走为上.

Not a big deal. Not that many of them.

Edit: is there any way to have the menu on the right? Can't quite reach one handed on note 3 :)
 
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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Thought we'd fixed that link bug, not sure what's going on there - thanks.

As for menu buttons, the menu button still works but there just aren't that many screens where it applies now - we've gotten rid of a lot of the overflow menus that we used to have in the interest of streamlining our UI, so there are only a few places left where there's still a menu for it to bring up.

I suppose we could make the menu button bring up the sidebar menu, but that's non-standard / confusing and I don't see it as much of a usability win either: tapping on the menu button isn't really any faster than swiping from the left edge of the screen, but you'd generally push that button with your thumb but have to switch to your index finger to actually select an item (since the sidebar menu is on the left side of the screen rather than the bottom). So the overall action of selecting a sidebar menu item is probably faster if you do it entirely with your index finger via a swipe.

Another option would be to have it jump back to the main search screen, but that feels too destructive - people hit the menu button expecting it to just pop up a menu (something easily dismissible) and are alarmed when it does something more dramatic.

Re your edit, we actually have other plans for the right side of the screen. We currently use it for a 'favorites' menu on iOS; we're not doing that yet on Android since we were able to put the two most important functions from that menu (Night Mode and simplified/traditional toggles) elsewhere, but there are other things we want to do with it in the future (more context-based ones - screen-specific help, for example) that we do plan to offer on Android as well, so we're reserving it for those.
 
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kiraven

举人
I just sent a crash report via Google on the 負面 crash, hope I used the right function / you received it?
I am using TL ABC PLC LMA MOE GR GRH HDD CC CF NWP 21C
As for the other bug, I am pretty sure that I selected 站稳, tried several times yesterday. Cant replicate it now as I don't remember what dictionary entry it was, but I can point out one as soon as I encounter the problem again.
 

HW60

状元
@HW60 for dictionary-specific compound searches we would suggest simply using the regular search box instead, enter a * followed by your character and you can view those results in whatever dictionary you like.
You are right, that does exactly what I want. But when you are reviewing flashcards or reading text in the reader, it takes a lot of time to switch to the dictionary, enter "*" and the character, see the results in the desired dictionary and return to flashcards or reader. I use the WORDS function several times during my flashcards session with 2.4.18.

With "use in compounds" I could search the same way as in 2.4.18, but the compound search in 3.1 has 2 problems: either the amount of compounds is huge due to the amount of dictionaries and too big for a quick look coming from flashcards, or the searched character is only in one or 2 dictionaries, and unfortunately I removed these dictionaries from compound search and do not find any compounds. And changing the settings "use in compounds" during a flashcard session is even worse than moving to Dictionary.
 

leynux

举人
After update to beta3, Cannot open Reader on my Samsung Note 10.1 GT-N8000 default android version 4.1.2. After Clicking Reader from menu, application closed after sometime.

Note: Beta2 everything crashed.
 
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