Pleco for Android 3.1 Beta 3

[mikelove]

@Yiliya - not finding the tabs without bold any better, personally:

 

[Yiliya]

@mikelove, looks fine to me, better than the iOS7 style buttons anyway. What in particular you don't like about it?

 

[mikelove]

@Yiliya - it doesn't fit with the rest of the type design; we don't use regular-weight all-caps anywhere else. (also tried it without the caps and it looked even worse) Every new type style you introduce makes the end result a bit more jarring / confusing; keeping all of them bold and blue matches them up with the style of the dictionary close/open icons, hyperlinks, etc. It's also not obvious to me that these other items are tappable, absent a shaded bar background or something else to make it clear that this is a control area rather than a content area.

The current bar wasn't designed around iOS - Apple segmented controls look quite different; in fact, last summer at WWDC we got two Apple UI designers to review the prototype of Pleco 3.0 and one of their specific suggestions was that we switch to a more Apple-like segmented control; in this early image you can even see our attempts at that. We ended up on this one because we thought it was the best fit for our type design. So if it doesn't feel Android-like I can certainly understand that, but I think it's fairer to call it Pleco-style than iOS-style - eschewing system UI convention on occasion to make something that we hope is easier on the eyes.

 

[wibr]

@mikelove have you ever tried replacing "Back / Edit / Test" in flashcards with icons? Back would be an arrow, Edit the icon you already use in other places (box with a pen) and Test the eye or checkmark... I think it would look a bit more elegant while still being pretty straightforward since all icons are already in use with a similar meaning.

 

[wibr]

another thing, I think holo blue and pleco blue don't go well with each other, maybe only use pleco blue

 

[many]

On flashcards, when I select "reveal entire card" near the bottom right of the screen a ? appears rather than the dictionary abbreviation. If I select that ? mark, the next dictionary definition appears together with the correct abbreviation, say PLC (replacing the ? mark). If I keep cycling through the dictionary definitions I return to the original definition, only now the correct abbreviation is there. Not a big deal, just curious why! I think this only happens for my user dictionary but, sorry, not sure if it was doing this all along or if it could be something I have messed about with in terms of importing cards and dictionaries. I've done a restore database to import my flashcards from Pleco v2 into this beta. Android 4.1.1 on a tablet.

 

[Taichi]

Reader launcher opens clip reader even if I used file reader last time.

 

[mikelove]

@wibr - yeah, we're doing that shortly; already works that way on iOS, the reason it didn't work that way on Android previously is that we put the tabs on the bottom of the screen instead of to the left of the flashcard button area. Quite right about Holo blue, we're still working on re-themeing all of that stuff.

@many - any chance these might be cards with custom definitions (embedded in the cards) instead of user dictionary ones?

@Taichi - thanks.

 

[many]

Ah, yes they are. So the ? just means this is a custom definition rather than from the dictionary? In fact, it's the flashcards with custom definitions and the related custom dictionary downloaded from http://www.plecoforums.com/threads/practical-audio-visual-chinese-dictionary-and-flashcards.2403/ (hence when I cycle through the dictionaries, the definition eventually comes to the custom dictionary AVC, which is probably the same entry as revealed with the flashcard)

 

[many]

Selecting Definition Interface: + Button For Each Entry led to repeated dictionary crashing. Had to create shortcut to get back to settings and change back. (Couple of reports submitted.)

 

[ohlordamen]

history bug, clicking on anything under "search" doesn't work.
Search bug: searching for a headword, if you have searched for one in the past, and change the word when you click on the "-", "AND", "OR", it brings back previous word. Also add an option to search the definition field.

I've also gotten the new test pop-up after completing a multiple choice test.

I've also had the misplaced pop-up. For me it seems to only happen on definitions that only have "old variant of X"

Also on generic searches that return a long list, if I scroll down the list view a definition, when I return I'm back the top of the list.

 

[ckatt]

On some occasions I'm getting a freeze then crash when i try to play the audio for example sentences. i don't know if its related or not but it might have something to do with the hui voice, as it never plays for individual words even in places where there is no extended audio recording. I have submitted the crash reports from the example sentence problem, but there is no crash report to send when the recordings play when the tts should.

 

[mikelove]

@many - yep, that sounds like it's working correctly then, though ? is a less-than-optimal icon I admit. Thanks for the note on that crash, reports haven't shown up yet but hopefully will in a day or two (Google sometimes takes a little while to sync / collect them).

@ohlordamen - thanks. Not sure what's going on with list scrolling, the length generally shouldn't matter for that.

@ckatt - thanks. Think we've fixed the recordings issue too but we'll find out soon enough in Beta 4 I suppose.

 

[HW60]

Synchronizing flashcards between different devices via dropbox is easy, but unfortunately all settings are transferred too. That looks strange when I increase font sizes and brush sizes so that the fit to a 10 inch tablet and copy the flashcards back to my One X with a 4.7 inch screen.

 

[mikelove]

Are you sure that's happening with flashcards? We actually have code in Pleco specifically to deal with this - separate font size settings used on tablets and phones, which we invisibly switch between (so it'll use one set or the other and apply changes in test settings to one set or the other depending on the device that Pleco is running on).

If you change the font sizes on your One X and then sync back to the tablet, does the tablet then get the smaller sizes or does it keep its larger ones?

 

[thefriendlygeek]

Both devices listed in sig below have this problem. Pleco crashes to home screen if either the clip reader or file reader is used. The file reader crashes upon file selection, the clip reader immediately upon pressing it's button. All beta versions do this.

 

[HW60]

Are you sure that's happening with flashcards? We actually have code in Pleco specifically to deal with this - separate font size settings used on tablets and phones, which we invisibly switch between (so it'll use one set or the other and apply changes in test settings to one set or the other depending on the device that Pleco is running on).

If you change the font sizes on your One X and then sync back to the tablet, does the tablet then get the smaller sizes or does it keep its larger ones?

When I switched via dropbox from tablet to my phone, the font sizes of the main dictionary were reduced to about 80%. The font sizes of the flashcard review screen (card text) did not change, and that was what I saw first when I did my first review. On the way back the tablet got the old values again. I still tested on 2.4.18 and will start testing again with 3.1 Beta4 .

 

[ckatt]

Small issue with the text position on some flash cards.

 

[mikelove]

@thefriendlygeek - thanks, should be fixed in Beta 4 (relates to pre-4.2 versions of Android).

@HW60 - we only added that feature on Android in 3.1, before that it was always using the phone setting.

@ckatt - thanks - very specific combination of settings for this, actually (need to show examples but not links).

 

[Taichi]

font size of clip reader is bigger than font size of file reader on xperia z ultra with the default font. Reader font size is set to 30 in the setting.