Pleco for Android 3.1 Beta 5

[mikelove]

Update: now it's Beta 5, fixing a newly introduced bug in our Storage Access Framework support (see below).

Sorry for the slow release of Beta 4; the main reason for the delay is that we realized that we really needed do something about the new Storage Access Framework (the thing responsible for all of those new file opening / saving / etc errors in Android 4.4) sooner rather than later, since it's likely Google will be pushing it a lot more aggressively in their next Android update this summer, and we'd rather do that now when we're beta-testing than later in a minor update that won't necessarily be as thoroughly tested.

So SAF is now fully supported in every part of Pleco that interacts with external files, and any file open / file save function on 4.4 will now bring up 4.4's spiffy new file browser. We've finally fixed the "where do you want to store your files?" prompt on startup for devices with Android 4.4 and external SD cards, and we also revamped the file browser on devices with older versions of Android (switched to a different open-source library and retooled it a bit for Pleco).

If you feel like helping us out with some explicit testing, try a delete and reinstall on a different card, or try anything that involves a file browser - installing custom fonts, backing up / restoring flashcard or user dictionary databases, installing files in Add-ons from directly downloaded .zip files on our website, etc.

We've also given the UI a nice little tune-up in several areas, particularly icons, and added a new option in Settings to put flashcard vocabulary on top of "Words Containing." And we've fixed pretty much every bug that's been reported to us so far.

If you already have an earlier beta 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-140518-310b5.apk

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

 

[Marco]

Hi. Any chance to see an option to disable one or two input method? I've never used strokes or audio input . Thanks and go on with this great app!

 

[Taichi]

Pleco crashes when i open a local txt file. I can open the same file if it's on the google drive, but the file title of the reader is wierd (e.g. "acc=1;doc=1950")

promoting flashcard vocabulary in Words Containing is really nice!

 

[mikelove]

@Marco - not unless we see a ton of demand for it, I'm afraid - we're really making a concerted effort to pare down the number of options we offer, both for faster / easier development and because if you have too many options it tends to just confuse users and (ironically) make them less likely to actually go through configuring options to suit their needs.

@Taichi - yeah, seeing that too - fix coming momentarily in a Beta 5, relates to a particular problem with Storage Access Framework permissions that some Android 4.4 builds care about and some builds don't.

 

[Kathleen]

I found a strange bug concerning the flashcaeds. After i take my first test, the screen goes almost black for only the test screen. If i click where begin test wtc are, it takes me to a normal screen. Second, after a flashcard session, it adds additional tabs at the top of the dictionary screen, blocking out all of the other options and input tabs... i dont know if that makes sense... look at the second image

 

[mikelove]

@Kathleen - what model of device is this and what version of Android are you running?

EDIT: never mind, realized you emailed us before even though this was your first forum post so we can get the info we need from that. Thanks.

 

[HW60]

Update: now it's Beta 5, fixing a newly introduced bug in our Storage Access Framework support (see below).
b) Directly from our website; APK at:
http://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-140517-310b5.apk

The direct link leads to URL ... not found on this server.

 

[mikelove]

Sorry, fixed the link now.

 

[HW60]

Uninstalled 2.4.18 as desired, tried to install beta 5.
I was asked
"Choose local installation
Volume 1 (xxx MB available)
Volume 2 (yyy MB available)"
and chose volume 1, but did not know why. Then

"Pleco install
Failed, see Pleco.com/androidfiles
Retry Exit"

I chose Retry, but nothing happened. And now?

 

[mikelove]

Are you sure your internet connection is working? Has to download new data files the first time it runs.

 

[HW60]

I looked at com.pleco.chinesesystem on device storage/android/data and found
-cache
-bdownloads (empty)
-btempunzip (empty)
-files
-bmodules
-10 (empty)
-modules (empty)

On my sd memory card I found
-Android/data/pleco.com.chinesesystem
-cache (empty)
-files (empty)

plecodroid-140518-310.apk is on /storage/emulated/0/download 19.7 MB

 

[HW60]

Are you sure your internet connection is working? Has to download new data files the first time it runs.

My Wifi was temporarily disabled, now is downloading very slowly.

 

[HW60]

Now it is very quick, but loops without stop:

Choose Install Location:
Volume 1 (8.9 GB available)
Volume 2 (16.9 GB available) (I chose volume 1)
Pleco install
unpacking zip files (45 files, very quickly happening)
Completed, launching app

and back to the beginning of the loop.

 

[HW60]

... but it is installed now

 

[dustpuppy]

I just installed pleco 3 on my ipad and it's extremely polished, looks very nice. Any chance of getting flashcard sync on Android now ?

 

[mikelove]

@HW60 - so it eventually stopped looping?

@dustpuppy - we actually could provide file sync through Google Drive now, but the problem is that that's slow enough relative to iCloud (and doesn't refresh as reliably in the background) that we don't think it would work well for people unless we add the ability to merge changes made separately on two different copies of the database rather than picking one version or the other (as we do on iCloud).

So once we add merging capabilities to our flashcard database format - probably in 3.2 - Android cloud sync via Google Drive should be quite simple to add. But of course that won't help much for people with non-Google versions of Android, or located in places where Google Drive is blocked; for them we'd pretty much need our own proprietary server, and while we have a reasonably good early attempt at that written, we're not sure if it makes financial sense to finish it and commit to the long-term costs of supporting / maintaining it.

Honestly, just in general I'm a little unsure of the long-term potential of Android tablets for us - people will certainly keep buying them, but personally I find the benefits of a tablet over a Nexus 5 for flashcard management very limited / probably not worth the hassle of syncing, and our user data suggests that far fewer Android customers than iOS customers make regular use of more than one device.

 

[HW60]

@HW60 - so it eventually stopped looping?

No, but I did not answer the volume question finally and returned to the home screen - then it was installed.

In dictionary I get only one character results - in 2.4.18 there was the option "1-char for 1-char" which seems to be missing in 3.1 (or I do not find it though the settings section is much clearer than in 2.4.18).

What is the slider bar (Settings: Show dict slider)? I do not see a bar to select dictionaries, only the standard top right field with the dictionary abbreviation.

The flash status in dictionary is really tiny on my tablet compared with the font of the definition - can it be adjusted?

Though I marked "Prioritize flash in containing" I do not see any of my flashcards in the words list. Also the words of my user dictionary are missing. In Synonyms and Antonyms most of the words are flashcards, but starting with "Words beginning" there are no more flashcards (or the list is too long to find out).

Is there a possibility to mark the last but one selection in Settings (bold or colored or underlined or whatever)? When I go through the settings and go back one step, I usually do not remeber where I came from.

 

[HW60]

In flashcards, the font in the first line is really tiny and does not fit to a tablet screen. The buttons around the very big "next card" field with the right arrow are small. The backspace button (left arrow with an "x") left of the Done button is very small.

 

[HW60]

In flashcards, show pinyin ask for headword, after the first stroke there are five HWR characters overwriting the pinyin which change with every stroke. Is it possible to move them down (there is much free space there on tablets).

 

[mikelove]

@HW60 - 1-char for 1-char actually only worked in single-dictionary searches even in 2.4; it's never worked in merged searches, and since the default in 3.1 is to disable single-dictionary searches altogether (and the vast majority of users don't re-enable them) we didn't feel the option was worth keeping. It's purely a Pinyin search issue, though - we could easily get it working for single-character searches (as demonstrated in the WORDS tab), but searching for every word that starts with a particular Pinyin syllable was fairly useless even with one dictionary and is totally useless with more than one.

The slider bar is a list of dictionary abbreviations that will show up at the bottom of the DICT screen (as an overlay) if that option is turned on - lets you easily tap on or drag between dictionaries to quickly jump to a particular one.

No way to adjust the size of the flash status icon at the moment - that's the sort of thing that will be much easier to accommodate at whatever point Apple and Google get off their duffs and add support for vector (= easily resizable) icons.

"Prioritize flash in containing" works in "words containing" but not "words starting." Though we should probably add an option for it in starting too - the thinking was that starting is where you go to find a particular word that starts with a character (so it's alphabetized and hence easy to scan through precisely) while containing is where you go to find any useful word containing the character (and hence the place where you're likely to want your flashcards on top), but if we're going to offer an option to make "containing" only words where the character appears later (as we do now, in order to accommodate people who liked the old "containing" option) then it makes sense to give both sections a flashcard priority option too.

With settings, you can actually jump to a different part of Pleco without going back to the root screen of settings first - just swipe the left edge of the screen and the sidebar will appear, regardless of how deep you are. So that makes it easier to go back and forth without losing your place.

With flashcards, are you referring to the text in the status bar at the top of the screen? That's actually happening on Android's end - that's the font size they use for items in the standard system toolbar that we're using now. If it's problematic we can replace it with our own text, we're just trying to stick with stock system UI whenever we can since we tend to see fewer bugs that way.

Which "next card" buttons are you referring to? The tab icons to the left of it? And the backspace button is the one in the handwriting box, right?

The HWR characters come from the evaluation version of our new handwriting recognizer that you might have downloaded in Add-ons - delete that in Add-ons / Installed to get rid of those. They're there now to make it easy to compare results from the old and new recognizers in order to provide us with feedback on the new system.