Pleco for Android 3.1 GM

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Finished release (we think) at last, out here just a little bit in advance of our releasing it to everyone to make sure we didn't screw anything up. Couple more bug fixes along with some tweaks to settings that came out of the process of writing the instruction manual.

If this does turn out to be the final release: many, many, many thanks to all of you who've helped us out with beta testing; this is looking to be one of the most polished / stable major updates we've ever released thanks to your efforts.

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-140611-310p.apk

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

HW60

状元
With the new version the problem of exporting cards with categories is the same. I found a way to export now, but it is still easy to let Pleco terminate: Organize Cards, Edit, Batch, Export Cards, Card Selection, Select Categories, AND NOW not the hook in the top right, but the back arrow to get to the Export Now screen. With the hook you get to the screen where you can only choose Export Cards again, and then Pleco terminates.

I think the back arrow, the hook and the cross to stop a flashcard session still need some changes - it is not always clear to me when to use which one.

Another late suggestion: When selecting things like categories or tasks in the menu or basic settings in flashcards, there are different ways of selecting: in basic settings, the whole line is sensitive, I can touch anywhere in the line there to select or deselect "Test reading" or others, which is sometimes not helpful when I just want to scroll, but change the setting instead. In the main menu only the text is sensitive, so when I tap the line "Organize Cards" a little right from the text, I just get back to the dictionary as if I had used the back arrow - here the whole line could be sensitive. Selecting categories in flashcards is now very transparent - the result is seen in the left column.
 
I'm excited about 3.1 becoming finalized.
I want to point out a potential opportunity for both the pleco developers to make get some low friction revenue, and the users to get more add-ons for free.

The Amazon android app store has given away around $30 dollars in free coins buy purchasing certain apps, a few weeks ago. Some were free, one was not, but after purchase of that specific app you got $20 in coins. The details can be found easy enough on the web.

What I want to point out is that previously, when I had coins to burn, I installed the Amazon version of Pleco, and input my registration code from the play store version. Then I bought an addon, (stroke order diagrams I believe) and it was tied to my registration code. When using the google play version of pleco, or the betas my addon purchased on Amazon app store also show as purchased and promptly download and install.

Is this going to stay this way when 3.1 is put on the Amazon app store?
As soon as I got those free coins I knew they needed to be spent on pleco addons :) I'm most excited about the Cantonese audio add-ons.

Also is 3.1 going to stay Android 4.x and higher only? I have a Honeycomb tablet I use, and as far as I know most of the stuff in ICS, is also in HC 3.2? I know that HC is like the orphaned child of android, and it doesn't account for a large percentage of overall users, so no biggie if Pleco 3.1 can't be made to support it .

My friends will also be using their coins to purchase addons if this method still works.
Thanks again for all your hard work to make the most functional and feature filled Chinese dictionary ever.
 
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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@HW60 - "select categories" actually shouldn't be active in that version of the Export screen, so that's the bug - if you want to export specific categories from the batch screen then the best bet would be to do a Search Cards and export the results of that instead.

Good note on tappable areas, thanks - something to improve for later 3.1.x updates.

@thefriendlygeek - thanks! Yes, this should keep working, but it may take a week or so for Amazon to approve 3.1 after we submit it to them and it won't be possible to buy any of the new add-ons until they do.
 

HW60

状元
@HW60 - "select categories" actually shouldn't be active in that version of the Export screen, so that's the bug - if you want to export specific categories from the batch screen then the best bet would be to do a Search Cards and export the results of that instead.
Search Card does not work, because there is no way (or I did not find one) to export the categories too.
 

giokve

进士
Most (all?) 注意 in GF are in simplified characters even though they should be in traditional.
 

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HW60

状元
I wanted to add a bookmark in Pleco's reader, but I do not know how: There is no "Add Bookmark" as described in the manual. I can tap the button "Bookmark", but only when nothing is marked - as soon as I mark a place in the text, this button is no longer visible. Or is "Bookmark" just the actual page and not a position in a text file?

In large files it may be helpful to look for a word not in a dictionary, but in the text (when no bookmark is available) - which outside of Pleco could also be done with an editor.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@giokve - that's intentional; many / most of those 注意 provide details on specific characters / character variants, and a lot of them even include embedded images to explain those variants, so we've kept them simplified-only - we don't currently have the editorial resources to perform an intelligent traditional conversion of all of them / generate new images for variants / etc and we think the original simplified version is better than a confusing / nonsensical traditional one.

@HW60 - it's only ever worked that way, actually; bookmarks a location but not a specific word. A document annotation feature is on our to-do list but we're waiting until we add support for a few more document formats first so we can do it a consistent / long-term-viable way (rather than whipping up something that only works for text files).
 
So far no bugs that I can see in what I do. Takes a few seconds to load and switch between sections though. One problem I do have is I have many words in my flashcards, but when I look up the word in the dictionary the + sign at the top doesn't indicate that it is in my flashcards.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@ohlordamen - does this apply to any two sections, or is there a specific one that seems to be slow? Any chance that the flashcards might only be in one character set or be missing Pinyin?
 

Taichi

榜眼
long pressing |-> two times to select whole paragraph doesn't work correctly in definition screen and flash test screen.
 
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In the entry, the pinyin next to the "PY" is always too small. Can we get a setting to control its font size?
 
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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@Taichi - yeah, we had to give that one up in order to work around a horrible bug in Google's text layout system (responsible for the text getting clipped off on one side that was the cause of a couple of previous bug reports).

@JimmyTheSaint - this should use the same font size as text in the definition, so if you enlarge that it'll enlarge this too. We really really don't want to add more font size options, we finally got them down to a manageable number after having had something like 40 of them in 2.4.
 
this should use the same font size as text in the definition, so if you enlarge that it'll enlarge this too. We really really don't want to add more font size options, we finally got them down to a manageable number after having had something like 40 of them in 2.4.
Well, yeah, but this affects basic usability, and it's also not conceptually consistent. The definition can be much smaller, and it's worth saving space to be able to see more info. But I have frequently run into the situation where I can't see the tone marks in the headword clearly. I've always had to put up with this difficulty because I didn't want to show less info in the definition. But it's quite aggravating because often I look up a word in real time just to verify the tones before I talk to someone, and it ends up a social fail.

The settings allow the size of the Chinese inside the definition to differ from the Chinese headword. Why lock the English headword to the size of the content? The Chinese headword is a lot less useful to me than the pinyin headword. Meanwhile, the list allows this difference, which is a much less useful place. If you really need to sacrifice functionalities so that users don't have to encounter so many settings, why not eliminate the list pinyin size and replace it with a definition pinyin headword size? But here's what a lot of apps do: instead of reducing functionality for experienced users for the sake of making it easier for the less experienced, why not add an expert mode that unhides extra settings?
 
Another thought: I actually don't think there are so many more piddly things that need to be added to justify an expert mode. I experience the elimination of so many settings as an advantage: I don't even remember what's been taken out. I just know that I have all the control over appearance that I need, so you've eliminated the right stuff. But that damn pinyin headword in the definition has always been a bugaboo for me, and now that there are so few font sizes, it seems like it could finally be dealt with. Why don't you think of it this way: you did a radical reduction, but overshot by one. I don't see a domino effect resulting from adding that last bit of control over the pinyin size.
 

botterli

Member
Hi, I just upgraded to the latest version through Google Play, I never installed any of the beta releases. When I opened the new version, there were no flashcards! I have a two week old backup, but I'll be very disappointed if I will lose two weeks because of a version upgrade. I don't dare load the backup either until I know what's going on. When installing I chose "volume 2", which is the SD card. I don't remember where I installed it last time, but can that be part of the reason? I also had to redownload all of the add-ons. Can I get my flashcards (and settings, if possible...) back somehow?

Thanks
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@JimmyTheSaint - I wouldn't say it does affect basic usability, it only applies in the relatively specialized case of people wanting to make their definition so small as to render Pinyin unreadable. And if you're looking up a word in real time to verify tones, why are you even visiting the definition screen at all, why not just get the Pinyin from the result list?

Chinese characters are a far bigger readability concern than Pinyin for most people, both because they're unfamiliar and because they're a lot more detailed. And resizable Pinyin is very useful in the list - you might notice that "List Pinyin" and "Entry body" are the same font size, but since we're not worrying about Pinyin or characters we can get away with making the "List definition" even smaller.

I'm also a little wary of this particular option because it seems like it might tie our hands for some future type design changes - the specific relationship between the header and the definition content is likely to evolve a good bit over the next year or so, there are some new things we might like to put in the header (flashcard categories) and some things we might like to move to the definition (variant characters / pronunciations).

Quite a few users seem to feel like our app would be brilliant if we just added one or two little options, the problem is that the specific options are different for every user :)
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@botterli - sorry about that. Choose "Import/Export" / "Restore Database" from the sidebar menu, then navigate to the /Android/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/files/databases folder in your internal memory - you should see your original Pleco flashcard database file in there to recover.
 
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