Off to the betas again; feedback especially welcome if you're using the latest Android M developer preview, or if you're a heavy user of OCR since we made a pretty big low-level change there.
This update temporarily drops support for Android 4.0 due to a bug in Google's developer tools that we discovered right as we were packaging it up - we hope to fix it shortly (if not via a workaround on our end then via a patch on theirs), in the meantime if you're experiencing problems with 3.2.13/14 you can download 3.2.12 directly from this link.
If you previously signed up for beta testing through Google Play, this new beta should show up as an update within a few hours. Otherwise, you can get it:
a) Through Google Play. Sign up for that at:
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.pleco.chinesesystem
(no more Google Group necessary thanks to a recent Play update) after which you should be able to get it right from there.
b) Directly from our website; APK at:
http://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-150823.apk
Changes in Beta 1:
This update temporarily drops support for Android 4.0 due to a bug in Google's developer tools that we discovered right as we were packaging it up - we hope to fix it shortly (if not via a workaround on our end then via a patch on theirs), in the meantime if you're experiencing problems with 3.2.13/14 you can download 3.2.12 directly from this link.
If you previously signed up for beta testing through Google Play, this new beta should show up as an update within a few hours. Otherwise, you can get it:
a) Through Google Play. Sign up for that at:
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.pleco.chinesesystem
(no more Google Group necessary thanks to a recent Play update) after which you should be able to get it right from there.
b) Directly from our website; APK at:
http://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-150823.apk
Changes in Beta 1:
- Overhauled the interface for invoking Screen Reader and OCR; there's now just a single Screen Reader sidebar item (which we're awkwardly calling "Screen Reader + OCR" for a couple of releases until everybody gets used to it and we can change it to "Reader" all the time), tapping that (or using the Screen Reader shortcut) will toggle both items, and the states of whether they're visible / invisible are now controlled solely via long-pressing the floating button. And the buttons are vertically instead of horizontally stacked.
- Added an option to invoke Screen Reader / OCR via a notification instead of a floating button. (long-press menu or Settings)
- Added new shortcuts (which can be created via the shortcut app of your choice) to directly invoke Screen OCR / Screen Reader rather than merely toggling the availability of their button.
- Improved Screen Reader results in a number of apps, including QQ and WeChat-when-it's-running-on-a-very-old-version-of-Android.
- Greatly improved stability / reduced memory usage of OCR on some (ironically) new and memory-rich devices by adding a custom memory allocation function for OCR (this is our workaround for the infamous Lollipop "memory leak" bug as it manifested in Pleco).
- Officially added support for Android M, including the new permission request system, floating text selection commands (only supported by Android on editable text at the moment, but highlight a piece of that and you'll see a "Pleco" option in the spillover menu), and some new requirements for native library string relocation (this was actually a huge pain in the butt which is why we're mentioning it here even though hardly anybody knows what we're talking about).
- Migrated (at last) to the new Android Studio developer tools, which probably won't be noticeable on your end unless we screwed something up but will streamline some things about Pleco releases going forward.
- Added separate definition scrolling buttons to the Clip Monitor notification since the mix of left/right / top/down buttons in the old one was very confusing and the wasted space is minor / infrequent.
- Made the "jump to dictionary" command in the Clip Monitor notification and in some OCR modes fill in results from other dictionaries besides your current one, when previously it hadn't.
- Added a "recognize" button in handwriting in flashcard tests in fill-in-the-blanks mode with "conceal until finished" enabled, for the sake of our stylus-using customers who can't use the two-finger tap gesture, and redid the way we advance through characters in fill-in-the-blanks tests a bit
- Made the Screen Reader floating button hide itself when the system is in Doze mode.
- Made text-to-speech work again on some x86 devices (<cough>Asus</cough>) through a clever hack that did not require us to release a separate version of our app for them.
- Made both Screen Reader and Screen OCR preserve your last keyboard status when possible (rather than forcing the keyboard to close).
- Made Screen Reader get along a bit better with other apps that float stuff on top of the screen.
- Made Screen OCR save its last focus rectangle a bit more consistently.
- Made selections of of items from your search history no longer cause your search history to be re-ordered - they should now stay in their previous order.
- Added an option in Settings to show invert/orient buttons in Screen OCR (though the UI is currently a bit awkward - you have to resize the recognition area in order to be able to tap on them).
- Made the "use TTS if no recording" setting match its iOS behavior, defaulting to "off" with only the free system TTS and "on" with one of our paid TTS add-ons.
- Fixed a bug that caused wacky display when rotating the screen with Screen OCR active (even if it was only in the background).
- Fixed a bug that could sometimes prevent CC-CEDICT from downloading initially, and added a ("don't show again"able) alert on startup if CC-CEDICT is missing.
- Fixed a bug that could cause initial file downloads to hang (rather than putting up an error message) when encountering certain problems accessing SD cards.
- Fixed a crash when opening Card Info from a duplicate prompt in Screen Reader / OCR (though we have to jump into the full Pleco app to pull it up).
- Fixed a bug that prevented the highlight from updating correctly when interrupting the system text-to-speech engine.
- Fixed a bug that made using custom startup directories on external SD cards impossible on some devices.
- Fixed a bug that could cause unexpected behavior when switching between dictionary groups with a particular combination of fallback settings. (you'd end up searching a random dictionary you hadn't chosen)
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes on tapping on a full-text Chinese search result.
