Pleco for Android 3.2.3 Beta 3

[mikelove]

Third beta of this big-update-with-a-minor-version number, with a few more tweaks and bug fixes; we're cautiously hopeful this will be the last beta though we'll release as many as we need to if we find more major bugs to fix.

As before, feedback especially welcome on design annoyances like screens that look outdated / awkward, icons that don't match (size is way out of proportion to its neighbors or style is jarringly different), etc. Also please let us know if you notice any major performance downgrades.

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 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-141205.apk

List of changes:

Beta 3

• Made the history, add-ons, bookmarks, and Card Info screen tabs all swipeable as well, since now that we're doing it in the definition screen we think people will assume it works everywhere and be confused when it doesn't.
• Made up / down scroll buttons for the embedded definition appear in portrait as well as landscape mode on decent-sized tablets (600 scaled pixels or higher in their smaller dimension, so 1920x1200 will probably work and 1280x800 probably won't); also made them optional (can disable them in Settings / Search Interface), and moved them and the + and edit buttons to the right instead of the left side of the top toolbar.
• Inset items in the CHARS/WORDS tabs in the definition screen so their margins will match those of the other tabs.
• Added a total file size to the "download all" buttons in Add-ons.
• Added an alert the first time you run a fill-in-the-blanks flashcard test to point out that it's only covering cards of 4 or fewer characters.
• Disabled continuous autofocus in OCR by default once again, since on some devices it tends to make the app focus excessively often (in ways we're not able to prevent).
• Updated a few more icons.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent the input method bar from appearing correctly after exiting and re-entering the search screen.
• Fixed a couple more bugs relating to the interface not updating correctly after a screen rotation.
• Fixed a bug that could cause erroneous "No words found" texts to flicker in the WORDS tab.
• Fixed a bug that could cause odd background colors in the results list after a screen rotate.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent the current search result from being preserved after a screen rotate.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the currently selected tab from highlighting correctly in Manage Dicts / Dict Groups.
• Fixed a bug that caused a 1-pixel-wide blank line to appear on the right side of the screen in two-ppanel mode.

Beta 2

• Made it possible to go between tabs in the definition screen by swiping.
• In service of this, made the stroke order tab now scroll vertically instead of horizontally.
• Made tabs in the definition screen reorderable - option for that is in Settings / Definition Screen at the top.
• Added an option for a floating button at the bottom right corner of the definition screen (also in Settings / Definition Screen) - this can be set to add a flashcard or play audio (Mandarin or Cantonese).
• Added an "Append headword to clipboard" command to the search results long-press menu - choose this and instead of replacing the current clipboard (as in a Copy) the headword will be added to it, similar to the text-appending option we already offer in OCR. (we also display the current clipboard contents in the notification)
• Stopped the clipboard monitor from popping up when copying text within Pleco.
• Made the clipboard monitor work with our "open in reader if length >" option.
• Improved startup time a bit by removing some redundant layout passes.
• Changed the list highlight color to not be exactly the same as the toolbar color in day mode (as that made things hard to see).
• Changed the day mode icon to look more like a sun and less like a gear.
• Tweaked the unselected tab colors a bit in Night Mode to be easier to see.
• Made the popup reader bubble avoid the shadow from the top toolbar.
• Made the Organize edit controls look slightly more Lollipop-like.
• Made the reader reload after paginate is toggled on / off (so you don't have to kill Pleco or open another document to get it to take effect).
• Made text items in the action bar correctly appear white in day mode on Android 4.4 and earlier.
• Worked around a bug in 64-bit versions of Android (which currently just means the Nexus 9) that could make it impossible to modify flashcard databases.
• Fixed a nasty bug that could cause blank / unusable screens on older versions of Android.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent various definition screen tabs from refreshing correctly on startup on a tablet.
• Fixed a bug that caused the drawing area in flashcard tests to cover up the buttons at the bottom of the screen, even when it was configured not to.
• Fixed a crashing bug when reopening Pleco with handwriting active.
• Fixed a bug that caused TTS in the document reader to stop playing at the end of a page.
• Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect line wrapping in the search results list on some older versions of Android with buggy Unicode support.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the audio button from showing up in user dictionary entries with "pron system" set to "none."
• Fixed a bug that could prevent example sentences from showing up in search result definition previews for full-text Chinese searches even when the word being searched for is in the example sentence.
• Fixed a bug that could cause flashcard audio to fall back on male TTS when audio was configured to be female-only.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the "change dictionary entry" command in Card Info to pull up entries with the wrong pronunciation if the current pronunciation was not included in whatever your first dictionary selected under Manage Dicts is.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the input method selector at the top of the dictionary search screen from displaying as tabs on tablets.
• Fixed a bug that kept the top toolbar from shrinking correctly in landscape orientation on phones.

Beta 1

• Reskinned our app around Android 5 and Material Design. (virtually all of the reskin applies on older versions of Android too)
• Added an option in Settings / Reader to make the document reader paginated (swipe pages like a book instead of continuously scrolling in a vertical box), and improved performance / reliability a bit while we were at it.
• Restored the "clipboard monitoring" option in Settings / Miscellaneous; we offered this for a few years after Pleco first came out on Android, but dropped it when it stopped working on Android 4 and nobody seemed to notice or care. Still very few requests for it, but we finally figured out why it stopped working, and since the code for it was still sitting there we figured we might as well add it back again. Anyway, turn this option on and whenever you copy a piece of Chinese text to the clipboard Pleco will automatically pop up with a definition; right now you have to go throgh Settings but if we get some interest we can easily add a more prominent toggle button and/or an option to automatically enable this at system startup rather than only having it work with Pleco running in the background.
• Started hiding example sentences in full-text search result list items when the text being searched for appears outside of an example sentence.
• Made the @ override prefix for flashcard pronunciations work for Cantonese along with Mandarin.
• Added flashcard options to display Mandarin along with Cantonese before the card is revealed and to display Cantonese as a secondary pronunciation to Mandarin (so the audio / fill-in-the-blanks / etc are for Mandarin but you still see Cantonese readings too).
• Added a command in Settings / Miscellaneous to clean up orphaned flashcard categories (to remedy some earlier bugs).
• Shrank our default fonts just a touch - we had ported our type design over from iOS without taking into account the fact that Android devices tend to have slightly lower pixel density at a particular resolution scale, so text was (we think) a bit larger than it needed to be.
• Added a more helpful alert for Xiaomi users when we can't access the device camera due to Xiaomi's wacky camera permission system.
• Added Android search manager support - this is a bit flaky but if you say "OK Google, search Pleco for dumpling" it might possibly bring up Pleco with a search for 'dumpling.' We have not yet found a way to get it to recognize Chinese here. Google's voice recognizer interprets 'pleco' as having a short 'e' (pleck-o) so pronounce it like that if you want it to (possibly) understand you.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent audio from playing in the definition screen when a custom entry was the first item.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the Card Info screen from returning you to Organize Cards after deleting the current card.
• Fixed a bug that caused stroke order diagrams to always be faded even with the option for that turned off.
• Fixed a bug that could interfere with edit fields working correctly in a few popup alerts on Android 5.
• Came up with a slighly less ugly workaround for the fast scrollbar not working correctly on Android 4.4/5, so it won't show up all the time as it did in Pleco 3.2.0/1/2.
• Fixed a bug that added erroneous audio play buttons before example sentences in Cantonese dictionaries. (though we're working on a Cantonese TTS option for those)
• Hid Cantonese in flashcard editing for users with the free version of our flashcard system, since you can't do Cantonese tests with the free version and we didn't want people to waste time making Cantonese cards tey can't use.
• Rearranged the Display section of flashcard test settings to make a couple of coherent groups out of Card Text instead of just having a long random list of options there.
• Renamed "Pinyin" in flashcard test field selection to the more neutral "Pronunciation" so as not to exclude Cantonese + Zhuyin users.
• Fixed a bug that prevented some punctuation marks (like ellipses) from appearing correctly in flashcard Pinyin pronunciations.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the floating DICT/STROKE/etc header to fail to appear after scrolling down in an entry via the popup reader.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the preview entry browser for in the Oxford Chinese Dictionary E-C half to show you entries from the C-E half.
• Fixed a bug that could cause imports to fail in certain rare cases where an extended Unicode character boundary happened to overlap with the border between two (arbitrary-sized) chunks of import data.
• Updated to a newer version of the SQLite database engine that should significantly improve performance in some cases.
• Fixed yet more crashing bugs.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent reader documents from saving their locations correctly on Android 5.

 

[zhaomao]

I started this beta on Beta 2 and first I have to say I was *very* pleasantly surprised at how smooth and slick the whole Material Design makeover is working... very well done!

I found a couple minor bugs, and one scope creep request (<shameful flinch>) -- but I hope it's reasonable and easily implemented... and if not, it's not crucial and can wait: I'd love to see a full screen mode in the File Reader.

In File Reader, if I click on the Bookmark icon, then click Cancel, the File Reader screen goes blank. A swipe to a different page and back, or a re-open of the file restores the display of the content.

Also, I was deleting History entries in the Dictionary section and after one or two deletions stopped working. I closed the app completely and relaunched, and it worked perfectly again. Let me know if you need to try to reproduce this one.

I'm also a Night Mode user, and I think that having swipe-able tabs has helped the grey tab titles by adding usability (it's not necessary to read and tap anymore) -- but I still think the difference between bright and dim text is too great. I think it looks fine on the Material Design spec web page, but on my tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 - SM-T310) it's a little too dark for my liking. That goes for the Settings page as well. I'm not asking you to change anything, just adding my 2 cents.

That being said, I think the change on the Dictionary page to add colored tabs is brilliant -- literally and figuratively. It looks great; right at home and very usable. Thanks for all the hard work on this update! I'm enjoying it already.

Cheers,
zhaomao

 

[mikelove]

@zhaomao - thanks! No problem reproducing the file reader issue but I'm not seeing the history one - was this with beta 3? (history saw quite a few internal changes in order to support swiping)

With Night Mode, to be honest, if we make the disabled tabs any brighter it's going to be hard to tell them apart from the enabled tab, and now that we're using Android's subtle underline instead of our previous hit-you-over-the-head inverted background I'm worried that that'll make it insufficiently obvious which tab is selected. We can experiment with a few alternative tint ideas, though - make them gray instead of blue, for example.

 

[HW60]

In the stroke tab, displaying simplified strokes, tapping on the traditional character instead of swiping to see it, Pleco is stopped. I just wanted to report for Beta 2 when I saw Beta 3. Report for Beta 2 sent.

 

[giokve]

In STROKE, Pleco stops when I tap on the headword. Just sent a report.

 

[mikelove]

@HW60 / @giokve - sounds like the same bug; thanks.

 

[HW60]

Added an alert the first time you run a fill-in-the-blanks flashcard test to point out that it's only covering cards of 4 or fewer characters.

That seems to be a one time alert, not much more than a hint in the manual. With several different profiles, in only 4 of them I use fill in the blanks, and only 2 of them may have due cards with more than 4 characters. I still often forget to temporarily change the profile to Self-graded. What about an alert AFTER every fill-in-the-blanks session like:"still xx due cards with more than 4 characters - switch to Self-graded to review" - that is the moment I would like to be reminded.

 

[zhaomao]

@mikelove - this is all done using beta 3... sorry I can't tell you when it might have been introduced, I just started digging in with this beta.

I'll try to reproduce the History deletion bug and post here if I can.

FWIW, I can also reproduce the crash above. Let me know if you want my crash report as well, but you'll have to tell me how . I'm using the APK at the moment, but I can join the Google group if that's the way.

WRT Material Design: I'm referring to the History section, DICT / READER / OCT / SEARCH / CARDS tabs, so my presumption was that those are already *ahem* shades of grey. I'm not fussed either way, it's a relatively minor thing. But again, *ahem* contrasted (I'm not trying to pour on the bad puns, I promise!) with the Dictionary section, DICT / WORD / CHARS / SENTS / STROKE (er, looks like I re-arranged them; you know what I mean) those tabs are much more legible in their faded blue to my aging eyes. <shrug> I understand you can't just make them all like that, so whatever you figure is best. I can always turn up the brightness.

Cheers,
zhaomao

 

[HW60]

Clipboard monitoring within Pleco seems to be active again: during flashcards, after revealing a card, when I copy a character, Pleco switches to the dictionary. As in that case it is easy to continue testing, this does not seem to be a problem.

When I do not return to flashcards at once, but select the character in dictionary to display the definition screen, WORDS (my first column there) is displayed. If I select any character in the WORDS list and copy it, I can no longer continue flashcards: I return until dictionary, then select Continue Test, and a black screen is displayed with an active menu button in the top left.
The only way to continue flashcards is by leaving Pleco with the device back button and to start again.

 

[mikelove]

@HW60 - yeah, it's not much of an alert yet; mostly just to deal with people who are unaware that that happens at all. Counting the number of > 4 length cards skipped would actually be rather tricky at the moment so I'd rather not put any resources into that when we're hoping to remove that restriction altogether soon enough. (and allow arbitrary length cards, though along with that we'll probably want to add an option to set a length above which it'll quietly fall back on self-graded - might be better to do that thorough some sort of category-specific override though)

@zhaomao - it looks like with those the spec may actually have them a bit brighter than we do; we'll see if we can adjust that.

@HW60 again - not seeing this clipboard monitoring issue; can you reproduce this on a new Pleco launch (i.e., reboot your device, open Pleco, go directly into a flashcard test and copy a character)?

With the second issue, how are you copying a word out of the WORDS list? (going to its entry separately?)

 

[zhaomao]

I haven't been able to reproduce the History deletion bug yet; it may have been a special set of circumstances. But given the next report, I may happen upon it again. I'll try to be paying more attention to conditions then.

I wasn't going to mention this initially, but it's happened a couple of times now... I don't have Settings > Search Screen > 'Always save first result' checked, but sometimes the last search gets put back in the search bar and it saves the first result to the history. Not a big deal, but curious that a cleared search came back. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to reproduce it on demand yet, but I'll keep trying. I know I was "minimizing" Pleco and then returning to it (as opposed to killing the task -- that always comes back with everything cleared).

And one last thought on the Material Design tabs vs. Night Mode thing... first, I am not in any way a design guy, so consider these observations and one user's foibles. But I had the thought, "I wonder if the blue DICT/WORDS/CHAR/etc. stand out more to me because of the weight -- that is, they're bolded or what have you." Again, just a thought; it's likely all of my thoughts on how I might like better it break all design principles.

Bug hunting sure is a great way to make sure I'm getting in front of Chinese content and my invaluable learning resource every day!

 

[mikelove]

@zhaomao - that one might relate to whether or not the search screen is unloaded from memory in the interim, we'll investigate.

All of our tabs are bold, but the font for DICT/WORDS/CHARS/etc is the custom font we use for text in dictionary entries, while those tabs and other UI text in general use Google's still-pretty-darn-ugly-even-in-its-ostensibly-refreshed-Android-5-iteration Roboto. So my snarky response to this would be that that probably explains why the former are more readable

 

[HW60]

@HW60@HW60 again - not seeing this clipboard monitoring issue; can you reproduce this on a new Pleco launch (i.e., reboot your device, open Pleco, go directly into a flashcard test and copy a character)?

No, can't reproduce after switching off the tablet.

@HW60
With the second issue, how are you copying a word out of the WORDS list? (going to its entry separately?)

I tap on a word and copy a character then from its entry. Can't reproduce after switching off the tablet.

 

[mikelove]

@HW60 - got it, thanks. Seems like the most likely explanation is that you somehow managed to have two instances of Pleco running at the same time - have to dig into our task management system and figure out how that might be happening.

 

[HW60]

It happened again. After switching off the tablet and starting Pleco again, the same flashcard session came up. I copied the same character, and Pleco switched to the dictionary again. I had to switch to the next flashcard to avoid clipboard monitoring from there.

 

[many]

BTW, the problems with the earlier beta for my 4.1 android pad are fixed, as predicted. Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

@HW60 - thanks, we think we've come up with a way to fix this more reliably now for Beta 4.

@many - glad to hear it!

 

[Taichi]

I often mis-taps edit userdict icon and handwriting icon on the nav bar as they look similar and confusing.

 

[mikelove]

Actually those two buttons shouldn't be visible at the same time now - edit should only be visible when the keyboard is closed. So that's a bug which we'll fix in Beta 4.