Pleco for Android 3.2

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
No longer a beta, we went ahead and made it the official 3.2 release. Changes:

Beta 3:
  • Added our own crash reporting system, which will automatically collect crashes in copies of Pleco not downloaded from Google Play.
  • Added an option to disable the two-finger tap gesture in handwriting (in response to several complaints that it was making usage with a stylus difficult).
  • Added a "restore dormant custom definitions" command to Batch (to go along with the recently added to command to remove them).
  • Added a "shuffle" option for repeating incorrect cards during a test. This applies both during the test (for cards answered incorrectly within a few seconds of each other) and in the review of remaining incorrect cards at the end of the test.
  • Added text-to-speech playback buttons in example sentences in the Guifan Cidian (which lacked them before).
  • Stopped showing "unknown volume"s in installation volume prompt screens on startup, and made the system automatically choose the good volume in cases where there's only one of them.
  • Worked around a bug in the draggable scrollbar control on Android 4.4 (entirely Google's fault, see https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63545) by forcing the scroll bar to always appear in the main Dictionary and Organize Cards screens on devices running 4.4 or later. The bug appears in the current version of Android L too, but since it's fixed in the latest update to 4.4 we're assuming they also fixed it for the finished release of L and have therefore left the fix disabled on that.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect breakdowns of searches containing a lot of punctuation.
  • Fixed a bug that caused incorrect text to be copied to the clipboard + incorrect position resuming on screen rotate in the document reader.
  • Fixed a few more crashing bugs.

Beta 2:
  • Added an option for Cantonese tone coloring in Settings / Colors. (feedback on the color scheme is welcome)
  • Added an "Auto-generate if missing" option for Cantonese (Settings / Language) which attempts to generate a Cantonese reading for a dictionary entry if it doesn't already have one. This doesn't yet work for searches (we won't let you search for those auto-generated readings, in other words) but it does work pretty much anywhere you might display Cantonese - reader, OCR, etc along with the main dictionary. We add a ± symbol after these auto-generated readings so you can distinguish them from the official ones.
  • Added {} brackets around Cantonese readings in reader / OCR.
  • Added a duplicate card alert when updating a card's definition in Card Info or during a test in such a way that it will end up conflicting with another card.
  • Removed the notice about reviewing incorrect cards at the end of the test if they're set to appear during a test and you're just finishing off the still-pending ones at the end.
  • Added an R at the start of the card counter when reviewing incorrect cards at the end of a test.
  • Made "back to dict, then exit" the default back button behavior.
  • Made continuous autofocus on by default in OCR.
  • Restructured the live OCR capture view to hopefully get it behaving better on the Galaxy S5 and a few other problem devices.
  • Improved search breakdown behavior for searches containing punctuation marks. (in a few cases it was actually breaking down too aggressively and missing out on the fact that there was a larger word, in other cases it was searching across punctuation marks when it shouldn't be)
  • Made the edit entry button always appear in the search bar in two-panel mode (if you have an editable user dictionary installed).
  • Fixed a few more bugs in Yale-romanized Cantonese search and made it now allow (but not do anything special about) 'h'es in syllables.
  • Fixed a bug that kept the entry-specific + button from working in some entries.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause random jumping to incorrect locations on resuming a document reader session.
  • Fixed occasional crashing bugs in text rendering on devices running Android 4.0.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the dictionary switch button in flashcards from working correctly.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause auto-generated strings to ignore terminating 'er's.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause incomplete handwriting input (in partial-screen handwriting mode) to be saved to the search history.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the document reader from correctly recognizing words split by commas.
  • Fixed a few bugs in our Cantonese-only support.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect results to be returned for a few full-text searches (like 'aardvark').
  • Fixed a couple of other assorted crashing bugs.

Beta 1:
  • Added Cantonese support to flashcards; enable this in New Test / Display / Use Cantonese. (paid flashcard add-on only) This applies everywhere - display of cards but also audio playback and even fill-in-the blanks / tone practice. When you enable "Use Cantonese" a prompt will appear to offer to fill in Cantonese readings for cards that don't have them; you can also do this through Organize Cards / Edit / Batch, and assuming that you have Cantonese enabled, Pleco wil automatically attempt to add Cantonese readings for any new cards when you create or import them.
    In import files, to import Cantonese enclose it in {} brackets and put it at the end of the second column (where Pinyin normally goes); for consistency we currently only accept / output Jyutping romanization in flashcard import/export files.
  • Added the option to repeat incorrect cards during a flashcard test instead of at the end of it, via a new "time" option for "repeat incorrect" (in New Test / Commands). This will happen at a fixed but customizable interval after the incorrect answer - we don't try to SRS it (we're unconvinced that that would help). If any incorrect cards are still pending at the end of the test, it will continue cycling through those until you get each of them correct (as with the current repeat incorrect / loop behavior).
  • Added support for efficiently adding example sentences to flashcards. Go into Settings / Definition screen and turn on "+ button for each example" to enable that; after you do, a flashcard + button will appear at the end of every example sentence (if it includes English).
  • Added new commands in Edit / Organize Cards / Batch to automatically generate missing simplified, traditional, Mandarin, and Cantonese readings for cards. Also added a option to Import Cards to invoke this behavior in imports. We also added options to delete the current contents of those fields (in case you find yourself with some Cantonese you want to remove, say), to remove hidden custom definitions (we leave those in your database if you remap cards to the dictionary), and to swap the simplified / traditional fields (in case you import some cards incorrectly and don't catch it right away).
  • Made Cantonese work better when the Mandarin pronunciation mode is set to "blank" (so that there's no Mandarin displayed at all) - Cantonese readings + audio buttons should now appear correctly in that case.
  • Made multiple-choice choices appear in a smaller font / prompt for confirmation (if you've enabled the relevant option in Test Settings) for characters and Pinyin/Zhuyin (not just English) if the text is long enough to need it.
  • Added a tap-hold dictionary selection menu for the flashcard dictionary change button.
  • Dramatically boosted speed of some types of Chinese search through a couple of optimizations to our database access system.
  • Added a more powerful text segmentation system (something to break long strings of Chinese text up into their component words). It's still somewhat experimental, so for now we only deploy it by default for the above automatic text generation features in flashcards, but if you turn on "Intelligent segmentation" in Settings / Search Engine it will try to use it for multi-character breakdown searches too.
  • Made the custom flashcard / user dictionary entry screens from the popup reader + OCR fill in opposite character set / Pinyin / definition just as the ones from search results now do.
  • Made searches with trailing * characters no longer sort by length.
  • Made flashcard category tags now appear for all of the cards for a particular dictionary entry (in the event that you have duplicate cards).
  • Added support for radical characters to our "enhanced" handwriting recognizer (download the updated version of that in Add-ons, then enable radical recognition in Settings / Input Methods / Handwriting).
  • Fixed a bug that could cause laggy / halting scrolling through search results on some devices.
  • Fixed a bug that made it possible to deselect the text input boxes in tone practice tests and made it possible for tones to fail to enter correctly when you did.
  • Fixed a bug that caused text-to-speech to fail to acknowledge / pause for punctuation marks.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the flashcard "convert to dict-based card" command to yield inexact matches.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause wacky popup reader behavior for strings of text that contained wildcard characters.
  • Fixed a bug that made apostrophes before bolded headword pinyin in example sentences appear bold when they weren't supposed to.
  • Fixed a bug that made headers in user dictionary entries list "PY" even when displaying Zhuyin text.
  • Fixed a few bugs in parsing of Yale romanized Cantonese text (though we're still working on the 'h' problem).
  • Fixed a few crashing bugs.
 
Last edited:

HW60

状元
When I copy the flashcard db of my 10.1 tablet to dropbox and from there to my 4.7 smartphone, the settings in New Test/More Settings/Display/Card Text/Headword size and Definition size are managed by Pleco in a strange way: I have font size 60 and 32 on the tablet, and after the download of the flashcard db I get 120 and 40 on the smartphone - and I have to change 9 active profiles. I remember that I used font size 120 on the tablet some months ago, and we discussed the problem at that time.

I think that it would be a good idea if Pleco would store the device specific information on the device and would not override the settings, when the flashcard db is changed. Even a change of the font size by Pleco "in the right direction", e.g. smaller on the smartphone than on the tablet, would not be an ideal solution - I would prefer to decide on the font size with the settings myself.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We actually do store tablet and non-tablet font size settings separately now - it sounds like the old settings may have carried over from an old version where we didn't. But if you change those profiles on the phone, then move your database back to the tablet and restore on that you should find that the tablet's font sizes are preserved.
 

HW60

状元
I do flashcards normally on the tablet now. When I change the settings on the phone and download the same (new) dropbox copy of my tablet, the new settings are the same old 120 and 40. I could try to delete the actual version on the phone and install again, if you think it is worth trying.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
The settings for both are kept in the database, it's just that we only access the ones for your current device. So if you want to permanently use those smaller settings on your phone then you would need to change them on your phone and then restore that on the tablet - when they come back to the phone again you should find that they're still smaller.
 

HW60

状元
I am just installing the phone - will take some time. What is my current device? I would like to use 60/32 on my tablet permanently and from time to time copy the tablet flashcards to the phone and there use a smaller font without always changing the settings. I will not often copy the flashcards from my phone to the tablet.
 

HW60

状元
Now I have Pleco fresh on my phone without most of my dictionaries and am somewhat confused: I got a new ID, found all my flashcards after the download from dropbox, but no profiles and no settings.
 

HW60

状元
I found the old ID, but still have no profiles. Are the part of the flashcard db or were they locally stored and are gone now?
 

HW60

状元
Thanks and sorry for the many posts - the flashcard transfer now works in both directions without changing the font size.
 

LinZheFu

进士
As I noted in a separate post just now, my user dictionary vanished with the update. Don't think that should happen. But the problem of crashing caused by the handwriting tool has gone away. Yay!
 

LinZheFu

进士
On the Android, the scrolling feature inside of flashcards now works again. Thanks! The slider expands when touched and I can then move it to scroll down.
 

Taichi

榜眼
Hi, I noticed that popup doen't work for entries containing ','
In case of the attached screenshot, popup should be "江山易改,本性难移"
 

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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
That one's a deliberate tradeoff - we stop on punctuation boundaries because the alternative (searching for words that cross them) leaves a lot more erroneous matches. I suppose in theory we could allow punctuation if there is a corresponding punctuation mark in the original headword, but the use of commas in cases like this is very inconsistent.
 
When can we expect the Amazon app store version to get updated to 3.2? My friends and I would like to buy Cantonese add-ons, with the 20+ bucks we each have on that store.
I know you can buy them on the version up there now, but 3.2 fixed many of the bugs on my friends Samsung devices.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We submitted it days ago, it's up to Amazon when they approve it.

You could always buy them on Amazon and then migrate your Registration ID to the GPlay version.
 
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