Search for Dictionary entry in Flashcards

[Shun]

Hi Mike, one feature I've missed a couple of times is a button to search for flashcards containing a word displayed in the Dictionary, like the magnifying glass to search for dictionary entries containing a word/phrase.

One option is to press the Add Flashcard button twice to get to Card Info, but then ome would have to remove the card from the category one doesn't want it to be in. The other option is to search for the cards in Organize flashcards, but then one would need to type the word in.

Perhaps one could tap-hold the magnifying glass that's already there to get to a menu allowing one to search inside Flashcards.

Is something like this in the works? Thank you.

 

[mikelove]

Type a ! before a search query (even a wildcard one) and you'll see flashcard matches sorted to the top.

 

[Shun]

Thanks, a case of RTFM. Do you plan to include direct access to the Card Info screen in future releases? It could be basically the same as the current Search function inside Organize Flashcards.

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Flashcard Priority Search
This is slow and slightly experimental, but if you prefix a Chinese-English search in Pleco with a ‘!’ character, entries that appear in flashcards will sorted to the top of the result list; this is particularly useful if you want to find a list of flashcards containing a particular word. (we plan to expand on this function greatly in future releases) Entries in your currently selected default flashcard category will come up before other entries in flashcards, so you can use this specifically as a category filter too.

 

[mikelove]

You can get to it by tapping on + and then on "Card Info" - not sure if this is heavily used enough to justify a direct link.

 

[etm001]

Hi,

I was about to post looking for an answer to this exact question, i.e., when searching dictionaries I often want to know if a given word is already in one of my flashcard lists.

I'm not sure I understand how the flashcard priority search works. For example I entered !遲到 as a search term, but the result list looks exactly the same as if I had not entered a '!'. Do I need to enable something in settings? I poked around but didn't see anything.

 

[mikelove]

Do you have a flashcard based on 遲到? No extra setting required, no.

 

[etm001]

Yeah I have a 遲到 flashcard. I'm sure this is user error...the use of the ! does not seem to change my search results. Visually, how are the results supposed to look different than if I had not used an exclamation?

Just as a test I added 工作 as a flashcard, choose the GF dictionary entry, then search for !工作. As far as I can tell the search results don't seem any different, the first dictionary result in the list was ABS (which is how the app is configured). What am I missing? This is on an iPhone 5s latest iOS.

 

[mikelove]

They only look different in that they include words in flashcards on top. So they're less helpful with a character search because that word will probably come up first anyway; they would be more useful if for example you did !gongz since you'd get that 工作 on top (or another flashcard with Pinyin that also matched 'gongz')), and more useful still with a full-text search since you could for example search for !hello and get all of your flashcard words that contain the word 'hello' in one of their dictionary definitions.

 

[etm001]

Hi,

I'm going to add my vote for having something better than the ! operator for determining whether a word is already in one of my flashcard sets. I understand how to use the operator, but in the end the results returned just aren't intuitive and/or don't clearly show me what I'm looking for (perhaps because I do a lot of character searchers).

Hi Mike, one feature I've missed a couple of times is a button to search for flashcards containing a word displayed in the Dictionary, like the magnifying glass to search for dictionary entries containing a word/phrase.

I agree with this suggestion. It would be great if there was a function that would allow me to execute a flashcard search for the currently displayed entry. This function would be available on the definition screen or in the "Favorites" side bar.

 

[mikelove]

Sorry, could you elaborate on that? In what way are they not intuitive? What information are you trying to access that you aren't able to access this way?

If there's a flashcard for a specific entry then you don't even need to do a search, the + icon will change to indicate that the word is in flashcards and you need only tap on that button to get to its Card Info.

 

[Shun]

If I may, I will also try to elaborate on this.

I like to check where I've already encountered a word displayed in the dictionary; since I put cards into categories named after their source, from looking at the categories a word is in, I can find out its source. (as well as Date Added, last tested, test results 等等)

The behavior I think would help me a lot would be exactly the same as if I were inside "Organize Flashcards" and searched for flashcards whose headword contains (~) or exactly matches (=) the word currently displayed in the dictionary (or in the Popup Definition). So Pleco could return the list of flashcards containing (or exactly matching) the word whose definitions are currently displayed in the Dictionary; if I tap on one of the search results, it leads me to the Card Info screen. A tap-hold on the magnifying glass inside the Dictionary could search for the word in Flashcards, a single tap on the magnifying glass would search for the word (and the words/phrases containing it) in the dictionaries.

The !-Search query just shows the dictionary entries that have been made into flashcards first, but they tell me nothing about the flashcards themselves.

The "+" button inside the square border is useful only when the default Flashcard category new cards are being added to is identical to the category the currently displayed word is already in. Otherwise, one would be forced to press the "+" twice, then delete the card again from the current default Flashcard category.

Wouldn't this be a risk-free move? It wouldn't require any user interface changes, it would just add a tap-hold option to one of the UI elements that are already there. Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

Set "Duplicate (non cat)" in Settings / Flashcards to "prompt" and that will let you access Card Info from the + button even if the card isn't currently in the default category. I suppose in theory we could add a tap-hold option to do that even if you want the default + behavior in that case to remain 'add to category,' but we'd need to see some more requests for that before we could consider it.

 

[Shun]

Thanks for this tip, though it wouldn't work for me. A tap-hold on the + button to get to Card Info (and change the default category) sounds like a good option, however. In addition to that, a tap-hold on the magnifying glass to search within Flashcards (cards' headwords containing a word) could round it off. So we have three users speaking out in favor, if there are no users speaking out *against*, that probably means quite a few would vote Yes. Though I leave that to you.

 

[mikelove]

Why wouldn't it work? It pops up the same alert that you get with a duplicated card, but with a button to add to category instead of remove from category - tap on + and you can get to Card Info or get the otherwise-default behavior of adding a card to a category in one tap each.

I'm not wild about adding items to that menu - there are three ways I can think of to do it, all of them problematic:

• Put them at the top of the menu (or in the toolbar for the optional multi-level category selection version), which makes that interface more complicated / confusing.
• Put them at the bottom of the menu, which makes them hard enough to access that nobody will bother with them.
• Hide them by default but show them with an option, which means we have to add yet another off-by-default option that hardly anybody will find / enable, something we're trying very very hard not to do so much anymore.

 

[Shun]

Depending on the text I'm reading, I have to tap the Add Flashcard button quite often, so if I had to use two taps every time I add a flashcard, it would get somewhat inconvenient.

The other option would be not to include a Card Info button on the Multi-level category selection screen, but to allow a tap-hold on the magnifying glass to search for flashcards containing the currently displayed word or identical to it. (with the identical one(s) listed at the top) That way, one could also get to the right Card Info screen with two taps. In the flashcard search results list, one could make a heading "Flashcards containing <<headword>>", and on the next line, one could even include a toggle (Containing/Exact), or similar.

What do you think about this possibility?

 

[mikelove]

Not wild about it, to be honest - too non-obvious. How about a "Card Info" option in the popup bubble when you tap-hold on a dictionary search result with an associated flashcard?

 

[Shun]

That sounds like a great place. It should fit in well with the other options in that bubble. I would be in favor. How about also adding a "Search for Flashcards" option further right in the same bubble? In the flashcard search results list, one could make a heading "Flashcards containing <<headword>>", and on the next line, one could even include a toggle (Containing/Exact), or similar.

 

[mikelove]

That's considerably more complicated to implement - at the very least I'd rather wait until we add example sentence support to flashcards so that we can do it in a more integrated / consistent way.

 

[Shun]

Looking forward to it, thanks.

 

[etm001]

I mentioned in my earlier post in this thread the possibility of a "Flashcard Search" which would take the current (or last selected) dictionary entry as input for the search. Maybe this requires less coding effort and mucking with the UI?