My two cents - sentence/phrase study is the way to go.
With regard to Pleco support, I am looking for guidance. I realize that what I am writing about might be off the beaten path of Pleco's intended application. However, as Pleco stands now, the application is very useful, but I would like to optimize the settings.
Specifically, referencing the figure below.
Figure 1, Row 1 - First row displays the sample sentence. The Hanzi has been copied to the pasteboard.
Figure 1, Row 2 - The second row is successive screenshots of the resulting displays from Pleco, as automatically read in by Pleco.
My subjective good/bad comments are as follows:
The Good:
- I really like the fact that the words, when brought in, are broken up line by line. So I can quickly scroll the the words existing in the sentence, see the meaning, and then bail out of Pleco. I use this all the time.
- There is no need to press on a word unless I really wanna dig into it. I get the first two lines of definition that is typically enough for many cases.
- All the power of Pleco is there as needed to drill down.
Before I present the bad, it should be said that the picture provides a very nice example of a Pleco readout, where it is not cluttered, with 你 and 他 (for example) is not being listed a bunch of times from different dictionaries, although there is some superfluous definitions at the very end. This leads me to believe there is a setting that I have either set or unset such that now I get multiple definitions for the same word listed consecutively. With that said, I will list my current situation as below, with the hope that I can get the settings better arranged to support how I am currently utilizing the pasteboard reader.
The Bad:
- Hanzi characters like 的 wind up with multiple meanings (e.g., 20 different definitions are provided). They can be quickly scrolled through but I really do not need to see any of them as I know the definition already. Scrolling through is still easier than poking at a Reader Screen.
- Many of the less common words could have multiple meanings presented (e.g., one definition from each dictionary multiplied by a number of dictionaries).
- If I scroll to the end of the word list in Pleco, it has a lot of additional words where the last word in the list is part of that word (or maybe there are other things going on there). The example shows a bit of that. I only want exact matches presented.
- Right now, the Reader pasteboard trigger is limited to 15 or 16. But I only utilize the Reader for larger readings (e.g., articles). Anything below can be served just fine by the dictionary pasteboard lookup like the one presented below. Feeding study sentences to Pleco creates a problem as the sentences might take up as much as 30 Hanzi.
What I was hoping was to find out what Pleco settings might better optimize the experience. For instance:
- Is there a way simply get dictionary results from one dictionary (e.g., ABC) without turning all of the dictionaries off. (maybe dictionary group utilization). Or, have Pleco simply display the first two matches to the words, be they in one dictionary or across more than one? Some words have more than one meaning, I get that. But after two presented definitions, if it still does not look obvious, then I can choose to press on the words and get the full definitions. Bottom line is that I want a good chance of getting to the meanings of the words that have been fed via the pasteboard, but I do not need the kitchen sink. I can always drill down in Pleco if I am not satisfied with the presented definition.
- Is there a way to stop Pleco from looking up words like 的 in and of itself (but not cases where it is part of another word or phrase) so that they are simply not displayed (or only displayed once)?
- Would it be possible to give the user more ranged on how many characters will trip the reader mode, say to additional levels of 32, 48, 64? Or perhaps have it so that the user can enter an integer?
- Is it possible to only get exact matches presented? I thought I ran across some setting in Pleco that might do this awhile back, but I unfortunately now cannot find it.
