The ability to search for the meaning of Chinese words in the pop-up screen

I have posted a similar message before, but the problem is clearer for me now. So I rephrase my question. When you search for a Chinese word, and the Chinese explanation pops up, it is possible to click on the Chinese characters in the popup screen and then get an explanation in English. I cannot do this in the PDF reader (popup screen). I then end up having to write the characters that I am reading on my Pleco PDF reader on my Samsung tablet again on my cell phone Pleco app to get the same explanation of the character, but the searchable version of the dictionary (not the PDF reader). Is it possible to implement this function in the popup screen in the PDF reader (make it a little more intuitive)?
 

Shun

状元
Hi, just to clarify, have you tried the following? In the toolbar (top right in Android), you can tap the "square with diagonal arrow pointing outward" button, which will take you to the dictionary definition that allows you to see pop-up definitions. To return to the text, you tap the Back button. This also works in the Screen Reader.

- Shun
 
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Hi, thanks for this. Well, that worked. However, when I go back one step from the dictionary to the reading part, my PDF loses its zooming. It would be nice to just click directly on Chinese characters in the popup box in the PDF like you can do in a regular dictionary search.
 

Shun

状元
You're welcome! Or you could open the PDF in another app, like the Adobe Acrobat Reader, and use the Screen Reader there. Then, the position you have in the Adobe Reader is preserved on my device. It may use more CPU power/battery life like this, but if you're connected to power, it shouldn't matter.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Ah, the PDF definitely shouldn't be losing its place (unless your device is extremely low on RAM, anyway, but even then it should be saved + restored) - we'll investigate that one.

Directly clicking on characters in the popup is not part of our current plans, though; would be tricky enough to program and questionable enough from a UX perspective that we'd need a lot more requests from users before we could consider it. Our best suggestion for someone in your situation is that when you encounter a Chinese definition you can't understand you switch to an English definition instead; if you turn off the "sticky dict selection" option in Settings / Popup Definition, it will go right back to giving you a Chinese definition as soon as you select another word.
 

Shun

状元
1. I have bought many dictionaries in Pleco and I like it, thus I would prefer to use Pleco as my default PDF reader when reading Chinese texts on my Android tablet. The dictionaries on other PDF readers (like Adobe) cannot beat the mix of all the Pleco Dictionaries when it comes to reading Chinese texts.

That was a misunderstanding: The Screen Reader on Android allows you to translate Chinese characters using Pleco from any app. Just enable it in the Pleco sidebar, then you will get a floating control with which you may enable Pleco's functionality in the Adobe PDF Reader. This could be an temporary solution until the PDF Reader in Pleco remembers its zoom position.

I agree with Mike that nested Pop-up translation bubbles wouldn't look good, nor would the second bubble be large enough. BTW, do you also use the "Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese"? It's a good dictionary from older Chinese up to 1000 CE to English.
 
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I know there are ways around, and that is fine. I am not discussing what is good looking or not, and I am not an expert on software or design. I am just pointing out that the ability to click on the Chinese characters in the popupscreen in the Plect Dictionary is a nice feature. For me, this option would be great to have in the Pleco PDF reader as well. That is my main point. In fact, after I have OCR'd the Chinese PDF file, the Pleco PDF reader works great for me in general (without using the screen OCR). I have 90% of the dictionaries that Pleco offers included the one you referred to. The deeper the Chinese content in the dictionary, the better this is for my usage, as this will increase the amount of words that I can search for in the Chinese texts.
 
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Shun

状元
I would just try it first! So you:

1. Install the Adobe Acrobat Reader
2. In Pleco, activate the "Screen Reader + OCR" option in the Sidebar
3. Open the PDF in the Adobe Acrobat Reader, zoom into the PDF
4. Get pop-up translations by tapping on the Screen Reader button anchored to the screen, use the square button at the top right to get a larger (tappable) view
5. Use the Android Back button at the lower right of the screen to get back to the PDF
6. At the end, go back into Pleco to disable Screen Reader.

In the future, the fix in Pleco's PDF engine will make it even easier, of course.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Understood - can see the need to look up words in Monolingual-dictionary-only definitions, though I'd still rather find a way to do that via the definition screen.
 
If the users could click directly on the words to get explanations in the Monolingual-dictionary, this would mean a lot for those of us who use these dictionaries on a regular basis. Regarding the point that after adding one layer then this might still not be enough, I think this is less of a problem because most of the explanations in the Monolingual-dictionaries uses less advanced Chinese in the explanations. In fact, I have yet to have this issue when I do a single search on my cell phone in the dictionary. It might of course happen, but the chances are small for it not to be any explanation in either English or Chinese. Another example of the importance is when there is an explanation of the Chinese word with two characters, explained with two words (four characters.) Now and then, I am not able to search for this word, as there is one character in one or two of the words that I have searched for that I cannot read. From this viewpoint, Pleco as a tool for reading Chinese texts will be vastly enhanced if adding this feature. Thank you for providing a great product.
 
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One more point is that we can actually learn a lot from the monolingual Chinese dictionaries, as there is a lot of information there about Chinese culture. Thus, the ability to look up words in the definitions would be useful.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Oh, I certainly don't deny that looking up words in monolingual dictionaries is useful, I just think that looking up words within the popup bubble is confusing / bad UX. We have actually fixed the PDF scrolling issue for our next Android update, for what it's worth, so matters should improve considerably in that.
 
That is great. And at least we can look up the Chinese words in the popup bubble in a regular search in the Pleco dictionary, so it is not a big issue.
 
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