User dictionary - enable full-text search

[gbrooker]

I have been able to create a User dictionary by importing a word list to Flashcards, which creates cards with definitions from the dictionaries, then exporting the flashcards back to a text file, and finally reimporting the exported flashcard data into a user dictionary.

Please let me know if there is a simpler way.

However, there seem to be two problems
- full-text search does not work for the user dict. i.e if I switch to english mode, the user dict disappears from the possible dictionaries that can be selected
- when exporting the flash cards to a text file, the paragraph spacing of the definitions added from the dictionaries is lost.
-when editing a word definition from the imported user dictionary, links to other words in the dictionary (see xxx) appear as strange characters

I searched the forum, and saw on the android forum that someone had a similar problem, and it was resolved by pressing 'Enable full text search" for his user dictionary, however after carefully reviewing all the settings and searching the manual, I cant find that option in iOS pleco 2.2

So Q1. How do I get pleco to search the english definitions in my Chinese to english dictionary, like it does for the downloaded ones ?

Q2. can i transfer a saved user dictionary PDB to another iPhone, and add it as a user dictionary ?

Last question, Q3. wouldn't formatting be better preserved if a dictionary could be imported from an XML file instead of text ? I couldn't find any way to do that either.

I'm using pleco 2.2.13 for iOS 6.1.2

Thanks
Guy

 

[mikelove]

So Q1. How do I get pleco to search the english definitions in my Chinese to english dictionary, like it does for the downloaded ones ?

That's not supported on iOS yet, in fact it's highly experimental on Android - we'll release it on iOS as soon as we get the bugs worked out, but with stuff like this we usually try to test on Android first, since if we screw something up on Android we can release a bug fix immediately (rather than waiting 2 weeks for Apple to review it). Search engine bugs can be subtle and pervasive, so we tend to be really really cautious about search improvements - until we launched our Android app we basically went 3 years without making any substantive changes to the search engine (had not been significantly revised since Pleco 2.0 came out on Palm and Windows Mobile).

Q2. can i transfer a saved user dictionary PDB to another iPhone, and add it as a user dictionary ?

Sure - use the "Backup Database" command in the user dictionary's screen in Manage Dicts to back it up, then transfer it to the other device, go into Manage Dicts on that and tap Add New / Load Existing to load it.

Last question, Q3. wouldn't formatting be better preserved if a dictionary could be imported from an XML file instead of text ? I couldn't find any way to do that either.

The XML import/export format actually doesn't do any more formatting than the text format does at the moment - the extra data in the XML relates to flashcard-specific stuff like score histories and category assignments.

To be honest, the basic scenario you're describing isn't really something we've designed for - the intent with user dictionaries was that they'd supplement the existing dictionaries with new words and with usage notes / additional meanings on the old words, not that they'd give you a way to modify existing dictionary entries. Once you've transferred an entry to a user dictionary, you lose the benefit of any further updates/improvements we make to that entry, a sting people will feel particularly acutely when our new type design (finally) shows up and the difference in formatting quality between an exported user dictionary entry and an official Pleco-supplied one gets more dramatic.

Is there something you're trying to achieve with this other than adding additional notes / meanings to entries? Perhaps if we understood your goals better we could come up with a better solution for you.

 

[gbrooker]

Many thanks Mike,

My ultimate goal is to have a dictionary that only contains the words i have learnt during my studies. I often find myself in a Chinese conversation scratching my brain for a word i know i know, but it stays on the tip of my tongue.

Pleco's dictionaries are so extensive, i am rarely able to find the exact word i want to use, hence my desire to create a limited dictionary, that i can update each week with new words i have learnt.

I was planning to start with the dictionary built using the flashcard import of the wordlist, then curate it, perhaps by simplifying some definitions, or by adding some sentences i have learnt using those words.

In other words, i want to make my own custom dictionary.

My school is interested in the idea, and is considering making PDB's for each block of lessons themselves, to give to students.

It all seems to work well except for the problems i mentioned above; no english searching of the dict made this way, and the formatting of definitions are messed up.

Is there another way to make a dictionary that pleco would search and display in the same way as the the official ones ?

Cheers
Guy

 

[mikelove]

My ultimate goal is to have a dictionary that only contains the words i have learnt during my studies. I often find myself in a Chinese conversation scratching my brain for a word i know i know, but it stays on the tip of my tongue.

Then would it maybe be more useful if we offered an option to filter search results to words you've added to flashcards (or to a subset of flashcard categories)? It would slow things down a good bit, but it should be reasonably doable, and that way you'd be able to access every dictionary's take on the word you're interested in instead of just one.

It all seems to work well except for the problems i mentioned above; no english searching of the dict made this way, and the formatting of definitions are messed up.

Well the English searching should be fixed in the next major update, and the formatting I believe we've cleaned up a bit too (more effectively stripping out private-use characters).

Is there another way to make a dictionary that pleco would search and display in the same way as the the official ones ?

Unfortunately no, the only way to add your own dictionary to Pleco is via the user dictionary system.

 

[gbrooker]

Thanks again Mike,

that is very clear, and helpful. Looking forward to the new version.

In the formatting improvements you mention for the next major version, I hope there will there be a way to indicate a NewLine character in the definitions somehow; the main reason for the mess up of the definitions when building a user dictionary from flashcards is that when exporting to text, the line feeds are lost, so once imported back in again, the nicely formatted dictionary defs are all compacted together, making them difficult to read. There are one or two issues with special characters too, but the overriding problem is the paragraph spacing.

Cheers
Guy

 

[mikelove]

In the formatting improvements you mention for the next major version, I hope there will there be a way to indicate a NewLine character in the definitions somehow; the main reason for the mess up of the definitions when building a user dictionary from flashcards is that when exporting to text, the line feeds are lost, so once imported back in again, the nicely formatted dictionary defs are all compacted together, making them difficult to read. There are one or two issues with special characters too, but the overriding problem is the paragraph spacing.

You can actually insert those manually with the Unicode private-use character 0xEAB1 - search the forums for "EAB1" and you'll see a number of mentions of this technique.