Flashcards: How to see Eng/Pinyin & enter Chinese characters

Based on a short play this morning, the flashcard implementation is superb. However, due to all the available options, it took me the best part of an hour to work out how to enter Chinese characters in response to Pinyin and/or English definitions.

If you can't find it and don't have time to read the manual, here's a quick and dirty guide to get you going:

1. Create at least one flashcard, if you haven't already.

2. In the main Flashcard screen, tap Flashcard Testing:



3. Tap Test type:



4. When the options are presented, select Fill-in-the-blanks. You will be taken back to the Flashcard Testing screen.

5. Tap Prompt for (directly beneath the Test type option; yep, it wasn't there in step 3!).

6. When the options are presented, select Headword. You will be taken back to the Flashcard Testing screen.

7. Tap Begin Test Session. The test will look rather like this:



I've not written this instruction to cut Pleco's lunch, as it were, but I really hope it helps those of you who (like me) couldn't find the function and panicked.

Adam

Thanks for this - I freaked a little when I thought at first that the software couldn't do this! It isn't exactly trivial to set up, but all's well that end's well...
How do you delete the current character being inputted if you make a mistake? In simple HWR you do simultaneous 2-finger tap, but in flashcards addon this simply seems to submit current drawing (whatever it is).

Am i being supid?

Sean

You can do that with the backspace button - that's a part of the UI we're not entirely happy with, but we figured fast input / answer processing had to be the #1 priority, and having to tap on a button at the bottom of the screen when you write a character incorrectly seems like a worthwhile tradeoff for not having to tap on a button at all when you write it correctly.

Re: Flashcards: How to see Eng/Pinyin & enter Chinese charac

I mite have found a bug in the Fill-in-the-blanks mode for headword: you can't turn off the input with the button at the top (button with CN word for "character") - i.e. you can't select back or skip or anything covered by the input while handwriting input is operational. Or is this behaviour normal?

Re: Flashcards: How to see Eng/Pinyin & enter Chinese charac

What about if you tap on the "Done" button, does that hide the input?

Re: Flashcards: How to see Eng/Pinyin & enter Chinese charac

pleco10 said:

I mite have found a bug in the Fill-in-the-blanks mode for headword: you can't turn off the input with the button at the top (button with CN word for "character") - i.e. you can't select back or skip or anything covered by the input while handwriting input is operational. Or is this behaviour normal?

Click to expand...

Do you mean the 字 button? If so, it's not a bug.

Two HWR interfaces are available in the flashcard screen: the answer interface, which you use to answer fill-in-the-blanks questions, and a scratchpad, which you can use to practise handwriting without committing to an answer. Both these interfaces can't be active at once.

The 字 button only toggles the scratchpad. When you're in fill-in-the-blanks mode, the 字 button doesn't do anything because the answer interface is on by default. If you turn off the answer interface, you can then turn on and off the scratchpad.

To turn off the answer interface, tap an empty answer box when the blue ring is around it. Tap an answer box again to turn the answer interface back on.

In case that's not clear:



See the two boxes at the top, with 大 and 小 in them? They're the answer boxes you tap to toggle the answer interface; 小 has the blue ring around it, so you'd tap that.

(As Mike said, you can also tap 'Done', but as 'Done' implies something else I recommend tapping the answer boxes instead.)