Pleco for Android 3.2.64 Bug Report: dictionary newline character '' does not work

Hello everyone,

I just made a new user dictionary for pleco with example sentences for me to comprehend the meaning and usage of the character better. While implementing these sentences I wanted to seperate the examples each in a new line, because having the sentences all crammed together makes them quite combersome to decipher. Furthermore, dictionary newline character '' does not seem to change anything in the android version, while in the iOS version the newline character '' does make a new line -- see attachments with examples of Android and iOS. Also adding two or three newline characters '' does not make a difference. Obviously, just hitting enter in the custom defintion of the user dictionary also doesn't create a new line, so I'm stuck with the crammed together format of the entry. Shun, one of the most active members of this site, notified me that there had already been the same problem in 2013 in Pleco version 2.4.10 (https://plecoforums.com/threads/pleco-for-android-2-4-10-bug-report-thread.3686/#post-29998 )

• Has this bug since not been able to be solved or is it now just resurfacing in the current version?
• Does anyone know about a suitable workaround to create a new line in the Android version of Pleco?

Responses will be really appreciated!
Thanks for reading!

Best wishes,
Perelyn

Have you tried inserting that custom newline character into the definition editor screen on Android? (rather than using it in the import file)

Hi Mike, hi Perelyn,

I found that the Android version displays the newlines correctly in the Card Info screen, just in a Flashcard session, it will condense multiple newlines into one. @Perelyn, could you try copying and pasting the special newline character in the definition editor just to check if it changes anything? I also attach the text file that was imported.

However, if it's too much of a hassle to fix, it isn't really a big problem, is it, @Perelyn?

Thanks, regards,

Shun

mikelove said:

Have you tried inserting that custom newline character into the definition editor screen on Android? (rather than using it in the import file)

Click to expand...

Hi Mike,

Yes, I have tried that. Unfortunately to no avail. It makes no difference.

Shun said:

Hi Mike, hi Perelyn,

I found that the Android version displays the newlines correctly in the Card Info screen, just in a Flashcard session, it will condense multiple newlines into one. @Perelyn, could you try copying and pasting the special newline character in the definition editor just to check if it changes anything? I also attach the text file that was imported.

However, if it's too much of a hassle to fix, it isn't really a big problem, is it, @Perelyn?

Thanks, regards,

Shun

Click to expand...

Hi Shun,

You are right! I didn't notice that before. You had a keen eye there!

Sadly also, with your suggestions to copy-paste and add more special new line characters in the definition editor, makes no difference. Is this what you meant? (see in the two attachments)

Sure, it isn't huge problem, but it is annoying enough to consistently bother me. But maybe I'm just easily bothered...

Kind regards,
Perelyn

We'll look into this for our next bug fix update - not exactly sure when that'll be, probably at whatever point we hit a critical mass of Android 10 bugs (Android 10 is slowly making its way out to more OEMs' devices and we're finding more obscure bugs as it does).

Thanks!

Appreciate it!

No luck reproducing this, sadly - works perfectly here, both with the special newline character and with regular newlines inserted into the edit card screen.

What version of Android are you on? And do you have the latest version of Pleco?

Hm weird...

My phone is running Android 9 Pie. The Pleco version on my phone is 3.2.69, which is as far as I know that latest version.

What is even weirder, is that by accident I just found one single case in which a regular newline works and is shown in the dict entry.

See in the attachments for what I mean. The last line in the user dict entry for 另外 actually shows the new line. However, when I go check in the edit card screen, all sentences are separated by either a special newline character AND a regular newline or are only separated by a regular newline. So the last sentence is not any different than the other ones above. Interestingly enough, the last line, that actually appears separated from the ones above does not contain a special newline character.

So I experimented around with it a bit. I swapped the last line with a line above, to see if that other line would also appear as a new line. But back in the dict screen, the swapped line did not appear as a new line, but as usual, all lines crammed together. And when I swapped the two lines back to where they originally were, the new line reappeared... I don't understand this. It is completely inconsistent and unpredictable.

Mike, can you make sense of this?
I thought I'd share this with you, as it might give you some insight to what the problem could be..

Thanks for your thoughts!

Best,
Perelyn

Do other Pleco entries display normally, i.e., is this problem confined only to your entries?

Try this code sequence instead:

Start of paragraph: 
End of paragraph: 

Does that work any better?

Yes, other Pleco dict entries look completely normal. Only my USR Dict, where I loaded the sentence snippets into, has this problem.

Sadly your proposed solution also doesn't work any better -- see attachments.

What about if you insert an extra   between paragraphs? (start and end of the old part plus a space in between)

Do you mean it in the way I did it in the attachments below?

In case this is what you meant: It sadly didn't change anything either...

Hmm... well in that case I'm not sure what else to suggest; if I have any other ideas I'll let you know but otherwise all I can suggest is waiting for 4.0 and its new Markdown-based user dictionary entry formatting system.

Alright, I nonetheless appreciate you trying to help me.
I'm very looking forward to version 4.0!


This character is still broken on 4.0, it's working on my phone but when i wanted to install a few dictionaries for my teacher it didn't break the lines.

Sorry, 4.0 only supports it when converting from 3.0. In 4.0 you should be able to quote a multi-line column in a text import file and have it come through with the newlines intact - let me know if that doesn’t work and we can check the file to see if it brings out a bug we don’t know about.

Honestly, I have no idea how to quote a multi-line column in a text import file.

A \n might work too, though you might need to put 3 spaces between them if you’re doing more than one.