2.0.2 Beta 2 Bug Report / Feedback Thread

[caesartg]

Dear Mike

Two things - the free answer pronunciation test - the four boxes that appear for the pinyin: on WM machines the box isn't big enough to hold the 7 characters that can make up a pinyin pronunciation (E.g. zhuang4) instead just showing the first 6 characters.

Also, about stroke orders again - it seems that the Taiwanese/traditional stroke orders are different for some parts of characters. If you remember, I was talking about the 或 part of 國 before. Please check this page from the R.O.C. Ministry of Education and this suggests that these characters are written to a slightly different stroke order. http://www.edu.tw/files/site_content/M0 ... 4.htm?open So, perhaps the traditional stroke order data isn't as buggy as was thought (although I found only one that was definitely wrong - 禮).

Obviously, depending on how you've implemented it, there could be a simple solution in allowing the selection of one or other of the stroke order diagrams (assuming you have two sets of complete data and the traditional set isn't a sub-set) based upon how a test has been set up and if referred to from the dictionary, based on whether the simplified or traditional character option has been selected. Just now, when traditional is selected, you seem to have a mix and match of the simplified and the traditional character stroke order diagrams. Whereas when simplified is selected, it just sticks with the simplified set. Because I study traditional, I keep getting marked wrong for changing my basic methods of writing from one way and then wrong again, and so it's a bit frustrating. There seem to be quite a few characters that differ in the stroke order for the parts that they are composed of.

If you haven't implemented it with two mapped sets of stroke order diagrams for the unicode characters that look the same in both simplified and traditional rendering, then it's probably a bit of a bugger of a job to correct.

Just in case it makes a difference, I set up my stroke order testing flashcards using Ryan Kellogg's 5000 character files at viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1674 and these were mapped to the unihan dictionary. Perhaps there's a way of forcing simplified/traditional at the import stage and perhaps that's where my mixed traditional/simplified character problem has arisen from???

Best

Ben

 

[mikelove]

radioman - dug out a T5 here and I'm seeing the same problem; not sure what might be causing it, though, perhaps it's something to do with the size of the application file. If we can't fix it, though, there are other ways you could relaunch Pleco while it's already running - bunch of third-party app launcher menu utilities out there, McPhling is one I used for a long time and TealLaunch is another good one. (there may be some free ones available too, I'm a bit out of touch with that market now)

caesartg - you're right about the 7-character issue, not sure how this didn't come up before - easy enough to fix, though, we can just knock a pixel or two off of the font size.

With stroke order, the characters are indeed drawn from two separate databases, but to save space we only store one version of each character (and lump them all together in a single database table), so it would take a bit of work to get them separated. Pleco doesn't treat characters at all differently depending on whether they're simplified or traditional (since many of them can be both) so it's not a matter of a flashcard having been somehow created in such a way as to make Pleco think it's from one character set if it's actually from another - there's only one diagram in the database for any given character. (and the new database we licensed lumps everything together, renders them all with consistent stroke order for each component)

Interesting that that site lists it that way, but checking the Traditional-character-only "Read and Write Chinese" just now it seems to put the dot last. And even within the mainland there are often significant disagreements about characters' stroke orders, so I think this isn't so much a Taiwan issue as an everyone-hasn't-standardized-on-this-yet issue - writing 國 with the dot last isn't *incorrect* in Taiwan, like writing it as 国 is, so I wouldn't tend to think that one needs to go to the trouble of learning two different stroke order systems along with two different character sets. (if a Chinese teacher marks you incorrect on a test for writing 國 with the dot last, you can refer her to the many books / websites / etc that list it that way)

 

[ben_gb]

OK. If he shoots back with a specific suggestion (i.e., a particular Windows message that we should be responding to in a certain way) let me know, it's certainly possible we might have overlooked something.

A quick follow-up on this. The Pocketshield guy has put out a beta which (based on a quick test) appears to have fixed the problem.
Sorry for the hassle for you!

Ben

 

[caesartg]

Dear Mike

What you're saying about a new database you've licensed lumping it all together will clearly be the solution.

By the way, the Batch flashcard 'remove category' function doesn't appear to do anything. I've tried it on a number of occasions and it never managed to remove the category. The cases when I used it would have left the cards 'uncategorized' (I.e. Removing their sole category) if that makes a difference. In my case, I was always able to achieve the eventual end through either manually removing the category one-by-one if there were few flashcards to process, or through simply deleting the category.

Cheers

Ben

 

[mikelove]

ben_gb - great! And no problem, it's always worth checking on these things - even if we don't manage to fix the original bug we might discover / fix another one in the process.

caesartg - that's odd... does it pop up a message prompting you to confirm that you want to remove the category, or does it just sit there and not do anything?

 

[caesartg]

It asked to confirm, counted through them but no impact - so it looked like it was busy but didn't actually remove the category. I tried running it several times and then simply decided to delete the category seeing as I wanted to remove all cards from it anyway.

I just tested again and it worked fine with a small batch and large batch so it seems to be working for me just now. I'm pretty sure I wasn't dreaming it. The first time, I had imported a 5000 strong set of characters and had been categorising them this way and that and then noticed the problem. The last time, yesterday, I'd shortly before imported maybe a total of 10000 or so flashcards and been processing them, deleting them, reimported them using different dictionaries and different allow duplicates settings and batch adding them to categories. The only time I used the batch remove category feature was when I was juggling a huge number of imported flashcards. Therefore, I suspect that perhaps something maxes out/runs out of memory, maybe the sql engine and the error isn't reported - if so, it isn't a major problem and if it happens again, I'll try and collect the details (although I don't think I'll be importing juggling so many flashcards in the near future, having set it up the way I want already).

 

[stisev]

1) Crashing crashing crashing!: I've been testing out the 2.0.2 beta, trying to check out its new features. Am I the only one who is experience crashes galore? There's no specific thing I'm doing in general. It's just crashing randomly it seems. I never tried beta1, but 2.0 was rock solid for me. Sometimes, it's in flashcards, sometimes it's in the main dictionary screen, sometimes it is in the input dialogue. It just quits. This is on an Dell axim X51 (WM6).

2) Also,

To Rename a category on Windows Mobile, tap on the category name to select it, then tap on it again and the name will become editable; you can then proceed to type in the new name. On Palm OS, select the category and tap on the Rename button to rename it.

IMO - on Windows Mobile -- that's really not very user friendly behavior. I would recommend going the Palm route and having a "rename" button. I'm an end user and this was not intuitive to me. :-(


3) When is the next beta release planned (approximately) mike? How many betas will there be to final release?

 

[radioman]

This will be likely unhelpful, but I have experienced some crashing as well under this beta. Not enough to concern me, but will keep an eye on it.

 

[radioman]

Found 'em, tried 'em, and they work - but not like the the original situation with the home button. For some reason, access thorugh the built-in "soft-home" button would COMPLETELY restart the application. These other programs are just too smart. They see the program is running, so they do not reinitiate the program. Neither will assigning Pleco to a hardware button. But... I have a two button workaround. I have one button that is never assigned in Pleco, and so anytime can hit it to go to favorites, and then another HW button assigned to Pleco, so I just sequentially hit the keys - more time and effort but it gets me there. (i.e., don't spend development time on this one!). Thanks for the timely responses.

radioman - dug out a T5 here and I'm seeing the same problem; not sure what might be causing it, though, perhaps it's something to do with the size of the application file. If we can't fix it, though, there are other ways you could relaunch Pleco while it's already running - bunch of third-party app launcher menu utilities out there, McPhling is one I used for a long time and TealLaunch is another good one. (there may be some free ones available too, I'm a bit out of touch with that market now)

 

[mikelove]

caesartg - could be a transaction size issue, yeah - on Palm especially that has a tendency to run out of memory from time to time. (reason #437 why we never should have tried to use SQLite on Palm OS)

stisev - tough to nail that crashing down without more specifics, but we'll keep testing at least. Not sure when the next beta will be out, or how many more betas there'll be - really depends on how long it takes to fix all these bugs (and how pressured we're feeling to spend most of our time on iPhone).

I see your point on category renaming, but lots of other things in Windows work this way (file names, for example) so I don't think it's really that unfriendly. And any time we can possibly find a way to avoid adding a button to an already-confusing dialog box like Manage Categories, we're always happy to do so.

radioman - saw that launching crash on our T5 too, actually, though I can't say it's a big priority to fix since launching Pleco when it's already open isn't something a lot of people do (and indeed isn't even possible using most other Palm OS app-launch methods - if anything, it's a bug in the T5 that even makes this possible at all).

 

[radioman]

On a main dictionary view, looking for the list, I somehow have the phone in a mode where there is no list. I think it is toggling somehow, as an arrow appears at the bottom of the screen or the typically bold scroll bar gets really thin (like down to one pixel) as I turn the list off and on.

I have a fairly complex setup right now, and do not want to move everything back to default if I can avoid it. Open to any ideas.

 

[mikelove]

"Reset to defaults" would be my suggestion, unfortunately there's not really any other way to fix that. Though it really shouldn't be happening anymore, there are like 9 different checks we've added over the years as people have kept reporting problems with this... guess it's time for #10. You could also try expanding / shrinking the Graffiti area with the screen in different orientations / list in different positions and see if any of that jogs it back to where it's supposed to be.

 

[ben_gb]

Something I've noticed is that there might still seem to be some problems with memory usage, or possibly some other resource.

I just switched to using a Diamond 2, and I find that some things don't work properly when Pleco is running (I did have similar oddities with the Touch HD, but I had so many other programs installed on it, I thought the problems were likely to be related to those). One repeatable example is the image viewer (called "Album"). If Pleco is running, the image viewer just shows a blank screen when you try to view a picture (though the album menus all work). If I close Pleco and try again, the image comes up fine.

Pleco is the only non-standard application running. This might not actually be a memory issue, because the memory usage is only showing as 60% with pleco and the album program running, and the "Memory" section under settings shows 75MB free.

This is running with Beta 2a.

Regards,
Ben

 

[mikelove]

Hmm... what about storage memory, how are you doing on that? SQLite creates some temporary files while databases are open, so that could have some bearing on this. Other than that... have you changed any settings from their default options? Is the "from taskbar icon" Instant Access option enabled by any chance?

 

[ben_gb]

Hmm... what about storage memory, how are you doing on that? SQLite creates some temporary files while databases are open, so that could have some bearing on this. Other than that... have you changed any settings from their default options? Is the "from taskbar icon" Instant Access option enabled by any chance?

Hi Mike,

There is plenty of spare storage (around 250MB). I am using the taskbar icon Instant Access option, however.

Ben

 

[radioman]

Does that affect card scores, category settings, etc.?

"Reset to defaults" would be my suggestion, unfortunately there's not really any other way to fix that. Though it really shouldn't be happening anymore, there are like 9 different checks we've added over the years as people have kept reporting problems with this... guess it's time for #10. You could also try expanding / shrinking the Graffiti area with the screen in different orientations / list in different positions and see if any of that jogs it back to where it's supposed to be.

 

[mikelove]

ben_gb - turn off taskbar Instant Access, exit and reopen Pleco and see if that helps - that feature really doesn't get along with TouchFlo (not a problem with IA in general, just the taskbar icon) and in fact we've thought a few times about removing / disabling it.

radioman - no, it doesn't change anything at all in your flashcard database - it just resets your preferences, including ones set within the main screen like the width of that list. The only flashcard things it would reset are the preferences-panel flashcard settings and the default / last used category and profile. (not the information in them, just which profile shows up first when you Open Flashcards).

 

[ben_gb]

ben_gb - turn off taskbar Instant Access, exit and reopen Pleco and see if that helps - that feature really doesn't get along with TouchFlo (not a problem with IA in general, just the taskbar icon) and in fact we've thought a few times about removing / disabling it.

Mike,
It doesn't seem to be related to the IA feature. I turned this off, rebooted and tried again, but still the Album just displays a blank/black screen if Pleco is running.

(I do find the IA taskbar feature quite handy as a quick way to go to Pleco, so it would be a shame to lose it....so far, I haven't noticed any problems with it when using Touchflo.)

 

[mikelove]

Hmm... well then I don't know what might be causing it. If you have any more information on this please let me know, but unless we can manage to reproduce the problem it'd be really tough to fix - problems like this can be caused by just about anything.

 

[mfcb]

long time no problems with pleco for me, then i read about ben_gb and his "lets-say-touchflo-related-album-shows-no-pictures-with-pleco-running"-problem on htc diamond2.

sorry to say, that i can confirm that... i have a HTC Touch pro, (and loads of other non-pleco software installed as well) but just today i recognized that the strange behaviour of the album application (no photos shown from time to time) could have to do with pleco... closed pleco and the album worked as expected...

additionally i suspect, that other applications could have problems as well. many times i have the case, that some applications dont want to start (due to low memory, but 90% of mem is free) and i never found the reason... cant say if pleco was running in all of that instances, but its possible, because of course its my main application on the device (hehe) ... for sure i know already, that the camera application cant start, when pleco is running, but i read somewhere (xda?) that the camera application is unreasonable in its memory consumption...

unfortunately the built in memory "inspection" is of no real help, i always have plenty of memory free, does anybody know a good memory manager, that can also list the REAL memory consumption of apps in WinMo?