2.0 Pocket PC Screenshot

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Just one, and it's not particularly interesting in terms of new features, but as evidence that we're finally getting close:

pd2pcscreen.gif


Still a lot of quirks to work out, much of the flashcard interface code is being hastily rewritten at this very moment, but the significant thing about this screenshot (and a big part of the reason for our current delay) is that every single character on the screen (outside of the menu / title bars, of course) is being rendered by our own code and not by Microsoft's; we've now purged the buggy Windows CE font system completely from our software, so the fonts in PD2 will load quite happily from a memory card and will not have the slightest impact on font rendering anywhere else on your Pocket PC.

We're going to do something about the toolbar buttons, though, the main question is what - the dictionary icon certainly gets a border, but whether we'll come up with new, PPC-sized icons for the other slots or just use some combination of borders and a gray background to make the current ones look OK remains to be decided. The down arrow is just a placeholder for a Recent Query List trigger which hasn't been given its own bitmap yet. And the menu button probably needs to be replaced by something that actually has relevance to a Pocket PC user...
 

Shadowdh

状元
It looks good... cant wait to get my hands on it... it seems to look clearer too... I guess it wont be out by this sunday though... (the day I fly to China...)
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yeah, sorry about that, just going to miss it by a few weeks... using FreeType gives us a lot more control over the font rendering, so that's why some characters might look clearer; we're now using anti-aliasing in a lot of places.
 
Wow! Awesome progress! I also like the improved clarity in the screenshot you posted.

Mike, can you post the screenshot in the 2.0 Preview Page with the Palm screenshots? I have some friends who I am trying to sell on Pleco, but they are waiting for 2.0 to come out, and they have pocket PC's like me.

Thanks!

Darrol
 

ipsi

状元
Looking good! How long until the beta release comes out? I'm heading back to Uni in a little over a week, and it'd be cool if I could show off my Treo with the brand-new version of Pleco (sure, it'd have bugs, but there should be enough cool stuff there to wow them all :D)
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
hairyleprechaun - I'd rather not post just this one shot, since it would look kind of lost on a page full of Palm OS screenshots, but hopefully by the end of next week we'll have the rest of the interface to a point where it's screenshot-worthy too, and once we've done that we'll put up matching Pocket PC screens for all (or nearly all) of the Palm ones.

ipsi - more than a week but less than a month is about all I can say with any confidence at this point; if we absolutely had to release something within a day or two we probably could, but since we know that in spite of our advice to the contrary lots and lots of people are immediately going to adopt this as their main Chinese dictionary, we'd like it to be at least reasonably polished/usable before we unleash it on the world.
 

cming

秀才
Plecodict 2.0 final relase date?

Hi Mike,

Haven't used the Plecodict product yet, holding off until the Beta comes out, because I dont want to learn the old version, one month later have to upgrade, and also the new version has some fantastic new features. I suspect there a quite a few others who have this page permanently bookmarked awaiting the release of 2.0.

Just wondering once the Beta is released, how long will it take for the full version to come out? I am pre-empting your answer by guessing somewhere between 3 months and 6 months.

I'll certainly be giving the Beta version a go in any case once its ready, and I'll post any appropriate feedback on here for you, as I will be new to both PDAs, Palm, and Plecodict. (Although I have now extensively read the manual for the old version, and gone trawled through the forums).

One more suggestion, after the final product 2.0 release does come out, it would be great to see some kind of proper user survey, ie User location, number of minutes people use plecodict each day, favourite sections, and how long they have been using the product for, etc. I guess you probably already know most of this info anecdotely, but the results of a proper survey might just throw in a few surprises, given the (almost exponential) increase in Chinese learners worldwide recently.

:)
Cming
Sydney, Australia
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
That's about right, yes - hopefully on the shorter end of that, it would be nice to have the finished version out by the end of '07 so we'd have a decent amount of time to market it before the Olympics.

And yes, we're definitely planning to do a user survey once 2.0 is out, or possibly even along with the beta release (since if there are widespread complaints about something it would be nice to be able to address it before 2.0 is finalized). Lots of things we need input on, most importantly our next few platform moves - anecdotal evidence certainly suggests that there are sizable number of people who'd be interested in a handwriting-recognizer-less version of our software for WM Smartphone / BlackBerry / Symbian / etc, but it would be nice to have some slightly more definitive-looking numbers to go along with the few dozen e-mails we've gotten on the subject. And the speed with which we push to develop an online version would depend heavily on whether or not people would be willing to pay for it, and how much they'd be willing to pay.
 

LaoWang

秀才
Re:

mikelove said:
ipsi - more than a week but less than a month is about all I can say with any confidence at this point; if we absolutely had to release something within a day or two we probably could, but since we know that in spite of our advice to the contrary lots and lots of people are immediately going to adopt this as their main Chinese dictionary, we'd like it to be at least reasonably polished/usable before we unleash it on the world.

Today is exactly one month - I really can´t wait until christmas eve!
 

tiantian

Member
My question is if you'll need your PPC to be "Chinese-enabled" (for example by using software like CE-Star) or does it provide own input-methods/chinese character support?
 

daniu

榜眼
Hi!

Even though the question is off topic I'll answe briefly: you do not need CE-Star or MC (Monster Chinese) Pleco has all input included

regards
Daniel
 
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