2.3 / User Interface Enhancements

[mikelove]

This is VERY minor (and silly), but in flashcards, when you reveal answer parts separately, it says "reveal definition" and "reveal pron". I understand that spelling out "pronunciation" might be a long word, but when my wife first saw it, she thought it said "reveal porn" I don't think it would look too bad to squeeze in the full word, or at least more letters "reveal pronunc." Or even "reveal pinyin"

Thanks - we actually just changed it to "pinyin" in a few other places in the 2.2.0 update but it looks like we missed it for those button labels.

 

[Entropy]

Saving a string of characters

It's unclear to me how to save the entire string in the search field to a card or list.

AFAICT, if I enter, say, 黄喉, I can only save the entries for the characters, not the entire string (which Google thinks means "yellow throated" and I think means a kind of turtle.)

 

[mikelove]

It's unclear to me how to save the entire string in the search field to a card or list.

That one's extremely well hidden - it's tied to the Edit Entry button for making user dictionary entries. Turn on Settings / Dictionary / Entry Commands / Always show edit button, then turn on Tap-hold create card below it; you can then tap-hold on the pen icon to create a new flashcard with the headword fields prepopulated with your search query. (or just tap on it to create a new user dictionary entry)

 

[Entropy]

It's unclear to me how to save the entire string in the search field to a card or list.

That one's extremely well hidden

I'll say.

I also can't figure out how to search my flashcards. In the search interface, there doesn't seem to be a way to actually enter a search term.

I want to be able to search my cards for a card which contains what I'm trying to find, not search my metadata for a type of card. All in all, it's sounding like a searchable word list is a desirable UI enhancement.

(This might be easier if cards can be in several categories, like "牛" and "dishes containing 牛角椒" but I really just want to be able to search for a string.)

 

[jlnr]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but I'd love it very very much if the pinyin pronunciation would be colored along with the hanzi in the flashcard module. When the expression is long and both strings are not aligned, I tend to accidentally look at the color of the nearest hanzi while reading the pinyin.

 

[mikelove]

I also can't figure out how to search my flashcards. In the search interface, there doesn't seem to be a way to actually enter a search term.

I want to be able to search my cards for a card which contains what I'm trying to find, not search my metadata for a type of card. All in all, it's sounding like a searchable word list is a desirable UI enhancement.

That would be a search for "headword," though I agree the interface is lousy - one of those places where we were in such a rush to get flashcards out that we ported over the equally-poorly-designed UI we had for it on Palm without taking the time to redesign it. But part of the reason Android is taking so long is that we want to get some things like this right on iPhone before porting them over to yet another platform...

(This might be easier if cards can be in several categories, like "牛" and "dishes containing 牛角椒" but I really just want to be able to search for a string.)

They already can be, that's what the "Copy" command in Organize Cards is for - if you use it you'll notice that updates to the score / definition / etc apply in both categories.

 

[Entropy]

Now that you have tap-hold popping up everywhere, why not add a command to open th character info screen, or better yet make the whole thing customizable?

 

[mikelove]

Now that you have tap-hold popping up everywhere, why not add a command to open th character info screen, or better yet make the whole thing customizable?

How would this offer a speed advantage over simply tapping on the character and then tapping the 字 button?

 

[Entropy]

Now that you have tap-hold popping up everywhere, why not add a command to open th character info screen, or better yet make the whole thing customizable?

How would this offer a speed advantage over simply tapping on the character and then tapping the 字 button?

Well, what i really want is tap-hold to get me there in one click. But I might not want to see the popup, or might not want to move my finger, or might just not know the option appears in another part of the interface.

~ Kiran

 

[mikelove]

Well, what i really want is tap-hold to get me there in one click. But I might not want to see the popup, or might not want to move my finger, or might just not know the option appears in another part of the interface.

So you want an option to get rid of tap-hold text selection and instead have the tap-hold trigger character info? Not that complicated, but I'm having a hard time seeing that as a tradeoff many people would want to make - even if we still supported tap-hold selection for text other than Chinese characters it would still make things a lot more cumbersome.

 

[Entropy]

So you want an option to get rid of tap-hold text selection and instead have the tap-hold trigger character info?

NO no no. What I want is to have a menu option to open the character viewer appear, alongside the other selected-text options like "copy" and "paste." I want to see a variety of options available when I select a range of text. One of those could be "add to word list" since I'm having trouble figuring out how to get the entire OCR captured text saved as a flashcard. Other obvious ones are "speak" and "search web". And ISTM that the options should be specified by the user. To save space on an iPhone, perhaps they should all be icons.

(I capture text, get dumped into the reader, select the text, choose "+", but only the character that Pleco thinks I'm interested in actually ends up in the flashcard.)

 

[mikelove]

NO no no. What I want is to have a menu option to open the character viewer appear, alongside the other selected-text options like "copy" and "paste." I want to see a variety of options available when I select a range of text. One of those could be "add to word list" since I'm having trouble figuring out how to get the entire OCR captured text saved as a flashcard. Other obvious ones are "speak" and "search web". And ISTM that the options should be specified by the user. To save space on an iPhone, perhaps they should all be icons.

Ah, understood. But in that case, wouldn't it be faster to just tap on the character and tap on the 字 button?

Customizable options for the popup menu make sense, though a few of those could be rather challenging to add - we'd have added text-to-speech for arbitrary character ranges a bunch of releases ago if we could do it accurately.

 

[Entropy]

But in that case, wouldn't it be faster to just tap on the character and tap on the 字 button?

You certainly think that's fast enough. To me it seems a bit confusing, at least on the iPad where it's down at the bottom. It does seem easier on the iPhone where it's at the top, within eyeshot of the actual selected text.

Another quirk is that if I have multiple characters selected and choose '字' I only see a diagram for the first one. It's unclear what should happen here, but I could certainly see queueing up the characters, with either a flick-to-move or buttons to scroll through the characters. (On iPad, you could just display all of them.)

 

[mikelove]

You certainly think that's fast enough. To me it seems a bit confusing, at least on the iPad where it's down at the bottom. It does seem easier on the iPhone where it's at the top, within eyeshot of the actual selected text.

Well that's an area we need to improve on the iPad anyway - put the buttons from the bottom bar right in the popup "bubble" somewhere and provide some other interface for moving the highlight around (say dragging).

Another quirk is that if I have multiple characters selected and choose '字' I only see a diagram for the first one. It's unclear what should happen here, but I could certainly see queueing up the characters, with either a flick-to-move or buttons to scroll through the characters. (On iPad, you could just display all of them.)

You've mentioned that before - still on the to-do list, though since it's a fairly serious overhaul it may have to wait a few releases; short-term it's more likely that we'd put Character Info in a popup bubble on iPad instead of making it full-screen.

 

[Entropy]

short-term it's more likely that we'd put Character Info in a popup bubble on iPad instead of making it full-screen.

An expanded popup bubble would work on an iPad, but I'm thinking that dumping the bubble entirely in favor of something else (on iPad) might be a better idea. (I was originally thinking of a popup overlay that appeared in the bottom 1/3 or so of the screen.)

~ Kiran

 

[mikelove]

An expanded popup bubble would work on an iPad, but I'm thinking that dumping the bubble entirely in favor of something else (on iPad) might be a better idea. (I was originally thinking of a popup overlay that appeared in the bottom 1/3 or so of the screen.)

But wouldn't that create the same problem that the Character Info button does, requiring lots of extra finger / eye motion? A bunch of people have asked for a dedicated definition area in the reader, and we're adding one as an option under protest, but going back and forth between that and the text has been noticeably irritating in our testing.

 

[Entropy]

It's unclear to me how to save the entire string in the search field to a card or list.

That one's extremely well hidden - it's tied to the Edit Entry button for making user dictionary entries. Turn on Settings / Dictionary / Entry Commands / Always show edit button, then turn on Tap-hold create card below it

This would be much more clear if it appeared in the popup menu for selected text. "Save string". It would also be more clear to the user what portion of the string would actually be saved.

~ Kiran

 

[mikelove]

This would be much more clear if it appeared in the popup menu for selected text. "Save string". It would also be more clear to the user what portion of the string would actually be saved.

Good idea, though this would have to be an off-by-default option (in 2.3) since too few people are actually interested in making user dictionaries / custom flashcards.

 

[gary]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Is it possible to make it so at if you press on an English word in the reader, or within a definition, that English word can be looked up? At least by initiating a full text search? I think I broached this in the past, but I'm putting it out there again.

Possible, but I continue to worry about mistaken screen taps (getting English when you wanted some adjacent Chinese characters) in this case - whatever we do has to at least have the same interface as a Chinese popup search. The "search for" button in the command bar for our new tap-hold selection system in 2.2 should be a pretty good solution for this, though.

Mike,

This is the thing I'd like the most, like the Palm version. Holding the tap works well to select and then choose lookup from the popup. But a simple tap to go to definition would be so useful and time saving. I find linking in other dictionary apps pretty accurate and I never tap on the wrong word. The back button helps in errors.

For clicking a chinese character in a definition body, is there an option to go to that word instead of showing it in a popup?



Gary

 

[mikelove]

This is the thing I'd like the most, like the Palm version. Holding the tap works well to select and then choose lookup from the popup. But a simple tap to go to definition would be so useful and time saving. I find linking in other dictionary apps pretty accurate and I never tap on the wrong word. The back button helps in errors.

I guess I'm still having a hard time seeing the importance of inline English-Chinese definitions - are you encountering words in Chinese-English definitions that you'd like to find separate Chinese translations for, are you using the document reader to look at English documents that you're translating into Chinese...