2.4.2: too many processes make operating phone difficult

[JimmyTheSaint]

Mayday! 2.4.2 populates the Android recent tasks with multiple processes, and this is causing me a major difficulty with the way I switch apps using GMD Gesture Control's recent tasks launchpad. I need to operate my phone one-handed and I always switch apps with an app switcher that is now filled with multiple Plecos that makes my app switcher get too big and too confusing. In fact, I can't even use it to switch to Pleco because there's no telling if it's going to switch me to Pleco's settings, installer, flashcards, or the dictionary (which is always the desired choice). I can permanently remove the installer task because it's just used once, but that still leaves me with the shell game of the remaining Pleco icons.

This is a serious problem for me in the way I need to operate my phone in real time. Is there a setting to prevent Pleco from filling Android with multiple tasks even though I opened the settings and flashcards from within Pleco, not as separate tasks using any of the new launchers. If not, I need to downgrade to the previous version of Pleco immediately, but Titanium has already overwritten its apk with last night's overnight backup regime. I had the bad luck of updating Pleco a short time before Titanium did its nightly backup. Can I get an apk of the previous version? I need it really bad.

 

[mikelove]

Mayday! 2.4.2 populates the Android recent tasks with multiple processes, and this is causing me a major difficulty with the way I switch apps using GMD Gesture Control's recent tasks launchpad. I need to operate my phone one-handed and I always switch apps with an app switcher that is now filled with multiple Plecos that makes my app switcher get too big and too confusing. In fact, I can't even use it to switch to Pleco because there's no telling if it's going to switch me to Pleco's settings, installer, flashcards, or the dictionary (which is always the desired choice). I can permanently remove the installer task because it's just used once, but that still leaves me with the shell game of the remaining Pleco icons.

How about adding a Pleco dictionary launcher shortcut to it instead? Does it support shortcuts? Are you unable to find the correct Pleco task because they all use the same icon (in which case we could perhaps address this by giving each task a task-specific icon) or for some other reason?

This is a serious problem for me in the way I need to operate my phone in real time. Is there a setting to prevent Pleco from filling Android with multiple tasks even though I opened the settings and flashcards from within Pleco, not as separate tasks using any of the new launchers.

Not right now; we could potentially add an option in the next bug-fix update to keep the tasks from showing up in history, but it's not really feasible for us to go back to doing everything in one task - using multiple tasks turned out to be the solution to a whole lot of usability problems, and for users with the built-in Android task switcher it's actually a much more "Android-like" way to go about your business (as these are to some extent all separate apps that happen to share a common engine / databases).

If not, I need to downgrade to the previous version of Pleco immediately, but Titanium has already overwritten its apk with last night's overnight backup regime. I had the bad luck of updating Pleco a short time before Titanium did its nightly backup. Can I get an apk of the previous version? I need it really bad.

Sure:

https://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-120725p.apk

 

[LantauMan]

I don't find that problem at all on my little phone. I'm not using a third party application switcher. But when I use the stock app switcher, by long-pressing the home button, I do see more than one Pleco process, but each is clearly labeled for what it is. Very convenient, as far as I'm concerned.

I want to also throw some praise to the new update: On my LG Optimus One, with stock Android 2.2.1 and constantly getting low memory warnings when running many other apps, the new update of Pleco runs faster and smoother than ever. Not that I ever experienced a problem or sluggishness with older versions of Pleco, but this new one so far is incredibly responsive. So, rather than 2.4.2 making my phone more difficult to operate, it's actually become easier. Huge congrats to Mike and his team for making my favorite app that much better.

 

[JimmyTheSaint]

An option to suppress the system from having the user see Pleco's components as separate tasks would be welcome. It may be how the apps technically function, but I experience Pleco as one app, and the flashcards and OCR as part of Pleco. But it's just downright un-Android-like to have Pleco's settings appear as yet another task.

In my case, GMD Gesture Control opens a launchpad that shows available tasks with their icons and an optional label in a much more compact way since Android made its task list even more unwieldy when they supersized it. Pleco tasks all show with the identical icon and label. The problem, however, isn't one of identification, but rather the proliferation of Pleco tasks that crowds out ergonomic access to other stuff I need to get to within a thumb's reach. Since I frequently use Pleco, it has its own convenient launching gesture (which I can report continues to function as expected in 2.4.2), soI don't even need Pleco to show up in my tasks at all. GMD will allow me to blacklist Pleco from its tasks list, but that's not the best solution because this suppresses convenient Pleco access in other contexts.

On second thought, maybe the problem is that you haven't gone as far as you need to to differentiate Pleco tasks. If each one showed in the tasks with its own icon (taken from its launcher) and label (which I'd suppress if the icons differed), then I could blacklist each Pleco task individually as needed instead of the whole app. But Pleco's settings as a separate app every time I open settings?--that's just weird. The launchers look like a good idea for some users, but they somehow (I'm not a programmer) don't have the same functionality as widgets do when integrating into how I use my phone. I can add a Pleco launcher to a home screen, but I can't get a Pleco launcher shortcut into GMD or Widgetsoid to launch them that way. If OCR and Flashcards (but not settings, for godsake) basically function like apps in their own right, then why not go all the way and enable them to appear as widgets or shortcuts so that other launchers can launch them? I never launch an app from an icon on a home screen, which is how I'm able to use even my Galaxy Note 2 one-handed. In this age of large phones, by the way, it is beyond me why some devs (not you) completely disregard one-handed use, putting unmovable functionality at the top or on the side farthest from the thumb. I can even type words into Pleco's search bar one-handed quite efficiently using an old port of a Fitaly keyboard; just too bad I can't reach its numbers and punctuation so easily, and the port will never be updated.

 

[mikelove]

I don't find that problem at all on my little phone. I'm not using a third party application switcher. But when I use the stock app switcher, by long-pressing the home button, I do see more than one Pleco process, but each is clearly labeled for what it is. Very convenient, as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks!

I want to also throw some praise to the new update: On my LG Optimus One, with stock Android 2.2.1 and constantly getting low memory warnings when running many other apps, the new update of Pleco runs faster and smoother than ever. Not that I ever experienced a problem or sluggishness with older versions of Pleco, but this new one so far is incredibly responsive. So, rather than 2.4.2 making my phone more difficult to operate, it's actually become easier. Huge congrats to Mike and his team for making my favorite app that much better.

Thanks on that as well - we actually did quite a bit of testing on the Optimus One specifically (as an example of an old Android phone) and found a couple of memory bottlenecks that we were able to rectify, so I'm glad it seems to be paying off.

An option to suppress the system from having the user see Pleco's components as separate tasks would be welcome. It may be how the apps technically function, but I experience Pleco as one app, and the flashcards and OCR as part of Pleco. But it's just downright un-Android-like to have Pleco's settings appear as yet another task.

That was a tricky decision (and a debatable one) but the thinking was that if a user was in settings, he/she wouldn't necessarily be aware of whether they'd been in the dictionary / flashcard / reader / OCR task when they got there, so it was better to make it a standalone task so it would be easy to find. (consequence of not having everything in one task) The alternative would be to keep it wherever you launched it and to reparent it if you invoke it from one task when you're already in it from another, or to leave it as-is but exclude it from history by default.

In my case, GMD Gesture Control opens a launchpad that shows available tasks with their icons and an optional label in a much more compact way since Android made its task list even more unwieldy when they supersized it. Pleco tasks all show with the identical icon and label. The problem, however, isn't one of identification, but rather the proliferation of Pleco tasks that crowds out ergonomic access to other stuff I need to get to within a thumb's reach. Since I frequently use Pleco, it has its own convenient launching gesture (which I can report continues to function as expected in 2.4.2), soI don't even need Pleco to show up in my tasks at all. GMD will allow me to blacklist Pleco from its tasks list, but that's not the best solution because this suppresses convenient Pleco access in other contexts.

The thinking with the identical icon was that since that Android 4.x task switcher does show screenshots, it's better to have the same icon on each to show that they're all associated with Pleco - again, certainly debatable though.

On second thought, maybe the problem is that you haven't gone as far as you need to to differentiate Pleco tasks. If each one showed in the tasks with its own icon (taken from its launcher) and label (which I'd suppress if the icons differed), then I could blacklist each Pleco task individually as needed instead of the whole app. But Pleco's settings as a separate app every time I open settings?--that's just weird. The launchers look like a good idea for some users, but they somehow (I'm not a programmer) don't have the same functionality as widgets do when integrating into how I use my phone. I can add a Pleco launcher to a home screen, but I can't get a Pleco launcher shortcut into GMD or Widgetsoid to launch them that way.

They're not widgets, no - just standard Android app shortcuts, which some launcher apps don't quite know what to do with. We used to use dedicated applications, as you might remember, which are a bit easier to handle, but one of our competitors accused us of spamming Google Play with them and threatened to report us so we had to pull them - we could make those available again as standalone APK downloads, though, just not on Google Play.

If OCR and Flashcards (but not settings, for godsake) basically function like apps in their own right, then why not go all the way and enable them to appear as widgets or shortcuts so that other launchers can launch them? I never launch an app from an icon on a home screen, which is how I'm able to use even my Galaxy Note 2 one-handed.

We could definitely do that with standalone APKs if your launcher app won't support our shortcuts, but are you sure that it doesn't? Seems strange that it wouldn't.

 

[LantauMan]

All respect to JimmytheSaint, but it seems to me that asking to change the nature of Pleco simply to accomodate one third-party gesture-controlled launcher could end up making Pleco less convenient for everyone else. I very much like the behavior as-is, and though Pleco Settings, OCR and Flash Cards indeed show up as a separate apps in the launcher, I don't see that as a problem or in any way confusing or adding clutter. In fact, it helps, because on an older phone like mine, running Android 2.2.1, when I want to switch from OCR to a different app like e-mail, then to the dictionary, using the stock launcher saves my place in all the apps and is far more convenient for me than any other method. Pleco is by far my most-used app and I like having Pleco's various offerings all in a row to choose from on the stock launcher. This is not against your comments--we all want Pleco to run flawlessly--but simply to add my own voice in favor of not changing the current behavior.

 

[JimmyTheSaint]

Yes, I remember the Play Store spam accusations. I imagine you face "political" issues dealing with stuff like that, so I won't comment. I don't know technically why the two launchers I use, GMD and Widgetsoid (mostly GMD) don't see your shortcuts, but they do only see certain kinds of app shortcuts, while seeing every app that can be seen in the app tray. If your other processes appeared as apps, that would solve the problem. Making them optionally downloadable apk's for those who wanted them instead of there current mysterious "in-between" status would fix everything I'm talking about, and would make for a more flexible usage that I'd exploit, not merely blacklist. If each was its own app, then we wouldn't have to have this odd settings-as-app situation, right? It seems to me that things would be more logical and customizable for the users if you let your apps come out of the closet as apps, even if they're still shunned by the intolerant at Google Play.

LantauMan, the current behavior has been in effect for one day. And as Mike indicated, it wasn't even his first choice for how to do things, but an accommodation to third party, non-user issues at Google Play. It's a compromise behavior that could be made rational without hurting anyone. I don't see any benefit to either cheerleading or gainsaying. Separate apps would still be switchable via the launcher, and the nature of Pleco that's been in effect since I bought it and up until yesterday would be restored. Yesterday's change was the radical one. To clarify what I'm talking about: if you use two hands and are indifferent to how many times you swipe and touch and how closely you have to attend visually and mentally to your phone, then any app's interface is fine as long as you have some path to reach its available functions. Here's the difference with the way I (and others) do things: I launch Pleco with one, single, solitary short thumb swipe from any context on my phone, that is, no matter what app I'm in or what that app is currently doing (for the most part). In fact, that's how I open the 15-20 most frequently used apps and 5 most frequently accessed files on my phone: one swipe. And I can do all that without having to look too closely at my phone (I could do it blind, actually) and while keeping my right hand free to do things that require more skill and strength, such as holding onto my stuff in a crowd or operating another device, such as a presenter. In any case, this is a much less fatiguing way to do your computing, leaving more energy to do other fatiguing things.

Think of the way a beginner operates a Macintosh computer. It's so easy, and that was Jobs's whole selling point: you just use the one mouse with the one button to access everything. The problem is that the mouse uses fine motor skills to do dumb things, which is why an experienced user will save a lot of time and energy by using a short command code for dumb tasks, such as cmd-S for save instead of selecting the "save" item with the mouse. You have to do the work to break free of the mouse, though, and unless you've seen someone fly around a Mac using just the keyboard, you simply don't conceptualize it yourself, and you're happy to just continue with the mouse indefinitely because the Mac's performance is so wondrous. I'm asking Mike to build in enough flexibility behind the scenes so that if users have the opportunity to see other people operating their phones in a better way (like I did), then they'll be able to do the work on their own (like I did) to start doing the same with as little pain as possible. You could also think of this as a pedagogical decision.

 

[mikelove]

Yes, I remember the Play Store spam accusations. I imagine you face "political" issues dealing with stuff like that, so I won't comment. I don't know technically why the two launchers I use, GMD and Widgetsoid (mostly GMD) don't see your shortcuts, but they do only see certain kinds of app shortcuts, while seeing every app that can be seen in the app tray. If your other processes appeared as apps, that would solve the problem. Making them optionally downloadable apk's for those who wanted them instead of there current mysterious "in-between" status would fix everything I'm talking about, and would make for a more flexible usage that I'd exploit, not merely blacklist. If each was its own app, then we wouldn't have to have this odd settings-as-app situation, right? It seems to me that things would be more logical and customizable for the users if you let your apps come out of the closet as apps, even if they're still shunned by the intolerant at Google Play.

They'd still have settings-as-app - all I was proposing to do was to 1) add an option to avoid adding anything except the dictionary portion of Pleco to the task history, thus preventing the clutter that you were complaining about and 2) re-release updated versions of the separate app launcher APKs we had before, so that if you want to get back to something other than the dictionary you can tap on those to do so. (Add-ons and Settings could only be reached by opening up one of the other tabs and then choosing them from the menu, but it sounds like that's what you'd prefer anyway) We'll also investigate whether there's anything we're doing wrong with our shortcuts, since it could be that we can simply tweak something about them to make them accessible to your launcher without even needing to revive the APKs.

LantauMan, the current behavior has been in effect for one day. And as Mike indicated, it wasn't even his first choice for how to do things, but an accommodation to third party, non-user issues at Google Play.

Actually, these are two different issues - the replacement of APKs with shortcuts was a Google Play issue, but one that for 99% of users (anybody using an app launcher that works correctly with shortcuts) should be unaffected by, while the switch to separate tasks was a voluntary design decision on our part, and one that I'll happily depend compared to the old model (a single task in which you have to back out of whatever you're doing in flashcards / reader / etc if you want to go back to the main dictionary, which was downright silly - putting Settings in a separate task, silly though it might seem, means that you can reconfigure a sub-screen in Settings, go back to the dictionary, then return to where you were in Settings again, something that might not make sense in most apps but makes a great deal of sense in an app with as many settings as ours).

So the current behavior viz-a-viz tasks was definitely our first choice, it's only the lack of APKs that wasn't, and if we manage to fix whatever's not working in your launcher, that may not even be much of an issue anymore.

 

[mikelove]

Update: upon further investigation it seems like we actually can support GMD (and several other previously-unsupported launchers') shortcuts, so we'll get right on that for 2.4.3.

 

[ckatt]

I can't say that i have any issues with the way task switching works i find the new method quite advantageous but i just wanted to vote in favor of using separate icons for the different parts. To me pleco is not a single app but more of a suite, and i think it is best if it operates as such. also as an android 4 user i use the in built task switcher that show screen shots, but they are are not all that useful if i have launched a part of Pleco from the menu since the screen shot mostly just shows the open menu.

 

[JimmyTheSaint]

Update: upon further investigation it seems like we actually can support GMD (and several other previously-unsupported launchers') shortcuts, so we'll get right on that for 2.4.3.

Fantastic. That covers everyone. I was going to contact the other developers to find out how their handling of shortcuts differed, but now I won't. I would guess it's some common and minor difference in the way Android shortcuts are handled? I've seen many apps that show different lists of available shortcuts, but I've never heard the explanation.

By the way, I've always found the new Android task switcher unwieldy on a large phone.The home button is a difficult move one-handed, and then you have to do multiple swipes to get the one you're after. If I wanted huge icons with lots of swipe-searching for things that don't already appear on the screen, I'd get a Windows phone. And sure it looks cool to have previews, but except for Pleco's latest iteration, I've never used an app where any info beyond the app's name would help at all when switching to it. When Google supersized the task switcher, I was surprised there wasn't a setting or two to customize it because I would think users of large phones wouldn't have to be power users to appreciate the ability to adjust the tasks' appearance.

I certainly see the benefit to being able to return to a settings context: the settings can be maddening because when you want to return to the same setting, remembering the path is error prone, even after you've been using Pleco for years. And not having to back out of settings is what I requested with that home button, though it proved useless unless available 100% of the time. As you'll recall, re-actuating Pleco's icon (or gesture) solved my problem because it effectively performs a home function, so that continues to be welcome behavior. But I do look forward to the more flexible way of dealing with settings, which will allow much more convenient A/B'ing.

From what you're saying, I glean that a whole lot of things would work more smoothly if Pleco could market multiple APK's in Play Store. Is that a battle worth fighting with the other developers to settle things once and for all, or is there some Google rule that's definitely in force? I mean, I've seen other apps that market incremental boosts in functionality as separate apps. For example, FX and SwipePad list things that are hardly conceptually separate from the main app, and certainly FX has a ton of file browser competitors. By comparision, Pleco's OCR, flashcards, and dictionary each offer functionality that is different from the other, so much so that they're nothing like the $0.99-style add-ons from the other devs. A reasonable person would see them as separate apps. Is it possible to run a plan past Google first so that when other devs are upset that your app is better than theirs, their complaints can't affect you?

 

[LantauMan]

LantauMan, the current behavior has been in effect for one day. And as Mike indicated, it wasn't even his first choice for how to do things, but an accommodation to third party, non-user issues at Google Play.

Point taken and acknowledged. I just think it was a good design decision, and I find it makes Pleco that much more convenient, whether I'm using it single handed or with multiple fingers, since in real life context I find myself often flipping between e-mail, browser, Pleco Reader, Dictionary and OCR. I see no problem in making this optional, but I hope it stays.

I thought the accomodation to the spamming accusation was the other new feature: generating home screen shortcuts for OCR etc. through Pleco settings, which has nothing to do with the launcher issue.

Anyway, I don't want to start an argument. I hope the app can please all users, and this new function does in fact please me.

 

[mikelove]

I certainly see the benefit to being able to return to a settings context: the settings can be maddening because when you want to return to the same setting, remembering the path is error prone, even after you've been using Pleco for years. And not having to back out of settings is what I requested with that home button, though it proved useless unless available 100% of the time. As you'll recall, re-actuating Pleco's icon (or gesture) solved my problem because it effectively performs a home function, so that continues to be welcome behavior. But I do look forward to the more flexible way of dealing with settings, which will allow much more convenient A/B'ing.

Well the home button didn't actually let you return to your last place in settings, that was the biggest problem - once you've got multiple hierarchical screens that you'd like to be able to bounce between, you need some sort of task switching mechanism that's independent of that hierarchy; the Home button was still part of the larger mistake of treating Dict as the root view of everything. This is also why we still use bottom tabs on iOS - we've gotten some criticism for not adopting the back-farther-out-of-the-hierarchy slide-out menu employed by Facebook et al, but that really only makes sense when you have a whole lot of tasks with very shallow hierarchies.

From what you're saying, I glean that a whole lot of things would work more smoothly if Pleco could market multiple APK's in Play Store.

Not at all, actually - there are numerous benefits to keeping the actual code in the same app, both technical (easy updates / compatibility, avoiding resource wastage) and marketing (tap on this button to try the demo of such-and-such new add-on right now); the APKs were really just a way of providing a more reliable way to link to specific Pleco features than shortcuts. But shortcuts should suffice in most cases now that we have them.

 

[JimmyTheSaint]

If the plan is to eventually have the different Pleco processes appear more visually distinctive from each other in third-party launchers' task lists, I assume you'd simply re-use the respective Pleco launcher icons. In that case, it would be nice if settings also had its own icon. A different label for settings is OK, but a visually distinctive icon would be better. Perhaps the standard Pleco blue icon, but reduced to black and white.

 

[mikelove]

If the plan is to eventually have the different Pleco processes appear more visually distinctive from each other in third-party launchers' task lists, I assume you'd simply re-use the respective Pleco launcher icons. In that case, it would be nice settings also had its own icon. A different label for settings is OK, but a visually distinctive icon would be better. Perhaps the standard Pleco blue icon, but reduced to black and white.

I think we'll actually do different ones - I'm not wild about the new one we have now anyway (it's an improvement, but it looks a bit out-of-place on an Android home screen, and on iOS it's too skeuomorphic given current trends) and yet it would look odd to pair that with the old ones for other tasks or to have them all differ from the main app icon as they do now. So we'll come up with something else instead.

 

[JimmyTheSaint]

We could update the APKs, but we were actually hoping that this could be made to work with our new shortcuts, particularly now that we've updated them to work in other gesture launchers like GMD

I came across this info by luck, so I'm not sure what stage you're at in dealing with this. Perhaps post updates on this issue here, not just the general bugs thread? I just want to let you know: currently in GMD, the different Plecos show up as selectable labeled shortcuts (all with the same icon) to associate with a gesture. The apps list in GMD only shows one Pleco. In Widgetsoid, I can still only select the one Pleco app, so apparently Widgetsoid wants to see separate apps, not one of the types of shortcuts.

I assume that eventually we'll be able to visually distinguish the different launchers. But the problem of too much stuff showing up in the recent tasks continues because all the launchers and Pleco show up in GMD's recent tasks with the same icon and label. GMD allows blacklisting apps from the recent tasks, but again since there's only one Pleco app, I'm forced to either blacklist all Plecos or none of them. It would be nice to selectively blacklist. But I hope at least that once the launchers differ visually, I'll be able to select the right one from GMD's recent tasks. Currently, I have to blacklist all of them or else I have multiple identical Plecos filling up my recent tasks launchpad.

 

[mikelove]

I assume that eventually we'll be able to visually distinguish the different launchers. But the problem of too much stuff showing up in the recent tasks continues because all the launchers and Pleco show up in GMD's recent tasks with the same icon and label. GMD allows blacklisting apps from the recent tasks, but again since there's only one Pleco app, I'm forced to either blacklist all Plecos or none of them. It would be nice to selectively blacklist. But I hope at least that once the launchers differ visually, I'll be able to select the right one from GMD's recent tasks. Currently, I have to blacklist all of them or else I have multiple identical Plecos filling up my recent tasks launchpad.

The launchers are visually differentiated, at least they are in my copy of GMD here - they might not be differentiated in recent tasks but they certainly are in shortcuts.

The "don't add to task history" option proved more complicated than I'd hoped, but I'm not quite clear on why you can't simply blacklist the whole app when you've got the ability to add a launcher for any section you're interested in.

 

[JimmyTheSaint]

The launchers are visually differentiated, at least they are in my copy of GMD here - they might not be differentiated in recent tasks but they certainly are in shortcuts.

When selecting shortcuts, launchers look like this in GMD's selection list:

They all get the same icon instead of those individualized icons they get when placed on a homescreen as a shortcut. Note also that the first word is "Pleco" for all of them. And here is how the launchers appear in GMD's recent tasks:


As you can see, everything appears the way they do when selecting shortcuts: same icon and same name, presumably because lengthy names get reduced. Normally, I don't show task names because the visual cue is enough, but showing the name here doesn't help. In any case, I would think that showing the launchers' individualized icon's instead of the main Pleco icon would be more expected behavior, and also solve my problem

The "don't add to task history" option proved more complicated than I'd hoped, but I'm not quite clear on why you can't simply blacklist the whole app when you've got the ability to add a launcher for any section you're interested in.

Yes, I could assign a gesture to a launcher and switch to it directly by executing its gesture. For the main Pleco app, this gives the strongly desired "home" capability. But switching to it that way isn't always desirable. One example: when A/B'ing settings. In that case I want to use an alt-tab gesture which swaps between the current and most recent task regardless of what they are. If I blacklist the entire Pleco app from GMD's tasks, then not only are Pleco tasks blacklisted from the recent tasks launchpad, they're suppressed from GMD's task switcher's next task, previous task, and alt-tab functions. This is logical and desired behavior from GMD. That's why I want to be able to treat each of Pleco's tasks as its own task and selectively blacklist them.

 

[mikelove]

When selecting shortcuts, launchers look like this in GMD's selection list:

They look that way in the shortcut list - those are the icons associated with the activities, which at the moment we're keeping the same for the sake of stock-ICS-task-manager-friendliness, but if you actually add them to a LaunchPad they'll take on the correct looks.

As you can see, everything appears the way they do when selecting shortcuts: same icon and same name, presumably because lengthy names get reduced. Normally, I don't show task names because the visual cue is enough, but showing the name here doesn't help. In any case, I would think that showing the launchers' individualized icon's instead of the main Pleco icon would be more expected behavior, and also solve my problem

Again, why not just ban them from recent tasks and then use a LaunchPad?

Yes, I could assign a gesture to a launcher and switch to it directly by executing its gesture. For the main Pleco app, this gives the strongly desired "home" capability. But switching to it that way isn't always desirable. One example: when A/B'ing settings. In that case I want to use an alt-tab gesture which swaps between the current and most recent task regardless of what they are. If I blacklist the entire Pleco app from GMD's tasks, then not only are Pleco tasks blacklisted from the recent tasks launchpad, they're suppressed from GMD's task switcher's next task, previous task, and alt-tab functions. This is logical and desired behavior from GMD. That's why I want to be able to treat each of Pleco's tasks as its own task and selectively blacklist them.

That's actually what the in-app function menu (top right corner of every screen, including Settings) is for - if you want to test a setting, go into the Settings screen you want, adjust the setting, then tap on that menu and select whatever section you want to test it in. When you're done, tap in the menu in that screen and select Settings - you'll be returned to the place you were before instead of taken to that section's home screen. The launchers return you to home but the menu doesn't.

 

[JimmyTheSaint]

That's actually what the in-app function menu (top right corner of every screen, including Settings) is for - if you want to test a setting, go into the Settings screen you want, adjust the setting, then tap on that menu and select whatever section you want to test it in. When you're done, tap in the menu in that screen and select Settings - you'll be returned to the place you were before instead of taken to that section's home screen. The launchers return you to home but the menu doesn't.

I see now--great. Suppressing from the task list and adding shortcuts works the way I need it to. The only sacrifice is the ability to reach Pleco via alt-tab functionality, which would be redundant but sometimes used when you're strictly going back and forth between two apps (for example Whatsapp messaging and Pleco). I saw the menu was changed, but I didn't realize all the implications. Also, the 6x1 menu is a lot more ergonomic than the previous 2x3