3.0.0 Bug Report / Feedback Thread

[gato]

I'd recommend that a "sharing" feature to be added to the dictionary screen so that definitions can be shared with friends via email, text, twitter, 微信, etc. You can even append a link to Pleco via ITunes or Pleco's website and it would double as a marketing tool.

"Sharing" could be invoked by tapping on the dictionary name next to the definition. I think double tapping on a dictionary name to bring up browsing and other features is a bit cryptic in any case. These features might be commonly used and would be easier to discover if they could be shown after just a single tap. Hiding a dictionary, on the other hand, could be switched to a double tap, as it probably would be less used (unless you are thinking of it as substitute for scrolling - in that case, something better probably can be thought up rather than hiding a dictionary).

 

[mikelove]

Share feature makes sense, but I like the collapse function the way it is now - it's a lot more than just a scrolling substitute, if you have a lot of dictionaries you can leave most of them hidden by default and rapidly bring out the few that you want to consult on a particular entry. And lots of interesting potential for integration with slower-to-access (i.e. online) data sources in the future.

 

[Bendy-Ren]

This has been brought up before in this thread, but I think it needs to be revisited—

In flashcard testing mode, the current behavior is to have a time interval under each score, telling you how soon you will see the card again if you choose that score. I realize the intention was to make the system more transparent and to move away from the "points" system. However, in my opinion, the current implementation does not work very well.

The main reason: In spaced repetition, while the "right" scores give me different time intervals, the three "wrong" scores almost always, in my experience, have the same time interval written underneath. One, two, or three, they all say "one day" or "one day 6 hours" etc.
Since I'm a long time user, I know to hit 3 for "almost remembered" and 1 for "don't know." However, this is not clear to new users. I was helping a friend migrate to Pleco from another flashcard software yesterday—I'm quite the evangelist—and this was a major point of confusion for him. Presented with three apparently identical options is never good UI. Other than the Chinese "一 二 三" characters, the buttons are the same. There may be some situations where this is not the case, but I haven't seen them in any of my (fairly extensive) daily use since 3.0 came out.

The second reason: Even if the buttons did show different intervals, I still think it's easier to understand with the former labeling style of "barely remembered" etc. I don't think a lot of users feel qualified to know whether "2 days" or "6 days" is more appropriate, especially if they're new to spaced-repitition learning. On the other hand, answering a straightforward question like "how well did you remember this card?" is much less intimidating.

Finally: I find myself frequently adjusting the number of points to test per day in the "Card Selection" settings screen. When the system wants to give me hundreds and hundreds of cards to review, because I haven't tested for a few days, pretty much the only way not to give up completely is to reduce the number of points per day, which will decrease the number of cards scheduled to be tested. However, adjusting the parameters like this makes the interval labels in the flashcard test almost totally irrelevant. When I score myself "4," it may say 2 days, but if tomorrow I have some extra time and decide to raise the daily point allotment, I might see it in one day's time instead.

You might say that this is non-ideal testing behavior, constantly adjusting the parameters like that, but it's simply a reality that not everyone can do their daily SR 100% of the time. You've mentioned trying to move away from the "points" system, but I think whatever you do, you should make sure there remains a way to adjust SR quantity and make that "768 cards due" message a little more manageable. It would be great if there were a way to do this more easily than my current method, which I only discovered after months of repeatedly failing to start up a good flashcard habit.

Sorry if this sounds too complainy — I just love Pleco & want to help it be the best it can be! It's only my opinion, but to sum up, my recommendations are as follows:

1. Restore the "almost remembered" / "remembered perfectly" etc. scoring button labeling for both SR and normal flashcard tests. These options are less intimidating to users and easier to select which one is appropriate. Just let the system decide what exactly the time interval will be.

2. If you remove the "points" system or make it totally behind the scenes, make sure there is still a way to manage a humongous pile of due cards. Maybe allow users to set a maximum amount for each SR test.

 

[mikelove]

1/2/3 are probably going away in 2014, actually - most other apps in this space have already moved in that direction, anything other than a single "wrong" option really is overkill. But in the meantime it might be better if we just dropped the confusing number characters and came up with a more obvious icon.

I do think displaying intervals is logical, though - useful to a lot of people and a negligible distraction for those who aren't interested in them. We've had one other comment on this, but to be honest flashcards are an area where I'm going to have to be especially stubborn about reversing changes / adding options, because we're about to make a whole lot of much more dramatic changes and it's not really going to be possible for us to provide people with a way to get things working exactly the way they did before. For example, "weighted" / frequency-adjusted is going to go away entirely (a fact we're actually stating explicitly in the 3.0 instruction manual) and we're not bringing it back.

The flashcard system is simply too darn difficult to use right now and yields less-than-satisfactory results for anyone who hasn't gotten thoroughly acquainted with its quirks and intricacies, and it's going to take some fairly radical changes to fix that - even more than in the main dictionary, this is an area where we're in danger of getting eclipsed by a more cleanly-designed competitor unless we're willing to make some tough decisions and tick off a few long-time users for the sake of making our app better for everyone else. The design decisions we made in 2007 based on the technical constraints of *Palm Pilots,* the abilities of the much more primitive flashcard systems of the time, and a desire to maintain some level of similarity / compatibility with our even older (2004!) Palm/WM flashcard app simply aren't something we can be expected to carry forward indefinitely.

As far as mucking around with points in general, I don't think we'll get rid of any of the "batch" options, they'll just apply to intervals instead of points - unlike test settings, batch commands are mostly self-contained, so we don't have any particularly strong incentive to eliminate them aside from keeping the UI clean, and we can accomplish that by burying them in an "advanced" screen.

But we do also want to provide a much better way to catch up, one that I'm tentatively thinking will involve reducing the number of cards in your review pool in the most extreme cases: if you've got 2000 cards due for study today then you're simply not going to be able to review them all, and it's best if we make sure that the cards you do get through today come up again soon enough that you'll be able to retain them.

 

[Bendy-Ren]

Even if it wasn't a quality label like in the past, there should be some easy distinguisher between the buttons other than a time interval and a Chinese character. Maybe a different color for each button (green-yellow-red or something). I don't think this conflicts with your vision of making the flashcard system more streamlined—which I very much agree with. I just don't think 四 五 六 is the most user-friendly as the main button label.


I like having 1/2/3 but I could see the case for just having one "wrong" button. However, I think the main things that need to be streamlined are in the (nine!) flashcard settings screens, not in the testing interface itself.

 

[BrianTung]

I did a few searches in the forum, and also in the manual, and didn't see it anywhere; if this is a duplicate request or an existing feature, apologies.

Would you all consider adding a feature/option to take tone sandhi into account in pinyin searches? For instance, zhi2you3 would return not only 執友 but also 只有; yi2shi4 would return not only 儀式 but also 一世; and so on. It doesn't seem as though it would be onerous to add (although I admit I have no idea of Pleco's underlying architecture) and it would occasionally be helpful for students in deciphering, e.g., radio broadcasts.

 

[Shun]

I tried out the flashcard system on Pleco a few years ago; I think I understood the scoring system, but I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted it to. I then resorted to splitting flashcard categories and learning batches of 20-30 cards at a time, choosing the categories manually. This worked ok, but it wasn't perfect.

I think the best way to implement flashcard testing may be to model it after the way you learn with "real" flashcards written on paper. That is, you start with a batch of cards; if you didn't know a card, the flashcard goes to the 15th position. If you knew a card the first time after that, you put it in the 20th position, if you knew it the second time, you put it in the 25th position, and so on. If you change the set of cards you're studying, that shouldn't matter--the flashcard system should just work in the same way, whether you had previously learned the cards or not. That's why I think a nice statistics function, showing you when and how often you learned a flashcard category, or which words you knew most often and least often, would be very useful. I think the user should be able to decide, based on the statistics function, which set of cards (s)he would like to study. He often has the best feeling for it, perhaps because he recently ran into some words. Letting the computer decide which and how many words to learn in the next 2 hours doesn't seem very satisfactory to me. The user should be able to manage it.

Talking about the competition, I think Anki's system comes closer to that, but for my taste it is also too rigid. I think that giving the user the most control and predictability in learning cards may produce the best results. That said, I do love Pleco, and of course, I appreciate the openness with which the functionality can be discussed here.

 

[BrianTung]

One more thing I may also be just clueless on: When I open the in-app Help screen, it's for 2.2.10 (which I had previously, unsurprisingly), and Pleco helpfully indicates that this is out-of-date (I'm not being sarcastic; I might not have noticed otherwise), and that I can download the latest version from the Add-ons tab. However, I don't see anywhere in the Updates section (or any section) of the Add-ons tab where I can download the 3.0.0 manual.

ETA: Never mind. I discovered that when I deleted the 2.2.10 manual, the 3.0.0 manual showed up. I'm leaving this here in case someone else is curious.

 

[Chris O 火箭]

I am using Pleco on an iPad Gen 4. When I am in the search feature, I notice that the keyboard does not reappear after changing the category of a card. Here's what I'm doing:
1: Search dictionary for a word.
2: Add card to dictionary by selecting (+) if the card is not already in my db.
3: Select the (+) again to bring up the options menu.
4: Select "Card Info".
5: Add a category to the card.
6: Select "Done".
Now, the cursor is blinking in the search field, but the keyboard is disabled (using my bluetooth keyboard and I tried it with the iPad keyboard only as well). So, I have to press the menu feature in the top left corner, then press it again to collapse, and then press in the search field in order to continue searching.

 

[gato]

With "Embed Definition" on (which is the default), when browsing a dictionary, if one tap on a word and views its definition, there is no link to go back to browse screen except by long tapping the dictionary again.

But with "Embed Definition" off, there is a link to return to the browse screen on the upper left hand corner, which is much easier to use and intuitive.

I think I mentioned this before. Just wanted to mention it again because it's probably a common usage case and since this is the default mode, it could frustrate a good number of people.

 

[mikelove]

Bendy-Ren - the settings screens are indeed the heart of the problem and the main thing we want to fix, but adding a "show intervals below score buttons" option wouldn't help with that

BrianTung - possible, but I don't think we've ever had a request for it before; now that we do frequency sorting for toneless Pinyin searches, it seems unlikely most people would be looking for a result outside of the first few until their Chinese is at a level where tones are pretty much second nature.

afritzse - better statistics are most definitely in the offing, yes; that's why the currently rather uninspiring Statistics screen has its own sidebar tab. But I'm inclined to keep the card selection relatively simple - either you manage cards yourself (perhaps with some more prominent / easier to access tools for flagging / filing / etc) or you trust the system to do it and accept that you may not exactly understand the math behind its decisions.

Chris O - yep, seeing that here too - thanks.

gato - there is a button for that, but it's oddly positioned on account of our full-screen-width search bar - top right corner of the screen.

 

[Fabien Aeby]

Hi there,
First I want to congratulate everybody who has contributed to this new version. It is really great and let me save a lot of time doing several things, especially managing flash cards. Here is a bug and a improvement proposal. Sorry if it has already been reported, I don't have the courage to read everything through.

BUG:
I input a word in the dictionary and want to create a flash card out of it. Whenever the flashcard already exists, I can review it and apply modifications such as changing its category, which is perfect. The bug lays in that when I touch the "Done" button, it's impossible to get the input back (here I use handwriting). I need to open the menu and select Dictionnary-search again to raise up the handwriting input.

IMPROVEMENT :
Well, it would be great to be able to sort the flashcard of any category how we want. I know I can use search and then specify sorting method, but it would be great to have it in the "Organise" base screen.

Kindest regards
Fabien

 

[gato]

gato - there is a button for that, but it's oddly positioned on account of our full-screen-width search bar - top right corner of the screen.

I see the button to go back to browsing in landscape mode, but not in portrait mode.

 

[mikelove]

Fabien Aeby - thanks! Keyboard bug was actually mentioned a few posts ago. Better Organize sorting should be coming in 2014 when we revamp flashcards.

gato - ah, forgot this was iPhone. Looks like a bug - adding in that button will mean an extremely cramped search bar but since pretty much everything about Pleco is extremely cramped in that mode I suppose this won't make matters any worse. (as I've said a few times, we left it in only because we think it's very likely Apple will release a 5" phone in 2014 - perfectly satisfying experience on that but on a 4" phone it's an ergonomic disaster)

 

[jlnr]

Ajlnr - is iCloud flashcard sync enabled? Turn it off if so - on a jailbroken device I'd steer clear of doing anything related to iCloud documents, frankly.

Yep, it was enabled. It's crashed on my non-jailbroken iPhone twice too, when I was about to start a flashcard session and at the same time, Pleco informed me of a DB conflict. Since the phone is not jailbroken, would these logs be more useful?

Out of (developer's) curiosity, what are the issues with iCloud Documents on a jailbroken device? I would expect UI hacks to have an influence on Pleco, but I mostly use the JB for f.lux (and to hide Newsstand ).

Anyway, the iOS 6 implementation of iCloud won't get further updates so I'll definitely disable it. I've been offline too much for it to really work anyway. :/ A hosted sync solution is probably not a likely monetisation plan?...

Does the long-press jump you back to the dictionary search screen at least (but just fail to open up the keyboard)?

Yes, it always does that. Actually, tapping Search in the side menu also didn't focus the text field even though I left it empty. I think an empty field should always receive the focus when the search is shown.

(also, if you could expand at all on your App Store review, we'd love to find a way to improve the menu organization in general - you know you can reorder the items in Settings / Miscellaneous, right?)

Yep, I've reordered it, thanks! I don't know how to translate Menüführung into English, but I was thinking of the general flow of the UI, not just the side menu. This is going to be very subjective, but these were my pain points:

• Everything about flashcards, which is my #1 most used feature in Pleco (and it's awesome that a redesign for this is coming next!)
• All modal dialogs on iPad, e.g. I don't see why the document list is not a grid of documents that pushes the document reader onto the navigation stack (like Instapaper maybe)
• The side menu is long and I never understood "Recent..." features. I wish "Reader / Open Document / Recent Documents" was just one single "Reader" item, same for Search, OCR, settings, support and add-ons.
• The Add On section is not inviting and even a bit confusing IMHO, the grey-on-grey iOS 7 theme doesn't help. I wish it was more like the App Store, and less redundant at the same time (e.g. no Free/Paid section since the actual categories are short enough)
• Arcane workflows: I have transferred the MoE dictionary via iTunes, and I wish Pleco would just have recognised the file type on startup. My first stop was the File Manager which couldn't do anything with the file except rename it. Then I found the proper dialog for importing dictionaries, and I still don't know if I can delete the dictionary file now or not... (...but it's only a few MB so I haven't bothered to look it up in the manual)

I have a love/hate relationship with all killer apps, so I guess that's how complex software works. On the positive side, Pleco is now in the same league as Photoshop and OmniFocus for me

 

[Shun]

afritzse - better statistics are most definitely in the offing, yes; that's why the currently rather uninspiring Statistics screen has its own sidebar tab. But I'm inclined to keep the card selection relatively simple - either you manage cards yourself (perhaps with some more prominent / easier to access tools for flagging / filing / etc) or you trust the system to do it and accept that you may not exactly understand the math behind its decisions.

Card selection is good as it is; so we have two main ways of using the flashcard system:

1. The user creates categories and splits them up into manageable chunks. Here the only addition I would like to see is the order in which cards are learned. Instead of placing all incorrect cards at the end and repeating them until all were correct, the set of cards being learned could work like a physical stack of cards, where you put a card further back the better you remembered it. (Because otherwise, the cards you didn't know are too close together for one to memorize them well.) Conversely, if you didn't know a card, or you didn't know it repeatedly, the card will be placed closer to the front each time. The user could fine-tune this behavior. One could leave the old system intact, the new one could be implemented as an option only. If you would like me to elaborate on this system, I'd be glad to do so. In my experience, most students with written flashcards instinctively handle it like this.
   
2. The user chooses to trust the system to give him the cards he needs out of a larger set of cards.

I believe this addition would fit well into Pleco. Some users might not even notice it.

 

[mikelove]

jlnr - no particular jailbreak iCloud problem that we're aware of - the whole system is kind of a black box and there isn't much we can do to diagnose failures to sync when they come up. This is just based on feedback - virtually every iCloud complaint we've had so far has come from someone with a jailbroken system.

We've got most of the code written for our own flashcard sync system already - actually developed for a flashcard list / document / etc sharing system that we're hoping to launch with one of next year's flashcard updates - but actually releasing it and supporting it and keeping the servers running for it is a major undertaking (the scale is several orders of magnitude bigger with people syncing their flashcard databases than merely creating / sharing lists) and we're not yet sufficiently dissatisfied with iCloud to consider that.

Focusing an empty text field when you switch into Search worries me because it seems to run contrary to state restoration - in general our goal is eventually to have every screen return exactly to where it left off, we're not quite there yet but in terms of iOS design philosophy that's definitely the ideal to strive for.

Thanks for the menu feedback. Flashcards are indeed getting thoroughly redesigned; user dictionary workflows are awful because hardly anybody uses that feature at the moment and hence it's not a high priority for optimization. (of course if we ever did optimize it more people would probably use it...)

The document picker and Recent list are both related to our desire to let people have multiple documents open at once and switch between them; having it be a recent list instead of simply a list of open documents is again related to state restoration, we don't want you to have to think about whether a document is 'open' but simply switch into a document that you were looking at recently that you'd like to look at again. I admit it's a bit awkward, but we haven't yet come up with a better approach.

Add-ons does need some work - mostly in the description pages, I'd say: there just isn't enough information on those now. Combining free/paid in the "by name" section makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose - I might also turn "top sellers" into just a "featured" section and drop the featured section on the main page (going back to our old approach of just listing bundles there).

afritzse - burying cards later in the test is something we could do with an SRS system too, actually, and something I believe several other SRS systems do already. Frankly this sounds more like SRS behavior in general - it may a more straightforward / intuitive way of increasing or decreasing card intervals depending on how well you remembered the card, but it's the same idea.

 

[Shun]

afritzse - burying cards later in the test is something we could do with an SRS system too, actually, and something I believe several other SRS systems do already. Frankly this sounds more like SRS behavior in general - it may a more straightforward / intuitive way of increasing or decreasing card intervals depending on how well you remembered the card, but it's the same idea.

It sure is the same general idea, but the devil is in the details. Why not satisfy everyone's wishes, make an SRS system like the one you describe, and as an option, one like a physical stack of cards? I think the preferred way of learning with flashcards is a very personal thing, users have to be able to try every kind out before they know which one they like, so why not offer all of them as options?

 

[mikelove]

"Why not offer all of them as options" is kind of what got us into our current settings mess, and scoring / card selection is confusing even compared to other problem areas; we need to be extremely cautious about adding any more options there. In fact, much as in 3.0 the tentative plan is to remove a whole lot of settings at first and then maybe add a few back based on user feedback.

 

[Shun]

"Why not offer all of them as options" is kind of what got us into our current settings mess, and scoring / card selection is confusing even compared to other problem areas; we need to be extremely cautious about adding any more options there. In fact, much as in 3.0 the tentative plan is to remove a whole lot of settings at first and then maybe add a few back based on user feedback.

I think options are fine as long as users understand them intuitively. But it's all right, I will give you feedback when the next version of Flashcards is out.