3.2.x Bug Report / Feedback Thread

[UsernameRequired]

Slightly related to background stuff, I find when resuming Pleco from background operation rather than a clean start, the handwriting recognition tool sometimes draws slightly slower.

One of the great features of the handwriting screen is it normally feels so smooth and fast, and much more pleasant than the built-in iOS one.

Could this be possible? Once or twice it's gone so slow that there's a large visible gap (e.g. 1cm) between where my finger is (or stylus, much recommended for handwriting at speed) and the appearing line.

Though it does always perform at top speed after a kill/restart, so I generally do this before a lot of handwriting, e.g. a lengthy test session.

 

[mikelove]

That's a new one... can certainly investigate, it could be that the (extremely old) OpenGL-based code for that box is no longer functioning well in new versions of iOS, in which case we can consider swapping it in with the new version we've done for 4.0 that's based on PencilKit. (the problem with that is that then we'd either have to drop support for iOS 11 and iOS 12 or spend even more time coming up with a way to support both the old and new versions of that box)

 

[UsernameRequired]

This is on iOS 14.6, I should have mentioned. Not sure I noticed it before 14, but then I did used to write much slower, so may not have noticed so easily.

 

[Shun]

A very minor bug: If I have Filter Head in defns enabled under Flashcards > Display, when the character being asked for in a Fill-in-the-blanks test occurs twice in a row in the card definition, the tilde "~" placeholder appears only once. I think it would be nice to have it appear twice in this case. An example with 往 in 来来往往:

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

Thanks.

 

[Shun]

Hello Mike,

when a PDF file containing Chinese text doesn't come with integrated text hinting and so cannot be tapped on, I open it using the Still OCR feature, which should recognize all Chinese characters with a hit rate of 100%. But I've noticed that the PDF file, which comes from a digital Print-to-PDF source, is internally rasterized to a relatively low resolution by Pleco (somewhere around 100-150 dpi) before the OCR is performed. Unfortunately, this leads to misrecognized characters, or even paragraphs that are skipped entirely:



If I first convert a single page from the PDF to a 300 dpi JPEG on the Mac/PC and open that in Pleco, the recognition works perfectly, and the text becomes more agreeable to read:



Considering that most users now use more powerful iPhones/Android smartphones with more RAM, would it be possible to increase the internal rasterized resolution to around 300 dpi when opening a PDF in Still OCR? As a possibility, Pleco could first check how much RAM it can comfortably use, and then adapt the resolution accordingly.

Has this process perhaps already been improved on with Pleco 4.0?

Many thanks,

Shun

 

[mikelove]

We've actually found that for our OCR algorithm this lower resolution generally works *more* reliably (I'm surprised it's not doing so in your case), but we could consider adding an option to adjust it - it's not a RAM constraint, even quite old iPhones could manage a grayscale 300dpi page image.

 

[Shun]

Understood. I can work around it by increasing the font size in the document from 12 pt. to maybe 20 pt., but in cases where a PDF with smaller fonts comes from a different source, I believe such an option would be very useful.

 

[mikelove]

This is for Pleco Android, but I couldn't find a bug report thread there and didn't want to start a new thread just for this problem. This has probably been mentioned before, but I've noticed ABC redirections doesn't work properly if there is more than one matching pinyin entry. For example:

黝
black; dark in yǒuhēi, ànyǒu

Pressing ànyǒu brings me to 暗友.

Follow up on this one (going through a backlog for our Android 12 update): it seems like there isn't an ABC entry for 暗友, the only entry I can find for that word is in KEY. Is it bringing you to the KEY entry instead? Which screen are you doing this from? The definition screen normally uses the same dictionary a particular entry is from to follow links, so tapping on ànyǒu there should bring you to the correct / sole ABC entry with pronunciation ànyǒu.

 

[jurgen85]

I have no problems with 黝 on Android with Pleco 3.2.82, the link takes me to 暗黝. I have both ABC and KEY installed and enabled.

@timseb are you perhaps using dictionary groups or something?

I do remember running into a similar issue when fiddling with links in custom dictionaries, but that was probably on me for using unsupported features.

 

[lostinasia]

I think this is the right place for an issue with the iOS update installed today or yesterday? When I'm looking at a dictionary entry, if it's already in the current flashcard deck, it appears with a solid square. I used to see a solid square with a plus sign to indicate which dictionary's entry was being used. Now I don't see that plus sign - all of the different dictionary entries just show the downward arrow.

I hope that makes sense.

 

[Shun]

Hi lostinasia,

perhaps your main dictionary was lost for some reason, or, more likely, the dictionaries have lost their previous ordering, so that the solid square shows up much farther down? I noticed with my Pleco that the dictionaries have lost their ordering recently, too. Would you like to check in Settings > Manage Dictionaries if everything looks good?

Hope this helps,

Shun

 

[mikelove]

Maybe it doesn't point to any of them? If you tap on the + button at the top and tap Card Info to look at the flashcard, does it match any of the dictionaries?

 

[rizen suha]

bug or treat: the top menu (eg in the reader) previously (seemingly) always had the same color as the text background. now (seemingly) in "dark mode" it is always dark grey and in "light mode" it is white, not customizable (seemingly).

 

[lostinasia]

perhaps your main dictionary was lost for some reason, or, more likely, the dictionaries have lost their previous ordering, so that the solid square shows up much farther down? I noticed with my Pleco that the dictionaries have lost their ordering recently, too. Would you like to check in Settings > Manage Dictionaries if everything looks good?

Thanks - nope, that part still looks good to me.

Maybe it doesn't point to any of them? If you tap on the + button at the top and tap Card Info to look at the flashcard, does it match any of the dictionaries?

Oh ... that's interesting. That + button at the top? It's gone when I'm looking at dictionary entries on my iPad, although I still see it on my iPhone.

For what it's worth, the little squares indicating if it's in the current flashcard deck isn't giving proper indications - lots of solid boxes, for example, for entries that aren't in the current deck.

Unless I'm misunderstanding. I don't remember that + button ever giving me access to Card Info to look at the flashcard. It'd be great if I could - that's a feature I've wondered about before.

EDIT: Also (on iPad), if I'm adding a word to a flashcard category, I sometimes get a warning that "You've already created another flashcard for this word, and that card is already in category "_____." But this definitely isn't true; I just made the category a few minutes ago!

 

[Shun]

Hi lostinasia,

you're welcome. It seems to me as if you're on to something here.

Unless I'm misunderstanding. I don't remember that + button ever giving me access to Card Info to look at the flashcard. It'd be great if I could - that's a feature I've wondered about before.

You can set it to go to Card Info if the card is a duplicate. (or by tapping the + button twice and removing the unwanted flashcard from the current category right in the Card Info screen afterwards)
See the relevant settings screen (Settings > Flashcards):



@mikelove: The new version of Pleco for iOS, which works very well otherwise (love the PDF OCR resolution increase and the new HWR recognizer), crashed on me when I tried to open the Settings > Flashcards screen for the first time. Do you automatically receive and analyze anonymized crash logs from Apple for all users? Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

Do you automatically receive and analyze anonymized crash logs from Apple for all users? Thanks!

We do, but I don't see any log for this yet. Does it happen every time you go to that screen or did it only happen the first time?

 

[Shun]

We do, but I don't see any log for this yet. Does it happen every time you go to that screen or did it only happen the first time?

It just happened for a second time as I tried to reproduce it. Pleco was already open in the background. Before, the crash had only happened once, and it worked normally thereafter. I unfortunately can't remember if the first crash happened the very first time I tried to open the Flashcards settings screen, or if it was just a random instance. (I am guessing the latter.)

On an iPhone 12 running iOS 14.8, I have yet to see it crash. Both crashes occurred on the older iPhone Xr running iOS 14.8. My analytics settings are enabled on the Xr:



My cellular connection is quite slow where I am, so perhaps the crash reports didn't get sent out yet. I've just enabled Wi-Fi, hoping that the crash reports will automatically be sent out to you.

Could it also be related to high memory requirements of my Pleco, due to my too huge flashcards database? (about 270MB uncompressed size)

Regards, Shun

 

[mikelove]

Shouldn't have anything to do with database size, no - SQLite is very lean in its RAM usage (only brings a little piece of the database into memory at a time) and in any event nothing in Settings / Flashcards ought to cause any extra database data to be reloaded since it's actually just adjusting in-app settings relating to flashcards.

It could be something iCloud related, since even if you're not using iCloud sync the app checks to see whether you have a dormant iCloud database when you enter that screen - does Pleco have permission to use iCloud storage? (if so, does it get rid of the crashes if you turn that permission off?)

 

[mikelove]

@lostinasia - have you enabled iCloud sync between your iPhone / iPad? That's been getting buggier and buggier in every iOS release (the particular feature of iCloud we use for that has never been very popular and Apple seems to be content to let it degrade) and the problems you're describing all sound like they relate to data file integrity, so if you are using iCloud sync, do things get better if you turn it off?

bug or treat: the top menu (eg in the reader) previously (seemingly) always had the same color as the text background. now (seemingly) in "dark mode" it is always dark grey and in "light mode" it is white, not customizable (seemingly).

Thanks - not deliberate, just an annoying iOS 15 SDK change which we neglected to undo.