Adjust popup window size

[shiki]

Is there any plans to update the size or give users the option to adjust the popup window size or even allowing example sentences in the popup? The popup feels small.

Also, is it possible to change the behavior of what happens when you highlight a word in whatever app and press the pleco button in the context menu, instead of opening up the whole app and leaving the current app, could you guys add the option to open up the popup from that context menu button instead please? Thank you!

 

[mikelove]

In general our recommended solution there is that you tap on the 'expand' button to show the full-screen definition; we're a little wary of making the bubble too big (or adding too much more information to it) since then it takes you out of the context of what you're reading, at which point you might as well just have it full-screen. We've experimented with trying to fit example sentences into even a half-screen-sized bubble and found it too cluttered be usable.

For popups, since that context menu command launches an Activity we're not aware of any reliable way to show it as only a bubble and not full-screen; however, our Screen Reader function allows you to tap-lookup text on the screen.

 

[shiki]

Yeah I can imagine the example sentences create a lot of clutter. Thanks for the quick response

I wanted to ask another question. I think someone else already asked about support for yomitan dictionaries and it seems that won't get support soon so I wanted to ask about the pleco dictionary file structure. Is there somewhere I could learn about what is needed to convert to the pleco file type? Like basically what is needed for the app to recognize and import the file? I'd like to see some yomitan dictionaries in pleco!

 

[mikelove]

It’s pretty basic at the moment, a plaintext file with:

Characters<tab>pinyin<tab>definition

One item per line. We’re adding Markdown formatting in our next major update - including some useful extra syntax / attributes / class IDs - but we haven’t yet come up with a good reason to support anything more complicated than that; most of the features people expect from Chinese dictionaries are features we already support algorithmically that a user dictionary doesn’t need to worry about.

 

[shiki]

I have a csv file and I converted it to tsv but then realized you said text file so I just changed the file extension but pleco still doesn't recognize the file as a dictionary.

Originally the csv file has 3 columns, called word,reading, definition.
Than every row after the first with the names is each entry. Could you tell me if my formatting is wrong or something else to do with the file type please?

 

[mikelove]

That should be fine - create a new user dictionary in Settings / Manage Dictionaries and then import the file via the “Import” command in that new dictionary’s Manage Dictionaries screen.

 

[shiki]

So which file type do you recommend, csv,tsv or txt file?

 

[mikelove]

The extension doesn't matter but the format has to be tab-separated (TSV).

 

[shiki]

I'm trying this but it's hard because the definitions all have newlines and spaces so I think I'm supposed to just remove them all?

By the way instead of pinyin, can the reading be in zhuyin characters or does the app automatically add zhuyin from pinyin?

If so did you guys intentionally choose to add the neutral tone after the character? I thought official zhuyin notation says that the neutral tone marker should be right before the character ? I'm just wondering if there's any pros and cons with that style

 

[mikelove]

You can use the private use character U+EAB1 (between brackets here: {{}}) as a replacement for a newline. (our next major update supports multi-line import files and Markdown, this is just our awkward internal way of doing it in the old version)

The app converts Pinyin to Zhuyin for display (and Zhuyin to Pinyin for search), we use Pinyin internally because it's more computer-friendly (nice simple ASCII characters that automatically sort correctly).

We put neutral tone dots on the end in our Zhuyin transcription because we're not using ruby - it's just a string of zhuyin - and so if we did it the other way we'd end up with the confusing situation of one tone mark immediately followed by another tone mark. This way seems easier to scan, and thus far we haven't really had any complaints about it that I can recall. With Zhuyin set to display as ruby text I believe we do put the neutral tone dot in the beginning instead.

 

[shiki]

I'm unsure how to make the csv work with pleco.

I don't know where the ruby version of zhuyin can be seen but it would be cool if we could change the neutral tone to be like the official notation.

Btw what's your opinion on erhua words and the ER being displayed as neutral tone while other sources such as the MOE dicts displaying ㄦ as the first tone? Or are all of them arbitrary since we isn't even a syllable?

 

[mikelove]

You mean that you don't know how to replace the newlines? You can do it with a regex find and replace to capture newlines within quotation marks; would be:

("[^"\n]*)\n
to
$1

Or if you email us to us we can take a look at it for you. Or if it's not urgent you can wait and do it in our next major update, which will support CSV files and quoted newlines natively.

Ruby: you can configure that in Settings / Languages / Mandarin.

Erhua tones: isn't this mostly a distinction between PRC and Taiwan pronunciation?

 

[shiki]

Okay thanks I can try this.

Around when would that major update release?

I'm not sure about it. Well maybe I shouldn't care too much. It seems taiwanese people dont even know since they never use erhua

 

[mikelove]

It's in beta testing now on iOS but I don't have anything to share about Android - not imminent at any rate.

 

[shiki]

Ok I was able to replace the newlines thanks to your help! Imported fine now. Three dictionary originally had zhuyin as well and I imported that but I see pinyin too, wondered if zhuyin as a reading in the file is ok, looks like it.

I've found some errors in the zhuyin of some entries specifically with er as a syllable. It's because of the capital E right?

Can I ask what converter do you guys use? Or is it something you guys made?

 

[mikelove]

Most likely the capital E, yes - will investigate.

You mean which converter we use for Zhuyin? It's our own, yes.