Beta 7 Bug Report Thread

[sych]

sych - that's odd, I don't think we've had any other reports of this - have you installed HWPen, PenPower, or some other non-Pleco handwriting recognition system on your Treo? Is PlecoDict 1.0 still installed too? Any other software that has something to do with screen input capture, like TealScript?

I don't have any 3rd-party pen input stuff. I still have a copy of Pleco 1.0 on my SD card, but I have deleted it and all the libraries (including HWR) from internal memory.

I have found a way to reproduce the problem:

1 ) Turn on full-screen HRW
2 ) Open Flashcards
3 ) Manage Flashcards
4 ) Search by "pron" or "headword"
5 ) Tap "入" to bring up the input dialog
6 ) Tap "Done" to dismiss the input dialog
7 ) Exit from Flashcards (i.e. Done, Done)
8 ) Write something on the screen
9 ) Tap "字", or wait for auto-rec if using auto-rec
10 ) Get a soft reset

This reproduces the crash 100% of the time for me.

A couple of things about what I wrote before turned out to be wrong:

1 ) I thought it might have been happening after doing a lot of searches; that seems to be incorrect (doesn't make any difference)
2 ) I thought it was happening on pen-up rather than at the recognition stage; it seems now that it's definitely occurring at recognition stage.


Another minor problem with full-screen HWR: When using left-handed interface mode, and the full-screen HWR toolbar is at the bottom of the screen, the the "字" button on the toolbar disappears when you start writing a character. This means that you can't use full-screen HWR in left-hand mode without turning on auto-rec, as there's no way to manually trigger recognition.

 

[mikelove]

The Duelist - glad we could fix part of this at least. Is the blank category at the very top of the list or is it farther down? Do all of the other categories in the list appear normal?

Getting category filters to remember their settings even when disabled would actually be a little tricky (we'd need to change the way those settings are stored), but something to think about post-2.0.

The corrupted database sounds like it might actually explain the category list problem too - I assume the list doesn't work correctly in the copy you restored from the card either, correct? Are you storing flashcards now as a PDB or in internal flash memory?

gato - that would actually be a new feature and not a bug-fix, which means it has to wait until after 2.0 - surprisingly tricky to implement, mainly because of Windows Mobile (which makes it really really hard to consistently capture hardware button presses, especially in a modal dialog box).

sych - are you using Input Field Compatibility mode? We managed to reproduce this with that turned on but not with it turned off. I'm seeing the left-handed bug here too, looks like a glitch in the form layout code so that at least should be easy to fix.

 

[The Duelist]

The Duelist - glad we could fix part of this at least. Is the blank category at the very top of the list or is it farther down? Do all of the other categories in the list appear normal?

The corrupted database sounds like it might actually explain the category list problem too - I assume the list doesn't work correctly in the copy you restored from the card either, correct? Are you storing flashcards now as a PDB or in internal flash memory?

Also Occurring With My Restored DB:
The 'Blank' Category(s) Appears In The Middle Of The List. (Only In 'Toggle Category' List)
Usually Only One 'Blank' Category Appears In The 'Toggle Category' List (But Sometimes There Are 2).

On The Card Info Screen:
I've Noticed That There Are 2 'Null' Categories On All Of My Cards.
eg CatA,CatB,,,CatC ...
I Think This Was Also In The DB I Sent You.
How Can I 'Clean' My Flashcards Of These Null 'Categories' :?:

 

[The Duelist]

Crash Report:
'Manage Flashcards' -> 'Edit Card'
Tapping The 'HWR Icon' Always Crashes (Fatal Exception)

Platform: Palm T5
Software: PD2b7(a)

 

[mikelove]

The Duelist - it does sound like that file is corrupted; could you send me the backed-up file from your SD card? Should be easy to get at if you put the T5 into "Drive Mode" - we need the actual .pqb database file, not the .xml export, since it sounds like the corruption is only present in the database.

The null categories are probably a symptom of that corruption, categories going missing or somesuch, but hopefully if we get a look at the file we can figure out what's going on. We made a tweak to the way that the Input screen works in the latest b7(b) so that might take care of the handwriting icon crash.

 

[sych]

sych - are you using Input Field Compatibility mode? We managed to reproduce this with that turned on but not with it turned off. I'm seeing the left-handed bug here too, looks like a glitch in the form layout code so that at least should be easy to fix.

No, I'm not. I turned CJKOS off & rebooted just now, and I can still reproduce the problem. Might be worth saying I also have "auto-enter best HWR match" turned on.

 

[mikelove]

Ah, now I'm seeing it - sorry it wasn't corrected in the b7(b) fix but it should definitely be fixed in the next one.

 

[sych]

Ah, now I'm seeing it - sorry it wasn't corrected in the b7(b) fix but it should definitely be fixed in the next one.

No problems, I can easily work around it.

 

[The Duelist]

The Duelist - it does sound like that file is corrupted; could you send me the backed-up file from your SD card? Should be easy to get at if you put the T5 into "Drive Mode" - we need the actual .pqb database file, not the .xml export, since it sounds like the corruption is only present in the database.

The null categories are probably a symptom of that corruption, categories going missing or somesuch, but hopefully if we get a look at the file we can figure out what's going on. We made a tweak to the way that the Input screen works in the latest b7(b) so that might take care of the handwriting icon crash.

Flashcard DB Forwarded.
Hope It Helps.

 

[mikelove]

It does (see my e-mail), and for anyone else reading, this turned out to be an issue with category assignments being left around when their associated categories weren't (rather than low-level file corruption like what we were seeing a few betas ago on the TX), so this isn't a troubling new sign of random Palm OS file-garbling but simply a slightly-askew SQL command on our end.

 

[benzhen]

this may be more of an issue of how pleco works with outside programs....but anyway when i use the pleco icon to look up words in other programs (windows media) i get two different scenarios. one is if i'm using a reader like haali reader i have to select and copy the character and when i hit the icon (or launch pleco) i get the full pleco in its own window. when i'm in a program like Word mobile i just select the character and then hit the icon and up pops a nice little mini-window with the definition (kinda like the palm instant access from pleco 1).

why is there this difference?

also when i switch into pleco using an "alt-tab" function on my phone the instant access doesn't get activated (i.e. characters that were copied don't get pasted in.) It only works when i launch the app from the start menu, button, etc... this is kind of frustrating because it's nice to use one button to switch back and forth.

also, the reader went back to repeating the last line at the top. it wasn't doing that in the previous beta and i like it better like that....

thanks!!

 

[mikelove]

benzhen - the first issue is happening because we don't have a good way to read highlighted text out of every Windows Mobile program; if a program's user interface supports the standard Windows Mobile copy-to-clipboard command, we can read text out of it, and we've added code for one or two non-standard ones (Opera and, ironically for something Microsoft developed, IE) too, but with other programs we'd need to specifically test / find out what command it uses to copy text and customize Pleco to work with that. Over time we'll probably add that kind of support to more programs, but for the initial 2.0 release we mainly just wanted to get it working with Word, IE, and Outlook/SMS, and it should be pretty solid with those.

What alt-tab function are you using to switch to Pleco - is this a third-party taskbar program of some kind, or something built into your phone? You have the Instant Access "on program activate" option enabled in Preferences, right?

The reader line repeat is intentional, I know some people prefer it the other way but until we add a preferences setting for it (the reader's going to need at least another screen or two worth of preferences) it seemed like having that repeated line would be less likely to annoy people than not having it.

 

[benzhen]

thanks mike:

i'm using a third party (tried a few) alt-tab switcher. One i've tried is called "GreenSoftware TaskSwitch+". I have "on program activate" on. it works if i go to the start menu and hit pleco. it seems that if i use any of the various "task switch" methods it doesn't work, only if i use something to "open" pleco. have you/anyone tried some kind of task switcher with instant access on winmo?

thanks

 

[mikelove]

That may not be fixable until after 2.0 is out, actually - it's very hard for us to tell the difference between switching to Pleco from another program and just switching between one Pleco window and another, we haven't come up with a consistent system for doing it yet so right now unless we're sure we don't paste in the clipboard (the feeling being that it would be much more annoying to have it happen when you didn't want it than to have it not happen when you did). But we'll certainly take another run at it post-2.0 anyway.

 

[Marc Vermeiren]

Mike,
On an iPaq 214 with WM6 Classic (5.2.1711 build 18165.0.5.0) in the 'Compounds' section of the Character Info, in the 'Words starting with this character:' box the character is given and than a code, for instance '黑 B6C2 216266 1-6329 WGF'. The 'Other words starting with this character:" box is filled out correctly. It happened with every character I tried so far. I use the same data files as on my previous PDA (PPC2003), where it functioned correctly.
Also, there seems to be no way of adjusting the font size in the list boxes of the Compound tab.

 

[mikelove]

Have you installed the latest experimental update? (b7b) This bug should be fixed in that, I believe. There's no font size adjustment option for those boxes yet, we were kind of running out of room in Preferences