COPYING DICTIONARY ENTRIES

[MALAILI]

IS THERE A WAY TO COPYING AN EXISTING DICTIONARY ENTRY INTO MY USER DICTIONARY. AND IF SO, WILL I BE ABLE TO EDIT IT WHEN I USE IT IN MY FLASHCARDS?

I SPEND A LOT OF TIME ENTERING CHARACTERS AND DEFINITIONS INTO MY USER DICTIONARY, TO FIT THE DEFINITIONS APPEARING IN MY TEXT BOOKS.

IF I COULD COPY FROM ABC OR OXFORD AND THEN EDIT IT, IT WOULD SAVE ME A LOT OF TIME.

 

[mikelove]

You can copy-and-paste, but it's rather tedious... for licensing reasons we're not really supposed to make it too easy to copy out dictionary entries into an editable / unprotected format. If you want to do that copy-and-paste, just highlight the entry text you want to copy, choose Copy from the Edit menu, then go to the new entry screen and choose Paste from the Edit menu to paste the text into one of the fields.

I'm curious, though - if you're putting in a new definition anyway, why bother copying out the existing entry? Is it because you want to save time on entering the headword / Pinyin or do you still use part of the definition? I'm asking because even though we probably can't add a feature in 2.0 that would copy an entire dictionary entry to the user dictionary, we could certainly add one that would copy the headword and Pinyin.

 

[MALAILI]

YES SIR, YOU ARE RIGHT ON.

I WANT TO SAVE TIME. MANY OF THE WORDS WE ARE LEARNING USE SO OF THE LESSER KNOWN DEFINITIONS AND IT SAVES TIME IF I DON'T HAVE TO SCROLL THROUGH ALL THE DEFINITIONS WHEN LEARNING A NEW WORD.

[/b] PLEASE ADD THE HEADWORD AND PINYIN COPY FEATURE.

THANK YOU.

 

[mikelove]

OK, we'll see what we can do on that... should be pretty easy, really, just one extra menu option that brings up the "Edit Entry" screen with the headword / Pinyin already filled-in.

 

[koreth]

I can add to this since I often copy and paste definitions too. I do it in two circumstances. The first is what was already described, moving the definition I'm learning to the front of the list (most often this is just shuffling the parts of speech around, e.g. I'm learning a word as an adverb that means something else as a noun.)

The second is to edit the dictionary entries for characters that have a mix of standalone meanings and bound-form meanings. The ABC dictionary includes the pinyin of the two-character words in its (BF) entries, which means if I'm quizzing myself on a standalone character's pronunciation based on the definition, I need to get rid of that part of the definition so as not to give away the answer to myself.

For characters that have no standalone meanings, it's usually not worth the effort to edit the existing dictionary entries, especially since, in my experience, the ABC dictionary very often doesn't even list the compound I'm learning for a given character. Or it lists the compound but with a different definition than the one in the main entry for the compound. (The BF-only dictionary entries are, in my opinion, the weakest aspect of the ABC dictionary by far.)

Actually, a third reason I copy and paste: On my Treo there's no other way to input certain characters, e.g. a tilde or (more frustrating) a semicolon. I also sometimes copy and paste an entry and throw away its actual contents just so my own entry can have the nice-looking (1) (2) (3) markers, the diamonds between parts of speech, etc.

 

[mikelove]

Agree with you on the BF-only entries, I'm hoping with the increasing efforts they're making towards turning the ABC into more of a mass-market title that there'll be fewer confusing bits like that in the next edition (no idea when that's coming out).

For the first two things you mention, though, this should actually be fixable in the new version without creating a new dictionary entry; thanks to our new, more intelligent text coding system most of those Pinyin giveaways should be hidden in flashcard sessions, and there's also a new feature that lets you highlight a specific section of a built-in dictionary entry and only have that show up on a flashcard. (we had a feature like this in Oxford Dict 2.0, had to take it away in PlecoDict 1.0 but now have figured out a way to bring it back in PD 2.0)

 

[MALAILI]

YOU HAVE MADE MY DAY! THE ABILITY TO HIGHLIGHT A SECTION OF THE DEFINITION FOR USE WITH THE FLASHCARD IS/WILL BE JUST WHAT THE DR. ORDERED.

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR SUPPORT.