document file reader question

[keitha]

Hello, I have a question regarding the document file reader option. I spend alot of time chatting with people on my iPhone. I use the app weixin and Pleco is the perfect tool for it, I just copy the message that I receive and look up the characters it in the pasteboard reader. Lately I have started to collect some nice phrases and expressions that I rarely find in dictionaries etc but that the native speakers use when they talk with me. Is there a way to select and copy the part I am interested in and save it straight into a default text file?

-Keitha

 

[mikelove]

Hello, I have a question regarding the document file reader option. I spend alot of time chatting with people on my iPhone. I use the app weixin and Pleco is the perfect tool for it, I just copy the message that I receive and look up the characters it in the pasteboard reader. Lately I have started to collect some nice phrases and expressions that I rarely find in dictionaries etc but that the native speakers use when they talk with me. Is there a way to select and copy the part I am interested in and save it straight into a default text file?

The best way to do that would probably be with a custom flashcard. Go into Settings / Reader, set "Unknown Flashcard" under "Popup Reader" to "Custom Card," then in the reader, when you encounter a word like this just select it (use the |-> button to extend the highlight to cover the whole word) and tap on + to create a custom flashcard from it. You can export these to a text file using the "Export Cards" command.

 

[jppleco]

Hi,

Is it possible for the document reader to read from a snapshot? I need to read printed announcements/materials from my kid's school so I am wondering if this can be the solution.

Thanks,

John

 

[mikelove]

Is it possible for the document reader to read from a snapshot? I need to read printed announcements/materials from my kid's school so I am wondering if this can be the solution.

For that you'd need our OCR add-on, though I would strongly recommend that you try out the demo of it with one of those announcements first to make sure that it can actually read characters from it correctly.

 

[jppleco]

Hi,

I did try the OCR demo and it can read out the hanyu pinyin but without the English definition/explanation. So we bought the OCR add-on but found it difficult to right-away/fully understand the sentences. If a block of characters are selected, only the first character is being explained and not as a whole. Is there a way to set it up so it can translate the whole thing? I hope there is because it's kinda frustrating going through character by character and in the end not knowing what the sentence is actually talking about.

 

[tsr]

Is there a way to set it up so it can translate the whole thing?

I'm pretty sure you can only lookup words. Here is how the manual describes the purpose of the OCR feature:

The new Optical Character Recognizer system in Pleco 2.2 is our first attempt to introduce a totally new way to look up unknown characters since the debut of our original Palm OS software way back in 2001. Rather than handwriting in unknown characters, or tediously looking them up in a radical index, using OCR you can simply point your iPhone's camera at a word to look it up instantly; you don't even need to tap a shutter button, you just line up the camera with the word and the definition appears instantly.

 

[mikelove]

I did try the OCR demo and it can read out the hanyu pinyin but without the English definition/explanation. So we bought the OCR add-on but found it difficult to right-away/fully understand the sentences. If a block of characters are selected, only the first character is being explained and not as a whole. Is there a way to set it up so it can translate the whole thing? I hope there is because it's kinda frustrating going through character by character and in the end not knowing what the sentence is actually talking about.

It goes through word-by-word - it will happily translate a multi-character word but it doesn't translate an entire sentence. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear; sentence translation isn't something we do in the regular document reader either and I assumed from your question that you already owned / were familiar with that. We mainly design our apps around people learning Chinese who need help looking up the occasional unknown word - the general-purpose translation market is something we leave to companies with bigger resources like Google.

If you're unhappy with your purchase and would like a refund you can write to Apple support for that - we're not able to issue them directly.

 

[jppleco]

I did thought of doing a refund but made up my mind to give it a chance. So if it's not a general purpose reader then can it at least have a feature to read out the captured characters? This will be a good solution for us since we need to review my kid on his Chinese spelling. Can you guys please add this feature in the OCR?

 

[mikelove]

I did thought of doing a refund but made up my mind to give it a chance. So if it's not a general purpose reader then can it at least have a feature to read out the captured characters? This will be a good solution for us since we need to review my kid on his Chinese spelling. Can you guys please add this feature in the OCR?

Already supported if you have our audio pronunciation add-on - Settings / OCR / Live / Lookup Words / Auto-play audio on lookups.

 

[furisas]

Mike, you say "Feature to read out the captured characters is already supported if you have our audio pronunciation add-on - Settings / OCR / Live / Lookup Words / Auto-play audio on lookups.

I have audio pronunciation and extended audio, for both female and male. But when I go to "Settings / OCR....", I don't see "Live / Lookup Words / Auto-play audio on lookups."

Instead I get the following.....
- Still Image OCT settings
- Basic Overlay
- Highlighted characters
- Unknown Flashcard

But I can get the audio (male and female" on the words that I highlight. What is happening?

Is it possible to have Pleco read the entire sentence or paragraph, rather than word by word?

 

[mikelove]

Instead I get the following.....
- Still Image OCT settings
- Basic Overlay
- Highlighted characters
- Unknown Flashcard

But I can get the audio (male and female" on the words that I highlight. What is happening?

It sounds like you're using a device without a camera - is that correct? The auto-play feature is currently only supported with live OCR - we actually hadn't had anybody request support for it in still images. We could certainly consider adding that in a future release, though.

Is it possible to have Pleco read the entire sentence or paragraph, rather than word by word?

Not yet, but that's coming soon with our TTS add-on.