Experimental ARM-accelerated Palm version

mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
http://www.pleco.com/beta/pd2b1-armtest2.zip

This is a new, even-more-experimental-than-usual release of the Palm OS application which uses ARM-accelerated code for its dictionary, font, and other non-editable databases. It actually seems more unstable in a few areas than the regular beta, but feels a lot faster and fixes a couple of bugs (for example, setting the search delay to 1/4 second in preferences will now actually give you a 1/4 second search delay, rather than the 25 second delay it did before) not to mention having far fewer memory leaks.

Anyway, we're not expecting this to really improve anyone's situation too much, but we'd love it if a few people would try it out and let us know a) how much less stable it is, and b) whether or not this is now as fast as / faster than the old version 1.0.3.
 
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AmeriChin

Member
oops... I was mistaken... the regular beta is 9.5KB/s. I have tried to open the link, but it takes me no where... no timeout, no nothing... it(IE) just spins away.
 
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beirne

进士
The program starts up and I can move around, but it crashes whenever I try to do a search by hitting the search button.

- Type / model of your Palm or Pocket PC - Palm TX
- Firmware version, if available - 5.4.9
- Cellular carrier, if applicable - N/A
- Type / size of memory expansion card, if any - 1GB SD card
- Free memory available (internal and on the card) Internal: 57.2MB free, Card: 678MB free
- Names of any system extensions / Chinese OSes installed - CJKOS, Fitaly Virtual, UnCache
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Anyone else gotten it working? We actually debugged this on a TX, so I don't think it's a hardware issue in beirne's case... have you tried clearing out your preferences and seeing if that helps any? Are you sure the dictionary's not in full-text search mode? (which seems to be very unstable in this release, though we think we've figured out why now) Have you tried any Pinyin searches or only characters?
 
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gato

状元
Anyone else gotten it working?
Click to expand...
I've just tried on my Treo 680. I see that a new "delay = none" option has been added for search. This works, but it's slower than it was on 1.03. It takes maybe 1/2 second for each letter you add. If you enter a five- or six-letter pinyin, it may take two, three seconds for it to complete the search. Handwriting search still does not work. Using it triggers a switch to the English-Chinese dictionary for some reason.
 
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ipsi

状元
Handwriting search works for me, but when I try to play the audio, it does a soft reset. :(.

Seems faster, sure, but I like having the audio, so I'll have to go back to the old one, sadly.

It doesn't seem any faster loading up though, which is kinda annoying.

Got a soft reset after searching for pinyin and then switching to English. Like you said, it's pretty unstable. But it does turn on, and I think it's faster. :). Either way, I'm going back to the slightly more stable version.
 
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gato

状元
Handwriting search works for me,
Click to expand...
You are using a Treo 680, too, right? I don't understand why this search is still not working for me, then.

And does the Chinese character entered through handwriting recognition display properly for you? On mine, it's hidden until you highlight it with the stylus. There's something odd about its foreground color.
 
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ipsi

状元
Yep, Treo 680 for me.

Yeah, it's still hidden from view, can't see it without highlighting. But once it's highlighted, it's still visible even after I've pressed something else.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Interesting that the audio isn't working, we'll have to figure out what's going on there - the decryption system for the audio files is still a little quirky even in 68k and it's exactly the sort of thing that can be screwed up by a processor change.

Load time is something we're still working on; the main reason the first load after a reset is so slow is that the flashcard database takes a while to set up (lots of different tables), but we could probably figure out a way to have a pre-initialized flashcard database file put on your Palm by the installer (and deleted or activated depending on whether there was already another file there). The sort-of-slow later load times are mostly a result of inefficient database initialization code, which is definitely something we can fix, though unfortunately I don't think it'll ever be quite as fast to start up as 1.0.

We're aware of the highlighted text issue and that should definitely be fixed soon.
 
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beirne

进士
mikelove said:
Anyone else gotten it working? We actually debugged this on a TX, so I don't think it's a hardware issue in beirne's case... have you tried clearing out your preferences and seeing if that helps any? Are you sure the dictionary's not in full-text search mode? (which seems to be very unstable in this release, though we think we've figured out why now) Have you tried any Pinyin searches or only characters?
Click to expand...

I checked my preferences in Filez and found 4 PLEN entries that were unlabeled. I deleted them and found that the non-ARM beta worked much better. I then tried the ARM version and the TX crashed while it was doing the real-time lookup. I didn't notice if the dictionary was in full-text search mode.

When the Palm rebooted I found that I couldn't get Fitaly Virtual to work any more and it appeared that the preference list as seen in Filez was a lot shorter, although I had never done a precise count. I ended up doing a hard reset and restoring the Palm. Your warnings about the beta are definitely valid. :) I think I'll wait for a later ARM-accelerated version before testing again.
 
Alexis

Alexis

状元
With the ARM-accelerated Palm version, both pinyin search, character search, and playing audio cause a fatal exception.

I am using a Tungsten T3 With Palm OS v.5.2.1. I have CJKOS, but it is disabled.

- Alexis
 
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AmeriChin

Member
I have now tried both and while ARM is a little faster in lookups, it causes reset after every second command. It's as if the app never releases the last request and it dies trying to execute the next request. Case in point... I look up an English word... it comes up with the Chinese ok, I try to take (copy) an atlernate Chinese meaning (Characters) and it resets.

Treo 650 V. 1.20-APR
Running: Palm OS Garnet v. 5.4.0
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
beirne - probably a good idea to wait, yes; we're not calling it Experimental for nothing.

Beta 2 may ship with two separate application files, one with the new ARM stuff and one without it, since the ARM code likely won't quite be stable then either. However, ARM code in general doesn't seem to be a problem since it's also used in flashcards and in audio playback and those don't appear to be causing nearly as many crashing issues as this.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.
 
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The Duelist

榜眼
mikelove said:
ARM code in general doesn't seem to be a problem since it's also used in flashcards and in audio playback and those don't appear to be causing nearly as many crashing issues as this.
Click to expand...
Just Installed the ARM-Accelerated Palm version on my T5.

May be a little Quicker Loading(???).
Still Slow compared to PlecoDict 1.03 & VERY Unstable.

Every Attempt to Use Audio Playback Caused an Immediate Crash.
I'm reverting back to the Non-Accelerated Version.

The Duelist
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
The instability we know about, but is there anywhere other than startup where it's slower than 1.0.3? Do searches still feel slower? Does this apply to all searches or only to specific types (character, wildcard, etc) of search? We're trying to figure out what else we need to try to speed up, so it would help a lot to know where the software is still lagging...
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I've just posted another version of this at:

http://www.pleco.com/beta/pd2b1-armtest2.zip

This version is considerably more stable (audio works! as do E-C searches!) and has been accelerated in several other areas, chief among them search; we've also made a few tweaks to the startup code that might result in some very modest improvements there. Before installing this, use FileZ to go in and delete your user dictionary databases; the format of those has changed slightly and not doing that could cause some even-weirder-than-normal behavior.
 
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