Feature request: creating custom flashcards from OCR

[etm001]

Hi,

It's snap to create dictionary-based flashcards from OCR. I'd really like the ability to create custom flashcards from it, though.

For example, I'm reading a an essay in a graded reader. There are ~200 vocabulary terms glossed for the essay, with pinyin and definitions. Right now, if I want to create custom cards in Pleco, I use a pen scanner to scan the vocabulary words and definitions into a text file for import (my pen scanner doesn't recognize pinyin, so I have to manually enter them in the file). While the pen scanner is faster than manually entering all the relevant information, it's far, far from perfect and still time consuming.

What would be really great is if I could perform a simple "add custom flashcard" workflow like this:

• Take a picture of the page that has the glossed vocabulary.
• Tap on a vocabulary word, or draw an OCR box around it, essentially identifying it as the headword for the flashcard.
• In like manner, tap on the pinyin or draw an OCR box around it, telling Pleco that this is the pronunciation for the vocabulary term (this assumes Pleco OCR one day recognizes pinyin. Bopomofo would be nice, but not critical).
• Lastly, tap on or draw an OCR box around the vocabulary term's definition to identify it.

During each step I would want to see and possibly correct the OCR (i.e., OCR recognizes the word as 奢跑 instead of 奔跑, I'd want to fix that.

This functionality would be a huge time saver for me.

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

Have you tried settings "Unknown flashcard" in Settings / OCR to "Custom Card" instead of "Truncate"? With that option selected, you can box off a Chinese word, tap on the + button, have Pleco automatically fill in (auto-generated) opposite character set + Pinyin and then key in your definition manually; not quite as fast as what you're describing but a lot easier for us to code

 

[etm001]

Have you tried settings "Unknown flashcard" in Settings / OCR to "Custom Card" instead of "Truncate"? With that option selected, you can box off a Chinese word, tap on the + button, have Pleco automatically fill in (auto-generated) opposite character set + Pinyin and then key in your definition manually; not quite as fast as what you're describing but a lot easier for us to code

I have no idea what this means, but I suspect it will make sense once I try it. And I also suspect that manually keying in text on my iPad will prove slower than my pen scanner (despite the heartache the pen scanner often causes me).

 

[mikelove]

Yeah, not one of our more user-friendly settings screens Should do much of what you need, though.