Feature request (various things)

[Peter]

Yes, for listening practice only. The TTS engine takes care of pronouncing numbers correctly, saying 负，十，千，零和等等. It works surprisingly well.

Other observations: When importing flashcards with numerical-only headwords and empty pinyin, Pleco doesn't autofill in the pinyin field. When importing flashcards with mixed numerical-char headword, e.g "3乘12", Pleco will autofill the pinyin field with cheng2 only; and when displaying such cards, the *first number* gets the 第二声 color.

 

[mikelove]

Ah, that definitely shouldn't be happening - thanks.

 

[mikelove]

@Peter - are you sure you're using the latest version of Pleco? iOS or Android? I just tested this here and it worked correctly - imported a file with just 3乘12 in it and it correctly filled in 3 cheng2 1 2 in the Mandarin pronunciation field.

 

[Peter]

What I said was incorrect. Pleco automatically fills in the pinyin (e.g. headword "3乘12" becomes pinyin "3 cheng2 12") but when the flashcard audio is played, the TTS only pronounces "cheng2". It is ignoring the numbers.

I have attached my mathtest file. You should be able to reproduce this behaviour by importing the file and starting a "Math Quiz" test. Yep, using Pleco Android 3.2.12.

 

[mikelove]

Ah, seeing it now, thanks - should have it fixed in the next bug-fix update (by automatically inserting our recently added "tone skip" characters when importing files with numbers in them).

 

[Peter]

Two small glitches related to the example sentences page.

1. Press play on an example sentence and then scroll down the page while the example is playing. The playback cursor will jump on to other sentences.

2. For some entries, example sentences are being duplicated. e.g. lookup 修理, now notice how 修理得好 is listed twice under GF.

Android, 3.2.12.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks.

 

[giokve]

Can we change the color of the highlighted words in full text searches? They are often very, very difficult to spot in example sentences.

 

[mikelove]

Those are actually supposed to be drawn with a highlighted background - very odd, we'll investigate why it's only changing the text color. You're running the latest version 3.2.12, right?

 

[giokve]

You're running the latest version 3.2.12, right?

Yes, I am.

 

[Peter]

Subtle glitch:
1. On the drop down menu, select 'dictionary history'.
2. From the history list, select a historical entry to display its definition. Go to the EXAMPLES page, highlight a word in order to bring up the popup dictionary. Click the popup dictionary search button (magnifying glass), which takes you out of history mode, and back to the main search screen.
3. Now some time later, select 'dictionary history' again from the drop down menu. Pleco will take you to the definition page of the last viewed history entry, rather than displaying the history list.

 

[mikelove]

Not sure if it makes sense to fix this one, actually - I can think of other scenarios where this behavior would be preferable, for example if you've OCRed a piece of text and brought it up in the document reader you would not want switching to the OCR tab to return you to the original OCR document. Really the magnifying glass probably ought to bring up a separate search results screen rather than jumping you to the Search tab.

 

[etm001]

Category locking strikes me as something that can get confusing quickly - not intuitively obvious what exactly one is locking when one locks a category, are we simply locking cards from being added to / removed from it or are we locking the cards themselves from changing or are we preventing the cards from being added to additional categories or something else?

I was wishing for a "category lock" the other day, actually. My typical use case is when I create a set of custom flashcards for a textbook (with definitions provided by the textbook). Once everything in the set looks good (i.e., since I create these sets manually it takes a few rounds of testing to discover all the mistakes I've made), I'd like the cards in the category to never be altered, i.e., "locked". The reason why I was wishing for a category lock was because I noticed I had inadvertently changed some custom flashcards to dictionary-based flashcards (thankfully the "revert to custom flashcard" option saved me). On a related note: is it possible to identify all custom flashcards that have been changed to a dictionary-based flashcard, so that I can review and/or bulk convert them back to custom cards?

 

[mikelove]

Well the idea of locking card texts makes a bit more sense, but I don't think I'd want to do that via categories since cards can belong to more than one - more logical as a switch on the Card Info screen + a batch command to change it on a whole bunch of cards at once.

I don't believe we have a search for hidden custom definitions at the moment, no. Best option I can think of would be to back up your database, export all of your cards with the options to include dictionary definitions + to export hidden custom definitions turned on, use the Batch "Remove hidden custom definitions" command to remove all of those definitions, export again with the same options, and compare - any card where the definition has changed is a card that had a custom definition which was covered up by a dictionary one.

 

[Peter]

The erase search bar clear button ('X' within the search bar) is super useful.
However sometimes I accidentally tap it on my phone. This usually happens when attempting to change the cursor position.
Undo erase option?

 

[mikelove]

Go into Settings / Search Screen / Buttons and turn on "Show history button" - this will give you a convenient history icon in the toolbar which you can use to quickly jump back to your previous search.

 

[student35]

Go into Settings / Search Screen / Buttons and turn on "Show history button" - this will give you a convenient history icon in the toolbar which you can use to quickly jump back to your previous search.

Is that option there for iPhone? Can't seem to find it.

 

[Captain Planet]

@student35 On iOS there's an undo key on the keyboard that does exactly what you're looking for (you need to press the .?123 key first to see it). And the Recent Searches menu is also there, at least on an iPad; I'm using it. Otherwise you can see the list in ☰ → History.

 

[mikelove]

Not an option on iPhone at the moment but it automatically appears on iPad; we're debating whether to show it on least the larger-screened iPhones too, but as @Captain Planet says there's also a convenient undo button on those.

 

[student35]

I would LOVE to have the simple option to add the History button on my iPhone like I get on the iPad. I'd gladly give up a little bit of search box space for this. (even on my iPhone 6, not 6+)

My scenario's different than the poster above's -- I'm not trying to undo but to get quickly to a search I'd done a few seconds or minute ago. The convenience of getting to history was one thing I missed after the last big UI update (which was a huge step up in every other way). While doing one search, I often look up another word and then want to come back. I use the arrow link when possible which lets me easily come back, but I still find myself often thinking of a similar word that I need to manually enter, or using the "search" link rather than direct arrow when I want to get to the search result page to look at all the pronunciations of a character, rather than the specific one that the arrow link will take me to.