Feature Suggestions

[Long Pan]

Thanks for Pleco 2; I must tell that after a month of using it, it is on all points better than Pleco01

Just one thing which I definitely miss from the V01: the searchbar. Pleco01 has a very smart Search toolbar, which buttons change automatically to what you look at. For instance:
- when you look at a word on Pleco01, the up or down arrays on the searchbar appear accordingly to the existence (or non-existence) of a following word in the list. Let's take 电脑 on the ABC as an example: on the word view (by clicking on 表 button) you only have a down array on the searchbar (normal as it is the first word on the "电脑 list"); by clicking on this array you go down to the second word "电脑病毒" for which we now have 2 arrays on the searchbar; and we then keep these 2 arrays until the last word of the list (电脑作业软件) for which there is then only one array up. This feature is quite helpfull when looking on a serie of words (especially on ABC)
- on the words list view (click again on 表 button), the arrays disappear from the search bar (indeed we do not need them anymore, which gives space) and the 果 and 典 buttons appear. How smart!
On Pleco 02 as I can see, your intention was to enhanced the search bar by making it changeable for the user. Trouble is that you cannot make it as smart as it was before. So my request is: could we have an option to get the previous Searchhbar back ?

Thanks again for this new software. I must tell that I love the Guifan dictionary

 

[mikelove]

Long Pan - thanks! The old search bar would be difficult to bring back, though, unfortunately - the way things are designed now, we'd need a whole extra settings panel where you could reconfigure the toolbars based on the current search state (or at least whether or not the list was open / closed, though we'd probably want to expand that to things like language switching too). Though that might actually be a good idea for a future release, particularly as we expand to platforms like iPhone with a much smaller number of buttons-per-toolbar.

 

[renovator]

Is it possible to add a forth option to the drop down box of Modules>Open Flashcards>Manage Flashcards>Advanced section?

In the right hand top drop down box there are 3 options --,AND,OR. Would it be possible to add NOT?

What that would allow me to do would be to put category in the top left drop down box, put my master list in the next drop down box below category. Put NOT in the drop down right had box. Put a large list like my list of 2200 some odd characters in the drop down box below my master list. Then hit OK and I would have all the cards in my Character list that have not yet been added to my master list.

At this point I don't see any way to find those characters within my Character list (that are not in my master list) without going one by one through the character list and hitting the i button on each character.

 

[mikelove]

A general NOT would be tricky given how some of those specific searches are structured, but a "not in category" search might be doable at least - you're correct that there isn't really any way to get that information now (though I guess you could set up a flashcard session with an "exclude" category filter and get at those cards that way).

 

[goldfish]

Pleco 2.0 is great! Some ideas, please forgve if they are already featured:

1. Option to automatically clear the input field after clicking on 'Add to Flash Card' button so PD is ready for the next look-up.

2. Under 'Manage Flashcards', be able to multiple select cards and add to category

3. Under 'Manage Categories', be able to rename categories and have the new name associated with existing flashcards

4. A way of working with longer category names in drop down menus. You only see the first 12-14 characters.

5. A PC desktop/tablet version - going blind haunched over the small mobile screen!

Many thanks and keep up the great work!

 

[renovator]

Pleco 2.0 is great!
3. Under 'Manage Categories', be able to rename categories and have the new name associated with existing flashcards

This function exists now. Once you are in 'Manage Categories' highlight any category. Then click once on the highlighted category. This will allow you to rename or change the description of your highlighted category. Only the Category name changes; there is no effect beyond that on the cards within that category.

At least that is how it works on my Windows Mobile HTC

 

[mikelove]

goldfish - thanks! 3) as renovator says is already possible, or at least should be - do you run into problems doing this?

Interesting idea on #1, certainly could be useful for people trying to quickly create new flashcard lists, though at whatever point we release a desktop version (which is definitely in the works, though it was pushed back due to the enormous demand for an iPhone version) that would of course be a much more efficient way to do the same thing. Multiple-card selection actually probably will appear on iPhone, since that's pretty much the way list selection works on those, but I'm not sure about it on other platforms - multiple-selection in normal Palm/WM-style lists seems kind of awkward since there's no way to hold down a shift key while tapping on things and hence you've got to deal with an extra mode switch (button to turn multiple-selection mode on and off, or something like that).

Longer category name boxes would be nice, but they're tough to squeeze into the current user interface - we could think about eventually adding a separate category selection screen (so you get the full tree view and can scroll through and select an item in that), but it's a lot of work to get those fussy little dialog transitions / list changes working correctly in every place where a category list appears, so it would probably be a Windows-Mobile-only feature.

 

[goldfish]

This function exists now. Once you are in 'Manage Categories' highlight any category. Then click once on the highlighted category. This will allow you to rename or change the description of your highlighted category. Only the Category name changes; there is no effect beyond that on the cards within that category.

At least that is how it works on my Windows Mobile HTC

Ah, ha! Great, thanks renovator and Mike.

 

[stonemountain]

First I'd like to say, great program. I have had it a month, and it works without problems. I have entered all the basic words from my dictionary and am using it to help me and my three kids learn chinese. My three brothers either have it or are getting it. After reading the forums, I just found out about using the "@" for single wildcard and "$" as a multiple character wildcard.

I do have a few suggestions.

1) Is it possible to just have the flashcard program run on a laptop computer? That way I can have all three kids do the flashcard sessions at one time.
2) While in the dictionary and in the flashcard session, I can activate the audio. Can I activate the audio while in the "Manage Flashcard" session? If I see a card in the "manage flashcard" session that I forgot, I will have to cut an paste into the dictionary to play the audio.
3)While in the flashcard session, the self scored sketch box is a short rectangle, which is a little short for me to write my answer. Can it be modified to be higher, like the height of the square in the handwriting character recognition site?

 

[mikelove]

1) No way to do that yet, we'd really like to do a desktop companion product but we had to push it back due to the iPhone version.

2) There's not currently any way to play audio in Manage Flashcards, though we've thought about adding a "Preview" screen that would let you view the full card / play audio / etc. (won't happen for a while, though, unfortunately)

3) Yes, just check the "taller" checkbox next to the checkbox which enables it in the Modes section of Advanced Settings.

 

[stonemountain]

1) No way to do that yet, we'd really like to do a desktop companion product but we had to push it back due to the iPhone version.
Thanks. I'll wait until the desktop version comes out. Hopefully the desk top will be compatible with both standard and touchscreen computers.

2) There's not currently any way to play audio in Manage Flashcards, though we've thought about adding a "Preview" screen that would let you view the full card / play audio / etc. (won't happen for a while, though, unfortunately). That's great. I'll wait.

3) Yes, just check the "taller" checkbox next to the checkbox which enables it in the Modes section of Advanced Settings. Thanks.

Have a Happy New Year!!

 

[Shadowdh]

This might have already been asked but a quick search didnt reveal any solution...

One really cool thing would be to have the ability to open the reader and use it to read texts/things without opening Pleco fully... how feasible is this?

 

[stephanhodges]

I was showing someone some text today, so highlighted the example sentence and clicked "Magnify". I think this is a feature that is underrated. It really shows off the dictionary and always generates a "wow" reaction.

But, it's a little limited in what it can show. Personally I really like the very large size (I have the super large font installed).

What I suggest is that you add a second line (or even three) to the display, so that it could show a much longer text selection. It should only display a box big enough for the text (height wise), to be consistent with current appearance, etc.

This does help with individual study, etc. but really has an effect when working with others, showing the teacher something, etc. To that end, I think this enhancement could help increase sales too.

 

[mikelove]

Shadowdh - we already sort-of do that on Windows Mobile at least with the "Look up clipboard" and "Use reader" options in the External panel of Preferences - enable those and that'll bring up the reader on whatever text is currently in the clipboard in the document reader. I'm not quite sure if I see the benefit of allowing you to do that with separate document files, though - it seems like it's really only saving one extra menu command.

stephanhodges - good idea, and it would be a nice showcase along with having a number of practical benefits - thanks.

 

[stephanhodges]

I assume the magnify (multi-line) would also be in the reader.

 

[mikelove]

In reader definitions, sure, just like magnified characters are now. Adding support for it to characters in documents would be trickier at the moment - the whole document-loading / scrolling system isn't all that well-designed, to be honest, so there won't be much added to it until we do a major rewrite.

 

[sinoreen]

I like stephanhodges' suggestion about the multiline-character-magnify option. Playing around a bit I found that in sample sentences the actual dict entry headword is replaced by a ~ symbol. Four things:
1. When I magnify a word group or a whole sentence, the replacement symbol is only shown in the ABC dict (and there also only, if it is between two characters, but not if it is at the beginning of the end of the selection). In the other C-E dicts the ~ symbol is not shown at all. So for the dict entry for 吃, the sample sentence 你~了吗？would be magnified as 你了吗 (the question mark isn't shown either)
2. When magnifying a selection, would it be possible to show the headword in the example sentence instead of the ~ symbol?
3. Why is choosing the size of the magnification only possible on WM and not on Palm? I'd really like to be able to adjust it.
4. Could you also implement magnifying for any kind of text? Would be nice to be able to magnify an English word or sample sentence and show it to one of your chinese friends or language partners.

And one last thing, I know it's been mentioned several times, but I still want to repeat this wish in order to show how much I'd like to see this feature, and I think many many other users would so too: I'd love to see the frequency of usage for dict entries. Even if it's hard to implement, IMEs and Wenlin (not for all entries) show it's somehow possible. (I must admit that I understand nothing about programming though)

 

[mikelove]

The dictionary databases haven't been coded in such a way to let us automatically replace those ~s, unfortunately, so in order to add that we'd need to go back and manually add that code to all of them - not quite as easy as a simple find-and-replace, since we have to pick out the correct headword variant characters / Pinyin / decide whether to leave in or drop the 儿 / etc.

Pleco on Palm OS doesn't support scaled/outline fonts, just bitmaps, so that's why there's no magnification size selection - it can really only display characters at that size. However, if you uninstall p2font96.pdb, that will get magnified characters to show at the same size as magnified headwords, which might help a bit if you want to display longer phrases. English magnification is certainly a possibility but we'd really need to add word-wrapping support before that would be practical.

If we could find a good frequency list of Chinese words (not characters) we'd be glad to add a frequency-sorting feature, but there just don't seem to be any - even Wenlin's feature I believe only supports single characters. It's not a difficult bit of programming to use that data, it's just very difficult to generate it.

 

[jiacheng]

Reveal Simplified/Traditonal Characters Separately

I think it would be useful to have an option to reveal the Traditional or Simplified variations separately from the headword. Currently we can force a character set to Simplified or Traditional only, however when we reveal a card, it would be good to also be able to see the other form as well. This could be an option nearby the "force character set" option, or it could be a test parameter along with the "Show:" option when setting up the test itself.

 

[Alexis]

One thing I'd love to see for the Tuttle Learner's Dictionary is a "sample sentence" test mode.
The "question" would be the sample sentence in English. The "answer" would be the sample sentence in Chinese.
This type of test mode would help pleco to move beyond "single word/character" usage. Being able to recall the constructions and patterns from these sample sentences would help to aid vocabulary and usage retention.