Feature Suggestions

[mrmidget]

Hi! I've been using the Guifan dictionary quite a lot lately, and although it is sometimes a bit limited compared to the ABC dictionary, getting the definitions in Chinese is still much better than the English translations. I'm often looking up words using the popupdfn function, either from the reader or from other regular dictionary entries, and one function I'm missing is the possibility to look up additional words from within the popupdfn itself. When using the C-C dictionary this function is really helpful since there might be entries where you don't know what the meaning of all the definition words are..

Being able to select words within the popupdfn window and make it show me that definition would save me the trouble of first copying out words from popupdfn window, closing it and pasting the word into the search function. A simple mark and tap to make the popupdfn go to the new word would be great!

Otherwise the B6 has been working pretty well for me, I haven't used the flashcards as of yet tho.. I guess the only other problem I have is that using the full screen character recogniser is a bit slow in registering the first stroke.

Oh, just remembered one more thing about the Guifan dictionary, when looking at the definitions the dictionary will sometimes make a point of how to write some characters which are similar to others. When the dictionary tries to display these separate parts the character just shows up as "?" in the definition. For example in the definition for 祭 (ji4) among many others. I guess the font is missing these specific characters, any way to fix that?

Great work guys, appreciate you taking the time to do it properly a lot!

 

[mikelove]

stephanhodges - the tone marks on the 1-5 numbers on the Pinyin keyboard are actually for illustrative purposes only, the input they send into Pleco is exactly the same as pressing 1-5 on the regular English keyboard. The idea behind the separate Pinyin keyboard was that it would let you enter any Pinyin syllable in just two button taps (initial + presents you with all of the available finals), but that got cut so now it is indeed pretty useless - it should get that functionality in a later release, though. The input palette doesn't have a shift key because it's only designed for entering dictionary lookups and those are case-insensitive (same reason there's no shift key in the flashcard session keyboard). We're tweaking the English keyboard to give you punctuation in place of #s when shifted, so that should provide ()s and other things.

On other platforms the keyboard palette may get replaced by a separate OS-specific input module (something we should probably do on Windows Mobile at some point too) - on iPhone for example it would be rather silly to try to get our keyboard to be finger-friendly when Apple has a perfectly good finger-friendly keyboard system built in. So because of that it's not necessarily something we're putting a whole lot of effort into right now, with the exception of adding Pinyin/ZhuYin-to-character input (another thing that got cut in 2.0 but should definitely be coming in 2.1)

mrmidget - we've gotten quite a few requests to be able to cross-reference words in popup definitions, actually - I think really the best approach on that would be to add a text input field and a Copy to Input button to that screen (along with Back/Forward I guess), something we can definitely think about for 2.1. Those missing part-characters in Guifan are difficult for us to do anything about right now, since most of them aren't in any of our Chinese font files - we've recently licensed some data from Wenlin which makes it easy to dynamically render custom characters and parts of characters, though, so once we get that into Pleco it should be possible for us to display that stuff.

 

[johnowenschina]

Maybe it is already possible, but I haven't found out how. I would like to be able to copy and sentence or 2 from the Reader to past into Mobile Word, but whenever I try to copy a selection it automatically highlights only a character or word.

Is this possible at present?

 

[mikelove]

Not possible, unfortunately, as the reader is specifically designed for looking up words in a document. Though I guess it's something we could think about for 2.1 - we'd have to add an extra button to toggle between selection modes since right now selecting text always looks up a word.

 

[ldolse]

Another way to support the extra popup for C-C entries might be to support a pop-up def stylus action from the text reader definition section - should provide the desired result and eliminates the need for more buttons.

edit - CharInfo and magnify would be cool from the reader too... anyway it's stuff that can wait, just suggestions.

 

[mikelove]

Already in Beta 7, we added them to the reader along with the flashcard review session screen.

 

[ipsi]

Couple of things related to full-text search:

It would be good if it could retain the highlight of the search-for word even after I click somewhere on the screen. I think this is more of a feature request than a bug, but I'm not sure how you expect it to work. Currently it also makes the highlight vanish if I click on the scroll-bar, which isn't terribly helpful.

I'd also love to be able to (through a preference option) exclude example sentences from the full-text search. This would be good if I'm looking up, for example, all English words where 卡 is part of the definition, or other words where I'm not sure of the meaning, but seeing other words that have that as the definition would help explain it more precisely. There, example sentences aren't always much use, as they're often focused on other things, and the word is only there because it's kinda lame to say N1把N2V1, etc.

 

[ldolse]

I see that the reader does that now - that rocks. It's really nice that that's consistent throughout the interface.

I was working with the multiple choice test mode some more, and I have several feature requests related to that:

• Would prefer that some method to allow confirming the Pinyin existed (already mentioned, just here for completeness)
• When the pinyin answer is incorrect it doesn't continue to ask you the meaning - even if I fail the Pinyin I'd still like to get tested on the meaning. Since answer quality is supported for some tests maybe it makes sense to allow testing on both Pinyin and definition separately from a scoring perspective. This could then be tied into a weighted answer quality based on whether one component or both were correct.
• Certain of my categories are not regularly tested - I have category of vulgar words, primarily there for entertainment value and a side effect of the import process, but not a part of my study process. The problem is when multiple choice definitions are drawn from that category it's extremely obvious that those cards are not one of the choices. I believe it would be very helpful if the multiple choice configuration allowed the user to select which specific categories the multiple choice answers options were drawn from. Similar situation with a category for radical characters.

 

[mikelove]

ipsi - the highlight is supposed to last if you scroll away from it and then scroll back to it, so that definitely sounds like a bug. Good idea on full-text exclusion, but right now the only data file that even has example sentences tagged separately is the ABC so before we could implement that feature we'd need to get all (or at least most) of the other data files similarly tagged.

ldolse - go to Advanced Settings, Modes, and choose "custom cats" in the "choices from" popup and that will let you select exactly which categories the choices will come from.

 

[stephanhodges]

Extracted from bug report on reader issues...

Feature Req: Able to toggle the bottom dictionary bar on/off from the reader screen (or minimize) Reason: It's larger than the pop-up, and often faster to move around the text, but if not needed, the extra screen space would be useful (especially on smaller devices).

Feature: Be able to add notes to document. They could be part of bookmark system.

 

[ldolse]

Reader request:
Hyperlinks to other entries do not work with the reader - since Pop-Up def from the reader was just added in the latest release it should be relatively simple to have those links launch a pop-up from the reader.

 

[sfrrr]

This request is exceedingly presumptuous, since I can't install B7 here--as I bemoaned in another thread. But here's my request anyway: I would like to be able to add comments to any given flashcard. Said comment might be a usage or grammar example, or a mnemonic, or, well, I don't know. Do-able? Already do-able?

Sandra

 

[mikelove]

ldolse - good point, would probably also make sense to put those in flashcard sessions (only available when revealed, of course).

sfrrr - not already doable, but something we've been thinking about a lot for a future release - would probably come along with annotations for the dictionary entries themselves, and for documents per stephanhodges' suggestion. The dictionary entry one has some interesting possibilities if coupled with an online sync feature...

 

[radioman]

Input - Swipe

In the array of input options, I saw this one. In reviewing Chinese/Pinyin/English, and you can throw some other languages in, I thought this was from left field to the point where it was worth thinking about. If proven useful of course, is there an application within Pleco, or some derivative for Hanzi/Pinyin?

http://www.tabletpcreview.com/default.asp?newsID=1265

 

[mikelove]

Implementing that ourselves would invite a patent lawsuit, I imagine - it looks like really cool technology and I'm sure they've got an army of lawyers to protect it. But it sounds like they're bringing it to WM anyway, so the official version from them would probably work reasonably well with Pleco (particularly if there's a way to train it to recognize Pinyin syllables as common words).

 

[ipsi]

Interesting. That's very nifty indeed, but given that it lists "Patented" as a feature (how is that a feature?), I'd agree with Mike on the army of lawyers. They probably have more lawyers protecting it than Pleco has employees.

 

[stephanhodges]

I really appreciate the longer drop down category list in the "add to flashcard" hold button. I still have a small issue, in that the list is too narrow. It only allows 8-9 characters in the category name (visible). I'd like to see it about 50% wider.

Also, as I mentioned other places, the other screen menus (flashcard and reader) still have fairly small lists for "Add to Flashcard", using the pop-up dictionary, etc.

Another item. When studying flashcards, I really would like to see the category(ies) associated with a word. Best would be to be able to show it while testing (configurable), but at a minimum would like to see it during the reveal answer phase.

At the end, I'd also like to see results reported by category, since my categories are related to which class/book, which chapter, etc.

 

[ipsi]

When doing a flashcard session, just hit the 'I' button to view the categories for a card. This can be done before or after you've revealed the card.

 

[stephanhodges]

I already knew that. I was debating whether or not to mention it. But, it's not practical, and would add a significant percentage to my review time. Once keys are programmed, going through cards can be blazing fast, as long as I concentrate. The main reason to include something like this is that memory is associative, and the more things I see in the "reveal", the more associations I can make, more quickly.

 

[ipsi]

Ahh, right. Fair enough. I think it's generally a good idea to say "I know I can do it via A, but I would prefer it if I could do this...", which prevents exactly such an occurrence, where someone tells you something you already know. Especially given the vast number of options in Pleco, it's extremely possible for someone to miss a small option somewhere, or have glossed over a given button.