Feature Suggestions

[mikelove]

renovator - that's odd, the headword should have been trimmed back to just the first character... anyway, you can certainly remap the card to ABC; just bring up the Card Info screen for it (by searching for it in Manage Flashcards, highlighting it, and tapping on the 'i' button), tap on the "Edit Card" button at the bottom of the screen, then search for / select the dictionary entry you want and tap Done to set that as the new entry for the card.

daniel123 - flashcard definition searches won't be possible until we drop Palm support; there's a full-text search module built into newer versions of SQLite, but we can't get it working on Palm. (it'll also enable full-text searches of user dictionary entries)

With the IA window problem, is this happening when you look up words inside of Pleco or when you look them up in another application? Is this the Pleco on-screen keyboard or the one built into Windows Mobile?

 

[daniel123]

With the IA window problem, is this happening when you look up words inside of Pleco or when you look them up in another application? Is this the Pleco on-screen keyboard or the one built into Windows Mobile?

It is both: never mind inside or outside Pleco. I mean the Windows Mobile built in keyboards and similar (SIPs). The SIP hides the lower part of the IA window.

 

[RobRedbeard]

Save to text file FROM reader when opened from clipboard

Hi Mike,

I'm back again with another feature request for this incredible package.

Here's the deal. I often read the newspaper on my Touch HD. All of the Tianjin newspapers are online for free at http://www.tjrb.cn (this is great reading material for anyone who wants some!). I read them in Opera and I can easily copy the text of an article to the clipboard, and it opens beautifully in Pleco Reader by simply selecting from clipboard.

Could you please add a "save to file" button and simple file save dialog in the reader interface? We both know, this one really is a 5 minute mod, and it'd be super useful for those of us entering reader through the clipboard option. Speaking for myself, that's 99% of the time I use reader.

----
PS - after holding down on the 入 button, I no longer feel that any modification is necessary, except maybe just a starting state in the config dialog.

Rob

 

[RobRedbeard]

Duplicate Card -> add to additional category selection

Mike,

I found that I prefer using two kinds of study lists in my cards. One is a "long" set and one is a "short." The prior is a large, long term study set with thousands of words, ie. HSK. The latter contains words from recent articles, meetings (I'm a manager in a company where meetings take place in Chinese only), etc. Since my "long" set is so big I often run into the problem that I want to add a word to my short list, but it comes up as a duplicate card. It might be months before I get to it in my long list study sessions, so this is a problem.

I recommend that when you flash up duplicate card, you make a check box list of my categories and let me check the boxes next to the category or categories I'd like it to also appear in. It would also be nice if it told me which category it was already in by already having a check in that cat's box.

Thanks!

Rob

 

[HW60]

When looking up words in Pleco, the dictionary only changes when the word I want to look up is not part of the current dictionary. In the reader, however, the dictionary always changes to the first dictionary of the "Manage Dictionaries" screen - I would like to keep the current dictionary there too. Is this a new feature or can I somehow manage to keep the dictionary?

 

[renovator]

Re: Duplicate Card -> add to additional category selection

Mike,

I found that I prefer using two kinds of study lists in my cards. One is a "long" set and one is a "short." The prior is a large, long term study set with thousands of words, ie. HSK. The latter contains words from recent articles, meetings (I'm a manager in a company where meetings take place in Chinese only), etc. Since my "long" set is so big I often run into the problem that I want to add a word to my short list, but it comes up as a duplicate card. It might be months before I get to it in my long list study sessions, so this is a problem.

I recommend that when you flash up duplicate card, you make a check box list of my categories and let me check the boxes next to the category or categories I'd like it to also appear in. It would also be nice if it told me which category it was already in by already having a check in that cat's box.

Thanks!

Rob

I am sure Mike will soon give you a better explanation but a duplicate card in this case just means that it is in 2 catagories. Many of us have multiple categories with the same word in a few of the categories. Although the word is only held once in the database, it will flash a duplicate message and depending on selections even tell you which category it is duplicated in. You will notice in your statistics of all cards that your total card count does not increase when you duplicate a card in another category. A true duplicate to the database would increase your total cards count in all cards selection by 1 each time you added a duplicate.

You will also notice that when you remove a card from a category or even delete a category totally that the words are actually still in your database. The system give you a message to that effect when you delete a category and once again you can see that is true as your Total cards count in all cards will not decrease as you remove one or more cards or even a total category.

 

[mikelove]

daniel123 - that's odd, on my Touch Diamond at least the keyboard disappears when that window opens in another application at least.

RobRedbeard - good idea, but where do you propose that we put that "save" button? This is the sort of thing that probably needs to wait until we add the option to customize toolbars in the reader (which is considerably more than a 5-minute change) - right now we'd either have to clutter up the already-cluttered interface with another button or add an annoying prompt every time you exit a clipboard document.

An improved duplicate card prompt is something we've gotten a lot of requests for (see the dictionary importing thread) so it should be easy to include Card Info / a checkbox list of categories in that overhauled screen.

HW60 - that's a bug, actually, but the sort of bug that's dangerous to fix because if we do we'll inevitably get complaints from people who liked it better the old way. So the fix would have to be accompanied by a setting in preferences that lets you search dictionaries in the reader in Manage Dicts order but search dictionaries in the main screen starting from the current dictionary.

 

[daniel123]

daniel123 - that's odd, on my Touch Diamond at least the keyboard disappears when that window opens in another application at least.

Well I tried it just it inside the contacts application. Don't know if the behaviour depends of the application or maybe the behaviour of WM 6.1 and 6.0 is different. I don't know. I have an iPaq 114.
Usually I use IA inside the flashcard management ("Manage Flashcards" and inside flashcard session: "Edit Card") to look up parts of vocabulary words and sentences. I use the preference options: Instant Access: on program activate and from taskbar icon.

I guess there is no chance to change the behaviour of not blocking the keyboard when an IA window is open - right?

It is not a big thing but would be great if it could be changed one time.

 

[mfcb]

i recently found out, that my flashcards (specially these with higher scores) tend to cluster up. what i mean is this: several days i get few cards in my reviews with score >=1900, then 2 or 3 days in succession i get a massive amount of them, lateron its again more relaxed. i suppose that will not go away anymore as i changed from "add 100 after 2 successful" to "add 10% after 1 successful" ... so they are bound to cluster more and more, as its next to impossible to finish this massive amount in one day. currently i make my sessions with scores < 1899 and after i'm done i do some >1899, basically trying to distribute them a little over the 19 days period. from the statistics i should have about 200 of them every day, but yesterday and today together i had >1000 of them, about a quarter of the total.

so the idea: a batch command for searchresults in the manage flashcards screen, that distributes the search results evenly over a time period (that means, when the card should show up next in a repetition spaced session). i thought some time about this, and i think its possible to implement, although it might have some side-effects when applied, like a just reviewed card coming up again on the same day. but the benefit of removing the clusters would be bigger, i hope...

 

[HW60]

HW60 - that's a bug, actually, but the sort of bug that's dangerous to fix because if we do we'll inevitably get complaints from people who liked it better the old way. So the fix would have to be accompanied by a setting in preferences that lets you search dictionaries in the reader in Manage Dicts order but search dictionaries in the main screen starting from the current dictionary.

I would prefer to see the same behaviour in the main screen and in the reader: the selected dictionary (with the dictionary button) should not change unless the word is not found in the dictionary. In the actual reader I start, change the dictionary, look up the next word, change the dictionary, look up the next word, change the dictionary ... I can hardly imagine that anybody likes it.

 

[mikelove]

daniel123 - could be a 6.0/6.1 difference, or just a difference in how I was launching it. Anyway it takes about 1 line of code to show/hide the keyboard so that shouldn't be too difficult to fix.

mfcb - distributing scores is something that a couple of other people have mentioned, but lately I'm favoring the idea of rolling out a new card selection system that works with sort of a "priority list" - cards that are most urgently due for study (largest gap between score and time since last review) would come up first. That way we get rid of the whole problem of people accumulating too many cards to study, since you can quit whenever you've had your fill of flashcards and be confident that you've still reviewed the most important ones.

We'd need to provide some sort of feedback / indicator for how far down the list you'd gone (so people with nearly-unlimited time could now when it was OK to stop), but I think this would really combine the best aspects of frequency-adjusted and repetition-spaced testing - less random than the former but more flexible than the latter.

HW60 - quite a few people actually have the main screen set up to work the same way that the reader does, always returning to the first dictionary on a new word. If for example you're a big fan of Tuttle and always want a definition from that if one is available, it might make sense to have the software try that first on every search - otherwise you'd be constantly getting shifted over to ABC and have to keep hitting the dictionary switch button to go back to Tuttle on a new search.

 

[renovator]

In the flashcards Advanced Settings > Controls > Buttons I would like to see an additional button which would be a clear all fields button.

This would help greatly for when pinyin input on a card gets scrambled, now need to keep hitting the back arrow until all the fields are cleared to be able to start over again. For one character cards this is not much of an issue but when there are four characters to a card and hopefully we will be able to have more characters available in cards in the future, this feature would save time and frustrations.

 

[daniel123]

I like in 2.0x that I can search my flashcards via Manage Flashcards and choose pron or headword in the drop dwon list. In the meantime my flashcards (including sentences) are for me as useful as a own dictionary.

But often I look a word in the dictionary and I want to look the same word or a corresponding sentence in my flashcards to compare (where I have my own German translation or maybe I just want to see if it already exists). To change to flashcards, Manage Flashcards, choose pron/headword, enter or paste the word takes some time. Therefore I would like to see some kind of combination between dictionary and flashcard searches.

Maybe like "Modules/Send Entry To Reader" you can add an Entry: "Modules/Open Entry in Flashcard search" or something like that. This opens the word in flashcard search headword mode. Would be a gerat help.

Another thing would be helpful: Normally I always search with "~" instead of "=". Maybe you can change it that Pleco remember the last search configuration instead always use "=".

Daniel

 

[mikelove]

renovator - good idea, though I think finding a way to incorporate a clear button into the free-answer-test-specific part of the interface might be better (since we're planning to let people mix test types in the future).

daniel123 - good idea also, though in that we might even be able to find a way to incorporate the flashcard search right into the main dictionary interface - let you search for / scroll through flashcards without even having to go into the flashcard system.

 

[renovator]

A really neat little feature that should not be hard to program for future releases.

In the flash card section when you input pinyin, not allow the card to advance unless the correct number of characters are inserted in the boxes. Either as part of the standard program, or as a selected option. If the card is 点for example, the card could be advanced as correct for input of dian, would be advanced as incorrect for input of diun but would not be allowed to advance if either dan or diian was input.

When doing hundreds of cards daily, there is always a certain small percentage of cards that are counted incorrectly because of either an accidental double strike such as diian in this case or a mis-strike, where the letter was not hit perfectly on target and is missing making dan the incorrect card. Such a feature would eliminate this problem.

 

[goog1e]

I'd like to see a few extra features added to Flashcard Category Management. These are my suggestions

Flatten a category:
Remove all subcategories and place all cards only under the parent category to be flattened.
Example:

Before:

-animals (30 cards)
--mammals (10 cards)
--reptiles (20 cards)
-plants (15 cards)

*** flatten (animals)

After:
-animals (30 cards)
-plants (15 cards)

Merge categories:
Merge two categories, subcategories that conflict would pop up a dialog asking to be renamed or just be merged as well.

Split categories:
I like to split very large categories into 10 card subcategories. It would be nice to change the category number limit from 100 to at least 200 categories.

Thanks for considering.

 

[mikelove]

renovator - I'm not wild about that idea, to be honest - a lot of time the confusion on Pinyin could lie in the number of letters (zhuan versus zhuang, etc) so I wouldn't want to give away that part of the correct answer. The idea of rejecting if it's it's not valid Pinyin might make sense, though - diun actually should get skipped, as should diian, but dun should not since it's possible you confused dian with dun.

goog1e - raising the split limit definitely makes sense, and I like the merge / flatten ideas too - the functionality for merge is pretty much already there (just assigning all the cards in one category to another, then deleting it), flatten's a bit harder though it doesn't seem like there'd be any major challenges there either.

 

[HW60]

[....]
When doing hundreds of cards daily, there is always a certain small percentage of cards that are counted incorrectly because of either an accidental double strike such as diian in this case or a mis-strike, where the letter was not hit perfectly on target and is missing making dan the incorrect card. Such a feature would eliminate this problem.

Since a suggestion by mikelove on Feb 15 2:19 am, I feel very comfortable with the "Skip Card" Control in the Advanced Settings of Flashcards. When I hit the wrong button or I am convinced to know the flashcard, but made a wrong input, I just skip the card. It is also possible to set (or increase or decrease) the score to a certain value during the flashcard session (Advanced Settings, "Score set to xx pts") when I do not like the actual score.

 

[sthubbar]

Mike, how about adding the ability to filter by number of days instead of just a date. In particular, it would be nice to always have a filter that says, "Only review cards that were created greater than x days ago" Currently to do something like this, the filter must be changed every day to manually select the appropriate date.

 

[sthubbar]

Here's something that I don't think is possible.

Would it be possible to assign flashcard session characteristics based upon card category?

So, I have a category called :Hanzi2Pin", for that category I want to see hanzi and I have to say the Pinyin. I then have a category called "Write" and for cards in this category I want to be shown the Pinyin and maybe a definition and I am to write the hanzi. Then during any single flashcard session I would show a mix of Hanzi and definitions and have to respond appropriately.

If the above request is too difficult, is it possible to have the flashcard session profile include the card categories? Is this already saved along with the other settings?