Feature Suggestions

I'd like to have a sufficiently long description field associated with the category. Currently, I find even long names a bit cumbersome, but short names also have their problems. I'm using names like DT01, etc. meaning "D" level course, Tingli, chapter 1, etc.

During flashcards, I'd like to be able to write the characters onto the screen in self scoring mode, perhaps after revealing, etc. I use that method with physical cards now (finger writing with the cards) to help remember things. I have a kinesthetic memory, and have a very hard time visualizing anything. But, it would help to see the effect even of using my finger on the screen before going to next card. Just a wish :)
 

gato

状元
During flashcards, I'd like to be able to write the characters onto the screen in self scoring mode, perhaps after revealing, etc.
You could do that in 1.0. Is that not in 2.0?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Good idea about description fields. You can indeed have a sketch box in self-scored, just enable it in the Modes section of Advanced Settings.
 

goog1e

举人
Yeah, the sketchbox is great! I go through my cards with only audio and try to write the characters -- a bit tougher than just reading.
 
Another feature (similar to Wenlin):
I'd like to be able to review character strokes from within flashcards. Even if only in the manage flashcard list, where I could see the list of words, pick out the one I would like to review, etc. Right now, I would have to go through all the words until I "hit" the one I want., which is suboptimal.

Please bring back this feature:
When entering words with the handwriter, in Pleco 1, it immediately shows the pinyin per character chosen. (When you choose a character to add to the line, it also shows the pinyin). This is a feature that I've really been missing. Now, I need an extra step (cllck done) just to see how to pronounce something. There's a blank line available (on my Tapcis anyways) where this could be added back. This would also allow me to go through all the possible choices after drawing, just by clicking them all, and seeing the added character's pinyin. Currently this isn't possible if I have to press Done, since it would fail a dictionary lookup.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Some sort of better integration between sessions and Manage Flashcards would be nice, e.g. starting a session with the current search result cards (or even a selected range within them), though that's definitely a 2.1 thing if not even later than that.

I don't know where you got the idea for that other feature - it definitely isn't in 1.0, there's never been a feature like that in any version of Pleco in fact. Unless you're referring to the fact that in 1.0's input screens you'd tap on a character and it would immediately be inserted into the Input Field in the main dictionary interface, rather than inputting multiple characters and then tapping Done - if that's what you want, just enable the 1.0-style input screens option in Preferences and that'll bring it back to that sort of functionality.
 

ldolse

状元
@Stephan,

You can check out stroke order during a flashcard session - just highlight the character you want, tap'n'hold, and you can select CharInfo. A little bit more work than the default of just tapping a character in the main interface, but it gets the job done...
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Char Info should get large-screen enabled in 2.1, we hope. Good point about wildcard characters, the big problem there is that those can change so we'd either need to stick with the default ones or add a bunch of new code to dynamically change the keyboards to show those characters. (there's also the issue of where to fit them, at least in the on-screen keyboard - the Input dialog one probably does have room)
 
In Pinying input the number tone row has space. Perhaps you could use "special" symbols for single-char wild card and multi-char wild card. For example, * for single-chard wildcard and ** for multi-char wildcard. But default ones will work too.

Perhaps the char-info can be better used/implemented in the main dictionary window. In Pleco 1.0 I would put a single character in the input line and tap the Unihan Dictionary. Then I could use the wildcard searches to find the compounds.

I find the pinying keyboard very valuable (thanks for implementing it); with the wildcard symbols, it will be perfect.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We ended up just putting the default @ and $ symbols on the Pinyin keyboard - both in the Input screen (hit shift and it goes from one to the other), just the @ in the main screen since there wasn't space for both. Also added @ to the Zhuyin keyboard (in place of the wholly-unnecessary-since-Zhuyin-doesn't-have-the-mid-word-vowel-problem apostrophe).
 
I'd like to have a "back/erase one character", and also a move cursor back/forward one. All of these should be assignable to keys, or able to be put onto the toolbar.

The "erase one char" is the same one that's on the entry screen, but I'd like to be able to customize my toolbar to have it available there.

A second item would be to make the zhuyin font heavier in the on screen keyboard (Palm). Right now, it is much lighter looking (almost too faint for my eyes) on the Palm Tapcis, but other keyboards are easy to see.
 
You can check out stroke order during a flashcard session - just highlight the character you want, tap'n'hold, and you can select CharInfo. A little bit more work than the default of just tapping a character in the main interface, but it gets the job done...

I haven't been able to get this to work for me on my Palm Tapcis device. Would you be willing to show me how with a couple screen shots on the wiki?
 
In flashcard Advanced Settings Display Tab, I would like to be able to display Sub-category (Category) in one of the Top fields.

If I use Groups and select the entire group (so it includes all sub-categories), then I'd like to have an idea of which category (categories) it is in. Especially in landscape mode, there's a lot of screen space for this, so of course, I'd like to see it take advantage of that too.

Perhaps an option to show the "sub-category" name instead, and only if the card wasn't part of a subcategory, then it would default to the category instead.

Multiple categories could be shown in the same order as they are presented in the main list, comma separated, and terminated with an ellipsis if not enough room.

Example (I have Zonghe class "Z", class 01, 02, 03...) with category Z, sub-categories z01,z02,z03
If I select "show subcategories", then if a word comes up that is in z01, z03, and z03 it could show "z01,z02...". Words only in "Z" class could show "Z" in this case.

The extra help of telling me which text and chapter will help in memorization for me, and also tracing back to grammar and usage notes, etc.
 

goog1e

举人
Three suggestions that I would like to see for the flashcards:
(but I too am open to suggestions for changes in the way I study...)

1. When self-scoring flashcards, the ability to change from "right" to "wrong" when already looking at "1,2,3" and "4,5,6".

I know I go through things a bit too fast sometimes but I do make the right/wrong mistake somewhat often for different reasons. I'm still in the early stages of building my flashcard but I would imagine as the time spacing gets wider, scoring things correctly gets a bit more critical.


2. Adding some different options to "Review" (such as "listen to audio", "view headword", etc.) where the score is not recorded.

I've read some posts in various places of people that systematically review their new word lists for several days before entering it into supermemo. Their argument is that they need to learn the word before they start maintaining it in memory. With plecodict, it's so easy to generate "new word lists" by using flashcards when I look up a word (my categories are dates of entry). However, I believe I've messed up my scorefile (not sure though) through repeating self-scored flashcards (I like to use headword only and audio only) many times and using a high "score-per-day" number in an attempt to learn the words. It would be nice to have flexibility to learn the words in many (already existing ways) influencing the long-term score too much.

Related question: When I score a card several times a day, how is the final score calculated if I have "score once a day" enabled? What if it's not enabled? Does it average or just take the last score?


3. Ability to see next scheduled review date when using spaced-repetition.

In light of #2, this would be helpful information for fixing mis-scored cards. I think it would also be cool to see how the cards get scheduled.


Thanks Mike and anyone else in advance.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
stephanhodges - good idea on the backspace button, no reason that shouldn't be a toolbar option when it's available in about 6 other places. In general I favor the lighter font for Zhuyin since it makes the lines more obvious, but I can see how it might get too faint in some cases - maybe we could eventually use the larger font file for keyboards if/when we get them better adapted for landscape screens. (something we should definitely look at giving the increasing prevalence of iPhone-esque finger-friendly WM designs)

It would be tough to list more than one or two categories in those top fields - I'd rather just steer people towards Card Info since that both gives you a complete category list and lets you easily edit which categories the card is in. But perhaps we could add the option to append a category list to the end of the definition once the card is revealed, sort of like appending the dictionary name.

goog1e - On #1, we've actually already gotten a couple of requests to put all 6 of those buttons in the end, so that might appear as an option at some point. You can override the scoring once it gets to that point using the score change button, though - when it sees the card's score has just been changed manually it doesn't change it based on your answer, so if you configure that button to add 0 points that would keep the score from changing. (we should probably add an item to the popup menu for that, actually, just to make it a bit more obvious)

On #2, if you set Scoring Type to "None" in the Scoring tab of Advanced settings, that will keep the card's score from changing in any test type, though the correct / incorrect answer totals would still be updated. If "once per day" is enabled, once the score has been incremented by any amount it won't be incremented again until at least 24 hours have elapsed since the last time it was incremented, unless it's decremented in which case it can be incremented again. (same goes in reverse with decremented/incremented) So basically it keeps the card from being shifted too far in any direction in one day. (though not so much with incorrect since with Automated scoring it gets reset to 100 the first time you get it wrong) If it's not enabled, the score goes up every time you get the card right, which is probably only a good idea with Manual scoring and a fairly-modest correct answer increment, so that's why we leave it enabled by default.

#3 has been mentioned once or twice before, I think - we could add something like that, but it's already pretty easy to see this for an individual card if you look at its score and last reviewed time in Card Info - divide the score by 100 and add that many days to the last reviewed time and that's when the card will be shown again.
 
How about changing the on screen keyboard by adding the pinyin tones onto the SHIFT-numbers 1-5. That would allow you to remove the pinyin keyboard entirely.

Or, do you have other plans for those spaces?

Also, the input palette keyboard for English does not have a shift key.

Ironic that the Zhuyin keyboard is the only one with left and right parens. So, when entering a custom definition, There are a lot of "missing" key values. Perhaps the next version will support an add-in keyboard option, where you could download and add in keyboards.
 
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