Importing old custom user dictionary

[Eddy]

Hi all,

Excuse me if this is a silly question.

How do I get my old custom user dictionary to work again?

Haven't used Pleco for a while. When opening the app again a few days ago the connection between the app and iTunes had been lost. Had to re-register the app, re-download my add-ons and reinstall my custom dictionaries. All went fine apart from the last part. One of my custom dictionaries will only partially import.

I looked into the instruction manual and did a search on the forums but didn't find an answer.

When importing entries from the custom dictionary file only about 150 out of 3,000+ entries are imported, afterwards the import stops. The .txt file is the same that I have imported successfully in the past. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. See also attached call-out screen from iPhone.

Any suggestions as to how to approach this are welcome.

Thanks!
Eddy

 

[Shun]

When importing entries from the custom dictionary file only about 150 out of 3,000+ entries are imported, afterwards the import stops. The .txt file is the same that I have imported successfully in the past. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. See also attached call-out screen from iPhone.

Any suggestions as to how to approach this are welcome.

Hi Eddy,

even though it's the same file you've imported in the past, I would try opening the text file in Excel (with the Unicode UTF-8 encoding set) and check if all rows are three columns wide. If not, you should see it right away.

Or perhaps there are some special Unicode chars in the file (used for bold or colored text, newlines, and so on) that Pleco won't accept anymore. If you know what they were, you could try replacing them with something simpler and see if the import goes through.

Regards,

Shun

 

[Eddy]

Hi Shun,

Thanks for the pointers. I've checked for the file being three columns wide and it is.

I am indeed using Unicode characters. While preparing for my HSK exams in 2014 I added my own notes and examples to entries. The only character I used, if I recall correctly, was the one for newline.

Have the Unicode characters functionalities been changed or disabled since 2014? Perhaps Mike or somebody else can comment on that. I might need to revise all entries then, ugh!

Thanks,
Eddy

 

[Shun]

Hi Eddy,

you're welcome! I know that newline characters still work (Unicode EAB1, or ""), but perhaps there are still other special characters in the list. You could check by duplicating the text file, then Search & Replacing the "" with a sequence like "[this was a newline]", and checking if special characters remain. You could Search & Replace those out one by one, then in the end replace "[this was a newline]" with "" again, just so you keep the newlines.

I think if the import just stops, it must be due to some special characters, though I might be wrong.

Cheers,

Shun

 

[mikelove]

From that screenshot it looks like a lot of the content of this has been corrupted - did you maybe pick the wrong encoding? (among UTF-8 versus GB versus Big5)

 

[Eddy]

Hi Mike,

Excuse the late reply. Got up in other things.

Perhaps the file is indeed corrupted. The question mark symbols should work. They represent the unicode entry for newline, I believe. I don't know what the other non-Chinese characters represent.

I re-saved the original file as a .txt with UTF-16 encoding just now and re-imported it as a new dictionary (tried UTF-8, UTF-16LE and UTF-16BE). Neither import was successful. When going through some entries with "Browse Dictionary Entries" I indeed see several (non-) Chinese characters there that shouldn't be there (see screenshot).

When I re-saved the original file as a .txt with UTF-8 encoding, I get a notification from BBEdit that “The UTF-8 file is damaged or incorrectly former; please proceed with caution”.

Do you have any suggestions how confirm the file is indeed corrupted and how to to un-corrupt it, if at all possible?

Many thanks,
Eddy

 

[Eddy]

Hi all,

Did a thorough search for earlier versions of my custom dictionary files on my laptop and found them. Successfully uploaded them just now. No corrupted files.

Pleased to say that Place seems to be working as before again!

Thanks for the support,
Cheers, Eddy

 

[mikelove]

Great! Sorry for the hassle.