ipad clear button and cursor movement keys

[pravit]

A few requests for the iPad version of Pleco (possibly applicable to the iPhone version as well):

1. A button to clear the search box, located near the bottom of the screen. I've often written in some characters only to find that they got tacked on to the end of a search I was doing before, forcing me to delete the previous entry and re-type, or fiddle with the magnifying glass to reposition the cursor (second request). The clear button is quite small and way at the top of the screen - it is a minor gripe but annoying enough that I usually hit the backspace key multiple times to clear an entry, or sometimes use the magnifying glass button at the bottom, which seems to clear the search box and put in the new character, although I'm not sure of its exact behavior or intended purpose.

2. Buttons to move the search box cursor left and right. I often enter a character, then realize it is part of a two syllable word and need to enter characters to the left. I then need to hold down on the search box and use the magnifying glass to move the cursor which is quite awkward, enough so that I sometimes just delete everything and retype the whole phrase in pinyin. Similar to how tone number buttons are on the keyboard it would be nice if cursor movement keys were added.

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

1. A button to clear the search box, located near the bottom of the screen. I've often written in some characters only to find that they got tacked on to the end of a search I was doing before, forcing me to delete the previous entry and re-type, or fiddle with the magnifying glass to reposition the cursor (second request). The clear button is quite small and way at the top of the screen - it is a minor gripe but annoying enough that I usually hit the backspace key multiple times to clear an entry, or sometimes use the magnifying glass button at the bottom, which seems to clear the search box and put in the new character, although I'm not sure of its exact behavior or intended purpose.

Very good iPad optimization, and not one we'd been thinking about much before - thanks!

2. Buttons to move the search box cursor left and right. I often enter a character, then realize it is part of a two syllable word and need to enter characters to the left. I then need to hold down on the search box and use the magnifying glass to move the cursor which is quite awkward, enough so that I sometimes just delete everything and retype the whole phrase in pinyin. Similar to how tone number buttons are on the keyboard it would be nice if cursor movement keys were added.

Oddly enough, this is actually impossible to do with Apple's current text input field system - you can easily put new text in an input field, or copy text out of it, but you can't directly manipulate the cursor; can't find out where it is and can't move it somewhere else. Not sure why they've chosen to block developers from this particular function, but they have. (this actually creates some other issues too, like the selection cursor jumping around when you switch between handwriting and keyboard input) We'll certainly keep an eye out for changes in a future iOS release that would enable this, though.