iPhone Feature Requests
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
TGD said:
It is, though it's "experimental" - turn on "Still image capture" in Settings / OCR and refresh the main OCR screen and you'll see three new options added for that. Basically you take a picture of the text, box off the part you're interested in, then get a standard Pleco document reader window listing the characters which you can tap on to look them up.
(this is getting greatly enhanced in the next few updates)
TGD said:
You can do that already by tap-holding on them to select / copy them. Apple actually did add a system for in-app SMS composition in iOS 4 but we haven't gotten around to doing anything with it yet.
Thanks for the advice.
My new solution is to have two copies of the text - one on my ipod and and one on my newly-acquired 汉王 e-reader, and use the latter to go through the first time and make annotations directly onto the text, before going back through and using Pleco to look words up and add them to my flashcards.
My new solution is to have two copies of the text - one on my ipod and and one on my newly-acquired 汉王 e-reader, and use the latter to go through the first time and make annotations directly onto the text, before going back through and using Pleco to look words up and add them to my flashcards.
magicdave said:
Sounds like a good system. BTW, since in spite of our close relationship with 汉王 I haven't actually gotten around to buying one of those readers yet - is there any facility for installing third-party Windows CE apps? (since I understand they're running WinCE) Given how cheap / widely available they are, it might be worth investigating whether we can get our old Windows Mobile software working on them with relatively little effort.
sburkle said:
That's the problem with relying on any particular web-based service, actually - you never know when it might get blocked, and Pleco users in China already have it bad enough with Apple constantly rejecting their credit cards.
mikelove said:
Not as far as I can tell - it's definitely something they provide any support for, but I guess it might be possible if you knew what you were doing. The model I have (the n517) actually has a translation feature built in, but it's pretty feeble and doesn't offer any options for customisation.
radioman
状元
Happy New Year to all....
Not sure this is a bug, but if I use the pasteboard function coming into Pleco, I would like the capability (option?) to read the first dictionary in the list. This is the way I have it set in the menus. However, right now, when coming into Pleco, I believe it does a lookup utilizing on the last dictionary used (if Pleco is already running in the background).
Not sure this is a bug, but if I use the pasteboard function coming into Pleco, I would like the capability (option?) to read the first dictionary in the list. This is the way I have it set in the menus. However, right now, when coming into Pleco, I believe it does a lookup utilizing on the last dictionary used (if Pleco is already running in the background).
radioman said:
So you already have the option to always search from the first dictionary enabled in Settings? (Dictionary / Search Results / Dict search order to "From First") It actually should return to the first dictionary automatically in that case... if you don't have that option enabled, does enabling that help, or do you prefer to only have this happen for pasteboard searches and not other searches?
radioman
状元
With following settings:
Dictionary >> Search Results >> Dict search order >> From First (so I believe that is correctly set)
1) If I leave Pleco, put a single character into the pasteboard, and then come back, it does not invoke the first dictionary, it uses the one last used.
2) If the previous search had a bubble up on the screen, then when I leave Pleco, fill clipboard with the character, and then come back into the program, it has the old bubble still displayed. As well it uses the last dictionary used as the underlying dictionary for the lookup of the pasteboard.
3) If I paste a sentence that winds up in the reader, Pleco appears to behave as desired, utilizing the first dictionary in the list, not the last one used.
Dictionary >> Search Results >> Dict search order >> From First (so I believe that is correctly set)
1) If I leave Pleco, put a single character into the pasteboard, and then come back, it does not invoke the first dictionary, it uses the one last used.
2) If the previous search had a bubble up on the screen, then when I leave Pleco, fill clipboard with the character, and then come back into the program, it has the old bubble still displayed. As well it uses the last dictionary used as the underlying dictionary for the lookup of the pasteboard.
3) If I paste a sentence that winds up in the reader, Pleco appears to behave as desired, utilizing the first dictionary in the list, not the last one used.
Caveats: may be more of an interface change than a feature, and there may be some compelling reason NOT to do this.
In Dictionary, when you have multiple hits on a word (which is the usual case if you're using pinyin input), the character(s) and phrases are listed below the search input field. You tap on one of the ones that is closest to what you want.
It often happens to me that what I'm actually looking for is an extension of the character(s) I've chosen - usually a longer phrase where the character or characters I've typed into the search field are in the initial position. SOmetimes I haven't keyed in the other pinyin for the characters because I don't know what their pinyin is (i.e., I've seen the character but don't remember how to pronounce it); other times, I'm just trying to speed things up by reducing my pinyin typing since, given the first character or two, there are only one or two possibilities for the remaining ones.
SO, I find I'm OFTEN hitting the "Copy to INput" link which exists (if you've set the setting for that) at the bottom of the dictionary entry, just in order to get the character back up into the search input field so I can expand on it.
It would save a lot of taps and time to add a setting which would automate this -- e.g., if I've tap-selected a search hit, then automatically copy that entry to the search field of the dictionary. Perhaps don't even change screens to show the extended definition, since I don't really care in this instance about the definition of that individual character - just keep the screen the same, and copy the tapped character to input.
You probably wouldn't want this ALWAYS to happen, which is why I suggested making the automation a setting. But If there was a way to avoid the necessity of setting or unsetting by using a modified tap of some kind (tap-hold, swipe in a direction, double-finger tap), then that would be preferable.
In Dictionary, when you have multiple hits on a word (which is the usual case if you're using pinyin input), the character(s) and phrases are listed below the search input field. You tap on one of the ones that is closest to what you want.
It often happens to me that what I'm actually looking for is an extension of the character(s) I've chosen - usually a longer phrase where the character or characters I've typed into the search field are in the initial position. SOmetimes I haven't keyed in the other pinyin for the characters because I don't know what their pinyin is (i.e., I've seen the character but don't remember how to pronounce it); other times, I'm just trying to speed things up by reducing my pinyin typing since, given the first character or two, there are only one or two possibilities for the remaining ones.
SO, I find I'm OFTEN hitting the "Copy to INput" link which exists (if you've set the setting for that) at the bottom of the dictionary entry, just in order to get the character back up into the search input field so I can expand on it.
It would save a lot of taps and time to add a setting which would automate this -- e.g., if I've tap-selected a search hit, then automatically copy that entry to the search field of the dictionary. Perhaps don't even change screens to show the extended definition, since I don't really care in this instance about the definition of that individual character - just keep the screen the same, and copy the tapped character to input.
You probably wouldn't want this ALWAYS to happen, which is why I suggested making the automation a setting. But If there was a way to avoid the necessity of setting or unsetting by using a modified tap of some kind (tap-hold, swipe in a direction, double-finger tap), then that would be preferable.
Writing practice
I know, this question has been asked a few times, but ...
I think writing practice (something like skritter or popupchinese) would be a killing feature.
Has any decision been made whether to integrate it or not? Couldn’t find an answer to this question in all those posts.
From my point of few the auto correct feature offered is quite fun to use, but not that helpful when it comes to remembering. Cheating is definitely possible. Probably an auto correct at the end (not after each stroke) would be a nice thing.
I know, this question has been asked a few times, but ...
I think writing practice (something like skritter or popupchinese) would be a killing feature.
Has any decision been made whether to integrate it or not? Couldn’t find an answer to this question in all those posts.
From my point of few the auto correct feature offered is quite fun to use, but not that helpful when it comes to remembering. Cheating is definitely possible. Probably an auto correct at the end (not after each stroke) would be a nice thing.
mikeo said:
I'm not sure if I quite understand - can't you just tap on the (>) button next to the closest matching entry to jump to the other entries that start with it? I suppose we could add a command to select an entry in the search results and copy it directly to the input field (maybe triggered by the same tap-hold command that we support now for creating flashcards), but that's actually what the (>) buttons and the ever-confusing 果／典 button are designed to do.
yong_li said:
Have you tried the "fill-in-the-blanks" test in our current flashcard system with "Prompt for" set to "Characters"? That's more-or-less what you're talking about, something like those other systems but without auto-correct; we've actually had quite a few requests for some sort of auto-correct but are still weighing the usefulness of that. Personally I'm not convinced that it does a better job of teaching you how to read Chinese than our test, but it does seem to have some benefits for writing, and however outdated handwritten text may be a lot of Chinese teachers still spend huge amounts of time on it.
Entropy said:
Buried 3 levels deep where nary a ray of sunshine breaks through - Settings / Dictionary / Entry Commands.
mikelove said:
Where it's cryptically called "Search for Headword" instead of "Copy to Input".
I found another setting in there for landscape mode whose intended use is eluding me: "Device Top/Bottom." Why would anyone want to fix the location of the definition (or anything else) to a physical edge of the device?