iPhone Feature Requests

[mikelove]

If pleco could do something similar.

*music playing through earphones*
-Tap on audio button to read out pronunication -
*music fades and plays character audio*
*music resumes*

Something equally useful (and perhaps easier to program) would simply be the ability to adjust the volume of the voice so it can be heard over the music.

Understood. Have to see if we can dig up an API for that... volume adjustment is actually tricky too since we're already maxing out the audio output gain; we'd have to re-encode the audio (generate brand new files and make everybody download them) to increase the volume without hurting quality / generating lots of weird distortions.

Ah yes, that makes sense. Still it's interesting that it would work with iOS - perhaps this could be an add-on to download separately.

Not possible at the moment, sadly - we can only use a custom font by embedding it in the main application - but hopefully they'll add a new API in OS 5 for custom font downloads.

 

[sukitc]

Hi, in the "Details" section of a character, there are many useful informations about that character like cantonese pronunciation, grade level, total strokes and some informations that I don't even what they are like code point and RSUnicode. I wonder whether it's possible to add another information: the 4-corner index number for the character. I have real difficulty figuring out the index number, but one of the texts I use (Cracking the Chinese puzzles) exclusively use this method. Thank you.

 

[mikelove]

Hi, in the "Details" section of a character, there are many useful informations about that character like cantonese pronunciation, grade level, total strokes and some informations that I don't even what they are like code point and RSUnicode. I wonder whether it's possible to add another information: the 4-corner index number for the character. I have real difficulty figuring out the index number, but one of the texts I use (Cracking the Chinese puzzles) exclusively use this method. Thank you.

It already is - "FourCornerCode"; are you not seeing that included among the available options?

 

[sukitc]

No, I can't find it. In the "Choose field" option, there are many options -- Definition, Cantonese, Frequency, Code Point, Hangul, etc., but I couldn't find anything on Four Corner Index.

 

[mikelove]

Go into Settings / Panels and turn on "Show rare details" - does that make it available? Also, go into the "Free" section of the Add-ons tab and download the expanded Unihan database from there.

 

[sukitc]

Success! Many thanks.

 

[mikeo]

Apologies if this request repeats an earlier post.

IOS doesn't support simultaneous display of different apps' windows, so when I watch a Chinese video (often subtitled with characters) I flip back and forth between Pleco and the ipod player, looking things up in Pleco.

Pleco now supports playing audio inside the app (which allows lookup without switching apps), but it doesn't support playing video (so far as I know!).

Supporting the display of video inside Pleco (with lookup in another Pleco window) would seem like a pretty easy extension and would be a great timesaver.

 

[mikelove]

IOS doesn't support simultaneous display of different apps' windows, so when I watch a Chinese video (often subtitled with characters) I flip back and forth between Pleco and the ipod player, looking things up in Pleco.

Pleco now supports playing audio inside the app (which allows lookup without switching apps), but it doesn't support playing video (so far as I know!).

Supporting the display of video inside Pleco (with lookup in another Pleco window) would seem like a pretty easy extension and would be a great timesaver.

It's been mentioned once or twice before, yes, but it's actually far from easy... the biggest question is the UI: do we support handwriting or OCR or some combination of the two or do we just load the Chinese text from a separate subtitle file, how might we handle a Pinyin search for an unknown word that you hear (seems like we'd need a button to switch into the main dictionary tab since the keyboard + search results take up too much space to combine with video), etc. So not something we can just slip into a minor update like the Lyrics Reader.

 

[mikeo]

It's been mentioned once or twice before, yes, but it's actually far from easy... the biggest question is the UI: do we support handwriting or OCR or some combination of the two or do we just load the Chinese text from a separate subtitle file, how might we handle a Pinyin search for an unknown word that you hear (seems like we'd need a button to switch into the main dictionary tab since the keyboard + search results take up too much space to combine with video), etc. So not something we can just slip into a minor update like the Lyrics Reader.

There could be a couple levels of implementation. Even just playing the video in a separate Pleco window, with video start/stop and pinyin lookup available (no OCR, no handwriting, no subtitle file loading) would be very very useful and save a lot of context switching time/attention. Of course all the other things would be nice too, but they could come later.

 

[mikelove]

There could be a couple levels of implementation. Even just playing the video in a separate Pleco window, with video start/stop and pinyin lookup available (no OCR, no handwriting, no subtitle file loading) would be very very useful and save a lot of context switching time/attention. Of course all the other things would be nice too, but they could come later.

Well that's what I wonder about... how much time would this really be saving over the double home button click / button tap that would switch you between Pleco and a video player otherwise? I'm inclined to think that if we do this we should really commit to it and create something that offers a clear benefit like the lyrics reader does... otherwise we're just teasing people with half-implemented functions that might take a year or more to be fully fleshed-out.

 

[mikeo]

There could be a couple levels of implementation. Even just playing the video in a separate Pleco window, with video start/stop and pinyin lookup available (no OCR, no handwriting, no subtitle file loading) would be very very useful and save a lot of context switching time/attention. Of course all the other things would be nice too, but they could come later.

Well that's what I wonder about... how much time would this really be saving over the double home button click / button tap that would switch you between Pleco and a video player otherwise? I'm inclined to think that if we do this we should really commit to it and create something that offers a clear benefit like the lyrics reader does... otherwise we're just teasing people with half-implemented functions that might take a year or more to be fully fleshed-out.

In some ways video is a lot less "standardized" than audio. Lots of Chinese DVDs and youtube videos don't use separate subtitle files, but embed the characters in the video, and often these character images (particularly characters with lots of strokes) are so fuzzy that it's only the context that lets you guess what characters they are. So I doubt that either OCR or automatic subtitle text translation could work well in many situations.

On the other hand, the speakers' sound is a pretty reliable guide to character lookup. When I am watching a video the sound can often clarify what the subtitled character is, and a pinyin lookup nails it most of the time. The real pain is the context-switching: pause the video, exit Ipod viewer, run Pleco, do the lookup, then go back to ipod viewer and resume the video. So for my use case simply handling the video inside Pleco would by itself eliminate all this context-switching time and solve the problem.

 

[peibolun]

Thanks so much for implementing non standardized romanization with the "@" symbol. My GR flashcards work great...

Except I don't have pronunciation as I'm sure this is based off the pinyin entry and not the character. So I'm gonna request that pronunciation could be based off the character so that quizzes using non standard romanization could still be used with listening quizzes. This request probably benefits just me so I understand if it's pushed down the priority list

Btw, I finally got around to writing a glowing review on the app store. Keep up the good work, love the software and I use it everyday.

 

[mikelove]

On the other hand, the speakers' sound is a pretty reliable guide to character lookup. When I am watching a video the sound can often clarify what the subtitled character is, and a pinyin lookup nails it most of the time. The real pain is the context-switching: pause the video, exit Ipod viewer, run Pleco, do the lookup, then go back to ipod viewer and resume the video. So for my use case simply handling the video inside Pleco would by itself eliminate all this context-switching time and solve the problem.

Well I'm wondering about the actual gain number-of-taps wise - seems like we're basically going from two (press home button, tap on Pleco icon) to one (tap on Pleco icon in video player); even a simple embedded video player would be a significant amount of work, so that efficiency gain isn't necessarily enough to justify doing it when there are so many other bigger improvements we might be working on.

Subtitle files and/or OCR are what would really make this a killer feature - even if content is not completely standardized, aren't there large archives of subtitled Chinese films / TV series / etc out there that we might be able to tap into / direct people to?

Except I don't have pronunciation as I'm sure this is based off the pinyin entry and not the character. So I'm gonna request that pronunciation could be based off the character so that quizzes using non standard romanization could still be used with listening quizzes. This request probably benefits just me so I understand if it's pushed down the priority list

Long-term we'd like to be able to support more than one pronunciation system on the same flashcard, so I think that would be the proper way to fix this; I'm somewhat wary of basing them off of characters since so many characters can have more than one pronunciation. (no sense in taking time to add a new feature if it can never be more than an inaccurate half-measure)

Btw, I finally got around to writing a glowing review on the app store. Keep up the good work, love the software and I use it everyday.

Thank you!

 

[character]

Subtitle files and/or OCR are what would really make this a killer feature - even if content is not completely standardized, aren't there large archives of subtitled Chinese films / TV series / etc out there that we might be able to tap into / direct people to?

While I would love something in Pleco that worked with subtitles, as HK/Chinese films are why I started learning Chinese, adding features to work with illegal uploads may be a legal minefield.

 

[mikelove]

While I would love something in Pleco that worked with subtitles, as HK/Chinese films are why I started learning Chinese, adding features to work with illegal uploads may be a legal minefield.

I was actually thinking of legal ones - old series that are available for free, or archives of subtitle files that can be used with cheaply-available DVDs. My sense at least is that there are a great many places online where one can perfectly legally watch Chinese TV for free; is that not the case?

 

[peibolun]

Long-term we'd like to be able to support more than one pronunciation system on the same flashcard, so I think that would be the proper way to fix this; I'm somewhat wary of basing them off of characters since so many characters can have more than one pronunciation. (no sense in taking time to add a new feature if it can never be more than an inaccurate half-measure)

I was thinking in terms of the character as being the "definitive" source, but I'd forgotten that you are dealing with a multiple to one mapping problem. I have no problem with having pinyin as the source for the pronunciation so perhaps adding another field that can be populated by the dictionary. Supporting all the other romanization systems seems like a headache! GR Itself has so many weird exceptions and spelling rules, especially between putonghua and peking dialect. I know I'm in the minority using GR so wouldn't expect it to be explicitly supported. It'd just be nice if I could use my flash cards for listening practice. Also the goal is at some point to just completely abandon romanization systems and move to characters.

 

[character]

I was actually thinking of legal ones - old series that are available for free, or archives of subtitle files that can be used with cheaply-available DVDs. My sense at least is that there are a great many places online where one can perfectly legally watch Chinese TV for free; is that not the case?

I don't know, having only in the last few weeks started watching HK/Chinese TV shows; been watching HK movies for decades.

The feature you describe (switching to Pleco from a video) seems best for advanced learners. For those of us who are not, there would be constant switching back and forth.

I'd love some way to play videos in Pleco and OCR subs/process a subtitle file. I just can't think of a way to do so which doesn't involve converting the video to a specific format.

Perhaps work on improving OCR so that one can watch the video on a TV/computer and reliably OCR subs from the paused video?

 

[mikeo]

Well I'm wondering about the actual gain number-of-taps wise - seems like we're basically going from two (press home button, tap on Pleco icon) to one (tap on Pleco icon in video player); even a simple embedded video player would be a significant amount of work, so that efficiency gain isn't necessarily enough to justify doing it when there are so many other bigger improvements we might be working on.

Subtitle files and/or OCR are what would really make this a killer feature - even if content is not completely standardized, aren't there large archives of subtitled Chinese films / TV series / etc out there that we might be able to tap into / direct people to?

I did a test using Pleco OCR on a screencaptured image of the video playing with subtitles. As you can see, though the subtitles are pretty clear, the chars are far too small for the OCR to guess them...if there's a way to blow up the image and give the OCR bigger characters to look at, I didn't find it.

So on the one hand, though the subtitles of at least this one example popular soap opera are clear enough to theoretically work with OCR, to make that happen there would have to be some way to resize and refit the OCR source and point OCR at the bottom subtitled part of the frames. What was a fullsize screenshot Pleco downsized via OCR/Still Image/Block Recognizer into a much smaller image. With other OCR sub-menu items, e.g. Scroll Lookup Words, and Scroll Capture text, there were similar sizing/orientation problems.

 

[flameproof]

Here is what I would love to see... more sentence examples, specially in flashcards.

Let me elaborate.... ABC is in that respect already quite good. But some structure words really can be very tricky. A simple noun like 狗 will be no problem, but 当 or even the simple 对 can have different meanings.

So what I think is that a sentence DB would be a good thing, were you have i.e. different examples of 当 in a sentence. This DB could be even user generated.

This help Pleco as a learning tool. I think there is no doubt that one needs sentences to get the characters into the passive memory. This could be a good step.

 

[Michaels1980]

Here is what I would love to see... more sentence examples, specially in flashcards

This is something that I would like to see too. I prefer to learn sentences rather than single words. Currently what I do is copy the text out of the dictionary definition and paste it into a text file in the reader. When I have about 20 example sentences in the file, I copy it to my desktop computer, format it <Chinese sentence> <Pin Yin> <English sentence>, copy it back to Pleco and import it into the flashcards. It works but is not nearly as quick and efficient as adding flashcards for single words in Pleco (just a couple of taps). Ideally I'd like to be able to tap an example sentence in a dictionary definition, then have a popup saying 'Add flashcard for this example sentence'.

Another issue, but it would be fantastic if during a flashcard session, the example sentence could be read out by some kind of text-to-speech function inside Pleco or Google Translate. Pleco's current audio pronunciation function is wonderful when doing single words but not so great when doing sentences.
I use another flashcard program called Anki for my Japanese and the version for Android called Ankidroid has just recently added this TTS functionality, and while they don't have it perfect yet, I think it's a good example of this.