iPhone Feature Requests

[Z-Lo]

Though a button toggle certainly might make sense in a future update (particularly since we've got plenty of toolbar space on that screen anyway).

Yes, a toggle button, exactly (I just looked that up)! Though the ability to reveal the pinyin for one entry at a time would also be great. Ok, I'm done pestering you about it.

so the list element to it is important and we couldn't really replicate that with an easier-to-access Review Only test.

For me, yes.



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[Dallin]

Learn to write Chinese feature!!!!!!

There should be a feature that gives you a sentence in pinyin and asks you to hand write it. Then it marks you as to whether or not the characters are correct and how accurately they were written.

Each pinyin word should have a box, similar to these,

just below.

Then it can mark you on accuracy, stroke order, speed, and whether or not the characters match the pinyin, etc, etc.

Sentence Translate Feature!!!!!!

There should be a feature that you can plug in a Chinese sentence or English sentence and then it translates them into the other language as accurately as possible.

Chengyu Dictionary!!!!!

There should be a dictionary with every Chinese idiom or saying possible!!!! They should be ranked in terms of how common they are. It should include the translation, the story behind it, and perhaps a link to a webpage with the stories and pictures!!! That would be awesome!

Learning Package Features!!!!!

There should be a feature that has some learning packages... for example... when you first download it, there will be a quick quiz with 50 questions or so, that will test you on your individual level of Chinese. The first few questions will be easy then they will get progressively more difficult. By the time you finish the quiz you will have a recommended starting level.

Then you can go into the Pleco app and there will be a series of levels with a series of lessons in each. Each level will be comparable to the HKS standards and the lessons within each level will contain sentence examples with daily vocabulary, multiple uses of the new vocabulary, and learning suggestions. The beginner lessons will teach pinyin, grammar and pronunciation. Then as the lessons progress they will get more and more complex until you have mastered every level so that you are ready to sit the official exams! Lessons could be done in 30mins a day and the vocabulary section will have a flashcard testing section that will test you on a series of the days vocabulary. Then you can choose to schedule revisions of those lessons and vocab. For example, I might memorise the days words. Then test them. Then set a schedule to alert me when to test again at progressive intervals. I might choose the first interval after 30mins. Then the next will be at 3 hours. Then the next at 8 hours. Then the next just before bed. Then the next when I wake up. Then the last at the end of the week. That way I can ensure what I have learnt will stay firm in my mind! The tests will all be weighted. As my language level increases I will then begin to be taught stroke order and tested on these with each daily lesson.

Obviously these language lessons would require a lot of work on your part. So perhaps this could be an extra paid feature where a subscription is set up for 5 dollars a month or 10 dollars a month or whatever...

Cloud User Translation Feature!!!!

There could be a feature whereby customers could pay a few dollars to have documents translated by the Pleco community... Then all the users that have passed a certain language level could participate in the translation. The more words or sentences they translate or proof read the more points they rack up against their name or profile. Those that have finished the highest level in the lessons are the moderators and are able to cross check the translations of the users.

As the user racks up points these points could be used in future for in app purchase discounts or discounts on new features, or lessons, etc. Also, this will help to expand the Pleco empire and get the brand name out there as something trusted. This will eventually lead to users being able to put on their resumes or job applications that they were pleco moderators, or that they have translated so many pages of documents... etc. etc.

The motivation behind users wanting to translate the documents is that they will get these points or credits or maybe one day actually get cash for jobs (if they are moderator level), they will get the experience, and they will get real world practice and be able to know exactly where they stand in a real world situation!

Book Feature!!!!

To be able to download books as documents (as we already do) but to be able to open them in a part of Pleco that actually lets you turn pages (similar to iBooks) and if you see a word you don’t know, just select it and flick through different dictionary meanings (as you already can). Then you can save quotes, and upload them to the community and ask for a translation if you don’t quite get it. Or you can save the quote to add to the lessons final test. Or save it to your daily memorization quiz schedule, etc, etc.


I have so many ideas pouring out of my head its insane...I just dont have time to even write them all down!!!!

 

[insighter]

That should be possible with the custom field support we're planning to add in 2.4, though it wouldn't specifically be about adding example sentences but rather about adding any extra data you feel like.

Good to hear.

I do have another flash card related request for more customizable scoring buttons though. I'm looking for both better speed and efficiency in flash cards. For whatever reason choosing between six score buttons is too slow but two buttons makes it so I'm marking cards that I know pretty well as totally wrong if there's any small aspect that's unclear. My ideal situation would be to have four buttons: two for completely correct/incorrect answers, a third for remembering an incorrect tone or pinyin, and a fourth for a slightly incorrect definition. The third and fourth button would count as incorrect entries, and would cause you to change testing modes for cards that received this score when 'repeat incorrect' is selected. This test session score based mode would then test those cards again specifically on either tones/pinyin or recognition. That last bit may be a bit of work so even the ability to reduce the number of score buttons to four would be good.

 

[character]

Just a thought...I don't know if other people would find this kind of thing useful, but I would love it.

I don't know the proper name for it, but I've found when studying things in order that the ordering helps me remember the next item, kind of like how one knows what the next song will be on a set playlist. So I don't use lists to study as I feel I'm learning the order more than the words.

Reading about your wishes, I wonder if some extension of the Document Reader might work. You could have two lists, one of pinyin and one of characters. You could look up the pinyin of the characters by tapping on them, and the characters for the pinyin by selecting and searching. For writing practice you could edit the document and use the HWR input, but that's admittedly not optimal.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for the feedback!

There should be a feature that gives you a sentence in pinyin and asks you to hand write it. Then it marks you as to whether or not the characters are correct and how accurately they were written.

That sort of thing would be possible once we had a better character writing test, one that had its own handwriting recognizer rather than relying on the one we use for word lookups. This is something we're looking into but no definite plans as yet.

There should be a feature that you can plug in a Chinese sentence or English sentence and then it translates them into the other language as accurately as possible.

For that, we're never going to be able to compete with Google Translate, and they give their service away for free in their own app but charge third-party developers to use it, so it's probably best if you just download their app for that.

There should be a dictionary with every Chinese idiom or saying possible!!!! They should be ranked in terms of how common they are. It should include the translation, the story behind it, and perhaps a link to a webpage with the stories and pictures!!! That would be awesome!

We actually have licensed a "multifunction" monolingual Chengyu dictionary recently, and we're looking at adding a second one that has more entries / fewer details. However, it doesn't include the story, just an explanation / usage advice / synonyms / antonyms / etc; we actually haven't yet found a Chengyu dictionary with comprehensive coverage *and* detailed stories, it seems like the only ones that include stories are designed for children and only cover a few hundred basic Chengyu.

There should be a feature that has some learning packages... for example... when you first download it, there will be a quick quiz with 50 questions or so, that will test you on your individual level of Chinese. The first few questions will be easy then they will get progressively more difficult. By the time you finish the quiz you will have a recommended starting level.

We've actually played around with a few ideas for something like this - test you on a random selection of words from various skill levels to try to gauge where we should start you - but honestly there's enough variation in Chinese textbook vocabulary (especially factoring in regional differences in Taiwan e.g.) that it's tough for a random sampling to give us an accurate picture. So instead we're trying to come up with a better way to quickly review a newly added flashcard deck and mark cards as new or already known - that way we can test you on the exact words you need to learn.

Then you can go into the Pleco app and there will be a series of levels with a series of lessons in each. Each level will be comparable to the HKS standards and the lessons within each level will contain sentence examples with daily vocabulary, multiple uses of the new vocabulary, and learning suggestions. The beginner lessons will teach pinyin, grammar and pronunciation. Then as the lessons progress they will get more and more complex until you have mastered every level so that you are ready to sit the official exams! Lessons could be done in 30mins a day and the vocabulary section will have a flashcard testing section that will test you on a series of the days vocabulary. Then you can choose to schedule revisions of those lessons and vocab. For example, I might memorise the days words. Then test them. Then set a schedule to alert me when to test again at progressive intervals. I might choose the first interval after 30mins. Then the next will be at 3 hours. Then the next at 8 hours. Then the next just before bed. Then the next when I wake up. Then the last at the end of the week. That way I can ensure what I have learnt will stay firm in my mind! The tests will all be weighted. As my language level increases I will then begin to be taught stroke order and tested on these with each daily lesson.

A lot of this is actually doable already in our flashcard app, but it's tough to set up and not especially automated, so this is certainly the sort of automated / easy-to-get-into system that we ought to aim for in the future.

There could be a feature whereby customers could pay a few dollars to have documents translated by the Pleco community... Then all the users that have passed a certain language level could participate in the translation. The more words or sentences they translate or proof read the more points they rack up against their name or profile. Those that have finished the highest level in the lessons are the moderators and are able to cross check the translations of the users.

As the user racks up points these points could be used in future for in app purchase discounts or discounts on new features, or lessons, etc. Also, this will help to expand the Pleco empire and get the brand name out there as something trusted. This will eventually lead to users being able to put on their resumes or job applications that they were pleco moderators, or that they have translated so many pages of documents... etc. etc.

The motivation behind users wanting to translate the documents is that they will get these points or credits or maybe one day actually get cash for jobs (if they are moderator level), they will get the experience, and they will get real world practice and be able to know exactly where they stand in a real world situation!

There are actually a bunch of websites that do some of this out there already - Lang-8 is one I've played with a bit, it's designed as more of a "language exchange" but basically you correct other people's writing in your native language and then they correct your writing in theirs. I haven't been on there in a couple of years, but last I checked there were far more Chinese speakers on there than English ones, so it's probably a pretty good way to get help with your Chinese writing.

Honestly, the Chinese learning space is so vast that it's tough to justify doing something like this ourselves unless it heavily leverages some of the functionality in our existing product - the marketing connection alone isn't enough, and I'm afraid that's all there'd be in this case. But if somebody else launches a nice website that does this (and they're not a direct competitor in other areas) we'd probably be happy to add support for uploading words / sentences to it from Pleco to translate.

To be able to download books as documents (as we already do) but to be able to open them in a part of Pleco that actually lets you turn pages (similar to iBooks) and if you see a word you don’t know, just select it and flick through different dictionary meanings (as you already can). Then you can save quotes, and upload them to the community and ask for a translation if you don’t quite get it. Or you can save the quote to add to the lessons final test. Or save it to your daily memorization quiz schedule, etc, etc.

That one's definitely coming, EPUB support is one of our most requested features.

I do have another flash card related request for more customizable scoring buttons though. I'm looking for both better speed and efficiency in flash cards. For whatever reason choosing between six score buttons is too slow but two buttons makes it so I'm marking cards that I know pretty well as totally wrong if there's any small aspect that's unclear. My ideal situation would be to have four buttons: two for completely correct/incorrect answers, a third for remembering an incorrect tone or pinyin, and a fourth for a slightly incorrect definition. The third and fourth button would count as incorrect entries, and would cause you to change testing modes for cards that received this score when 'repeat incorrect' is selected. This test session score based mode would then test those cards again specifically on either tones/pinyin or recognition. That last bit may be a bit of work so even the ability to reduce the number of score buttons to four would be good.

That's reasonable enough, particularly given that we already offer something like a dozen different ways to arrange the score buttons. Though I think we'd probably want to offer two new sets - 1/2/3/6 as you seem to be proposing, plus something like 1/4/5/6 for people who like the model in Anki et al of having only one incorrect level and three correct ones.

Reading about your wishes, I wonder if some extension of the Document Reader might work. You could have two lists, one of pinyin and one of characters. You could look up the pinyin of the characters by tapping on them, and the characters for the pinyin by selecting and searching. For writing practice you could edit the document and use the HWR input, but that's admittedly not optimal.

That wouldn't even really need to be an extension, actually - if we just added the ability to export specific fields from a flashcard list that would pretty much do it. (though I'm not sure if that feature would have enough other uses to justify doing it)

 

[insighter]

That's reasonable enough, particularly given that we already offer something like a dozen different ways to arrange the score buttons. Though I think we'd probably want to offer two new sets - 1/2/3/6 as you seem to be proposing, plus something like 1/4/5/6 for people who like the model in Anki et al of having only one incorrect level and three correct ones.

Thanks for considering it! Just wondered what you thought of the score based repeat idea though. I've mentioned before that I'd enjoy a multiple aspect SRS system, but this seems like it could an ok temporary feature. It seems like you wouldn't even need to do much because you already have the score based card test feature. Or would a session based score for repeats be a bit of work?

 

[Z-Lo]

I don't know the proper name for it, but I've found when studying things in order that the ordering helps me remember the next item, kind of like how one knows what the next song will be on a set playlist. So I don't use lists to study as I feel I'm learning the order more than the words.

I totally know what you mean. I do also use the flash cards for memorization. But for me, I like to be able to see everything I have at once and do not usually go through a list in order, one-by-one. With a list, I can quickly identify the ones I need to look at more closely and the ones I'm more familiar with. Also I can actually learn them before quizzing myself (honestly, I don't know how other people do it otherwise).

Reading about your wishes, I wonder if some extension of the Document Reader might work. You could have two lists, one of pinyin and one of characters. You could look up the pinyin of the characters by tapping on them, and the characters for the pinyin by selecting and searching. For writing practice you could edit the document and use the HWR input, but that's admittedly not optimal.

That sounds like an interesting solution, thanks The thing is, I don't have the doc reader yet, but I've been considering it. I was particularly looking for an efficient way to view the lists of words that I saved in Pleco, rather than just a way to view lists.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for considering it! Just wondered what you thought of the score based repeat idea though. I've mentioned before that I'd enjoy a multiple aspect SRS system, but this seems like it could an ok temporary feature. It seems like you wouldn't even need to do much because you already have the score based card test feature. Or would a session based score for repeats be a bit of work?

Sorry I didn't specifically address that one - to be honest I'm not quite seeing how the math would work, we could certainly flag a particular card to review with a particular field selection at the end of the test but having that setting apply going forward would require us to use something other than scores to determine what to test you on. And would probably introduce complications with a future multi-aspect SRS, something that we're strongly considering as a way to make the current confusing muddle of "scorefiles" a bit easier to sort out.

 

[nlucchesi]

Display Category in Flashcard

I'd like the option to display the category/categories from which the Flashcard is drawn. At a minimum, I'd like to see this at the same time the answer is revealed. The option to see it in the question would also be desirable.

The option of displaying only top-level/root categories would be very helpful. My root categories refer to book chapters and I repeat the characters in subordinate categories to provide finer grain selections.

 

[mikelove]

Re: Display Category in Flashcard

I'd like the option to display the category/categories from which the Flashcard is drawn. At a minimum, I'd like to see this at the same time the answer is revealed. The option to see it in the question would also be desirable.

The option of displaying only top-level/root categories would be very helpful. My root categories refer to book chapters and I repeat the characters in subordinate categories to provide finer grain selections.

So you'd like these right on the main screen instead of in Card Info? Where - appended to the bottom of the definition?

 

[nlucchesi]

Re: Display Category in Flashcard

So you'd like these right on the main screen instead of in Card Info? Where - appended to the bottom of the definition?

My apologies. I didn't realize that this information was available while taking a test within the "triangle" tab.

This is good enough for categories after the card is answered. But it would be better to have the option of automatically displaying it in the card Answer Reveal right after the definition. It would also be nice to have the option of showing it in the question part of the card as a hint.

So, let me refine what I'm asking for...

I'd like the ability to reveal a hint prior to answering the card. Among the choices for hints, I would like a list of categories. I can imagine that other types of hints (pinyin, pronunciation, etc.) would be useful to others.

Thank you.

- nello

 

[mikelove]

This is good enough for categories after the card is answered. But it would be better to have the option of automatically displaying it in the card Answer Reveal right after the definition. It would also be nice to have the option of showing it in the question part of the card as a hint.

Both possibilities, particularly in the context of a "custom fields" system.

I'd like the ability to reveal a hint prior to answering the card. Among the choices for hints, I would like a list of categories. I can imagine that other types of hints (pinyin, pronunciation, etc.) would be useful to others.

We already support this for Pinyin with our "reveal fields separately" option in Test Settings - again, once we start supporting custom fields it would probably be logical to make a list of categories one of those fields, and then we could fold this into that.

 

[llammamama]

Cloze deletion flashcards

After many years of trying out different types of flashcard formats and study methods (sentence cards, single-word cards, individual tone practice, C->E, E->C, etc) , I've come to the late realization that sentence flashcards with a "cloze deletion" (or fill-in-the-blank) are probably the most effective, easiest to study, and most versatile type of flashcard.

Unfortunately, Pleco has very limited support for creating this type of flashcard, and the workarounds involve a lot of manual copying and pasting in the custom flashcard creation screen. Is there any scope in the next flashcard-focused Pleco update to improve the custom flashcard creation process for sentence/cloze type flashcards?

Anki (another popular SRS flashcard system) has an easy-to-use and elegant "create cloze" button which could serve as a reference for the sort of functionality which would be fantastic. I often find myself looking at an example sentence in one of the dictionaries thinking "arrgh! I wish I could make a cloze deletion out of this sentence without spending 2 minutes tap- tap-hold- tap- tap- ing!!"

 

[mikelove]

Unfortunately, Pleco has very limited support for creating this type of flashcard, and the workarounds involve a lot of manual copying and pasting in the custom flashcard creation screen. Is there any scope in the next flashcard-focused Pleco update to improve the custom flashcard creation process for sentence/cloze type flashcards?

Yes - it's a feature that's already under consideration for our "custom field" system, since the same idea of a field being able to keep some of its text while "hidden" and only hide a specific range has a lot of other uses.

 

[llammamama]

Ok, well great! I'm glad to hear that you've already been considering it. You can count me as one vote strongly in favor of that feature being included.

I'll definitely be around to provide feedback etc as well for whenever a beta emerges with some of these new features.

 

[semola]

hope I'm posting in the right section...
I was wondering if you could consider implementing a feature that allows the user to change the colors of the characters of any text displayed on the reader according to tone colors, so one could read any text with tonal indications.
It would help (me) a lot, thank you!

 

[mikelove]

I'll definitely be around to provide feedback etc as well for whenever a beta emerges with some of these new features.

Thanks!

I was wondering if you could consider implementing a feature that allows the user to change the colors of the characters of any text displayed on the reader according to tone colors, so one could read any text with tonal indications.

That one would be very difficult because there are a lot of cases where you really can't know the correct tone for a character unless you understand the context around it. Just accurately segmenting the text into multi-character words and looking up the tones for those in the dictionary is tricky enough, but even that won't help with single characters like 得 that can change their tone depending on usage.

 

[insighter]

I forget, is there a plan to allow users to see which words are already in their flash cards list while doing searches? For example, having the entries that are already flash cards tagged with a colored square while searching through dictionaries could be helpful. If not this, it would be nice to have some feature where users can more easily see which category has an existing card if they are prompted with an add duplicate card message.

 

[tsr]

I forget, is there a plan to allow users to see which words are already in their flash cards list while doing searches?

Yes, I think mikelove said it was a plan in his February 2012 Announcement Email.

 

[mikelove]

Yes, I think mikelove said it was a plan in his February 2012 Announcement Email.

Yes, we didn't do many flashcard improvements for 2.3 (mostly split them off for 2.4) but we did do this one and it's already working great. Indicates whether it's been added and also whether it's been added to your current default category, and when you tap on the button with a duplicate card, you have a bunch of new options like updating its linked dictionary entry to the current one (useful if you want to pick and choose your definitions rather than just taking whichever one the importer used originally) and bringing up its Card Info screen so you can look at its history / already-assigned categories / etc.