iPhone Feature Requests

[mikelove]

I don't know if it's been brought to your attention before, but the guy over at Confused Laowai has made a pretty nifty tool to deconstruct characters into all their radicals. Would it be possible to add functionality like this to Pleco? Like in the Details tab of the 字 screen when you select a single character in a dictionary entry.

We already do with the "Chars" tab that's part of the stroke order module, actually. But if this is good data we'd be happy to make it available for people who haven't bought that module or who for whatever reason like this data better than that. It looks like right now it's still in-development and maybe not fully debugged yet, so I'd be inclined to wait a bit on that, but we'll certainly keep an eye on how it progresses.

 

[scykei]

This would be very useful when importing someone else's flashcard lists, like HSK. As of right now, there isn't an easy way to do glance through the contents and mark them besides deleting or moving them from the category. The organize menu would work but it isn't an optinal solution. Browsing through colour coded thumbnails gives you a good sense of progression.

Then it sounds like you need color-coded score info more than you need actual tiles - correct? Thumbnails worry me because I think you really need the definitions in a lot of these cases - you might know the characters but not really know the meaning (or all of the meanings), and just skimming through words won't necessarily give you a chance to find that out. Here's an easy way to experiment - go into the Pleco "Settings" screen / "Flashcards" / List Views, turn off "Use dict list settings" and set "List layout" to just "Head Pron" (so definitions don't show), then go back into Organize Cards and see how well you can find / sift through flashcards without seeing their definitions.

But I don't actually need the definitions on it because I've been saving them into txt files all these time anyway. But do I want easy access to definitions too, so tapping on the entries should bring up the definitions, right?

Because what I've been doing all this time is adding interesting words into this text file, then come back to that file when I have the time to view the definitions and other details such as sentence usage, etc.

The thumbnails idea is supposed to allow users to easily skim through their flashcards, and mark them when necessary. Probably something like a check mark to set them as learnt or something. :?

 

[mikelove]

But I don't actually need the definitions on it because I've been saving them into txt files all these time anyway. But do I want easy access to definitions too, so tapping on the entries should bring up the definitions, right?

Well yes, presumably we'd have a popup window of some sort in those cases.

Because what I've been doing all this time is adding interesting words into this text file, then come back to that file when I have the time to view the definitions and other details such as sentence usage, etc.

You mean to your flashcards list, right?

The thumbnails idea is supposed to allow users to easily skim through their flashcards, and mark them when necessary. Probably something like a check mark to set them as learnt or something.

Well that's the part I'm wondering about - can you figure out that you've learned a word without seeing its definition?

 

[scykei]

Because what I've been doing all this time is adding interesting words into this text file, then come back to that file when I have the time to view the definitions and other details such as sentence usage, etc.

You mean to your flashcards list, right?

Naah, I have the save words to a text file option set. I usually need to keep track of those words manually. Then when I feel I'm prepared, I convert the text file to the flash card and test my memory there. I mean, we have to learn the words first before being tested on it, right? That's how I feel anyway.

So I guess I just wanted an easier way to make a manual checklist. When I think about it, I'm probably the only person who does it this way so yeah, you need not attend to such a personal request. Maybe put this feature somewhere down the line when everything you've ever planned to be already implemented some time in the future?

 

[mikelove]

Naah, I have the save words to a text file option set. I usually need to keep track of those words manually. Then when I feel I'm prepared, I convert the text file to the flash card and test my memory there. I mean, we have to learn the words first before being tested on it, right? That's how I feel anyway.

That option's actually supposed to be removed in the next update - we've had a surprisingly large number of people turn it on accidentally and end up with no flashcards, and now that we're making the basic list-building portions of flashcards free there doesn't seem to be much of a point to keeping it when you can simply create and export a flashcard list. I'm not quite seeing why a text file is needed in your case either - why not just add them to a new category that's not part of your normal reviews, then move them to a different one when you're ready?

So I guess I just wanted an easier way to make a manual checklist. When I think about it, I'm probably the only person who does it this way so yeah, you need not attend to such a personal request. Maybe put this feature somewhere down the line when everything you've ever planned to be already implemented some time in the future?

Oh I'm sure it has lots of other uses too, I'm just wary of implementing something with a rather complicated / labor-intensive UI unless I'm really confident it'll do some good.

 

[scykei]

Naah, I have the save words to a text file option set. I usually need to keep track of those words manually. Then when I feel I'm prepared, I convert the text file to the flash card and test my memory there. I mean, we have to learn the words first before being tested on it, right? That's how I feel anyway.

That option's actually supposed to be removed in the next update - we've had a surprisingly large number of people turn it on accidentally and end up with no flashcards, and now that we're making the basic list-building portions of flashcards free there doesn't seem to be much of a point to keeping it when you can simply create and export a flashcard list. I'm not quite seeing why a text file is needed in your case either - why not just add them to a new category that's not part of your normal reviews, then move them to a different one when you're ready?

You're right. I should probably have done that. The only problem now that I think of it is that reviewing cards through the "Organize Cards" function doesn't save your position after you close it, but will reset it to the top. So when I'm halfway down a list, cannot I find where I was previously too quickly. Another good thing about saving into a text file is that Pleco makes a new header for every new day so I can keep track of where I was too. If you can solve that position saving thing then I'll have no problems. It would be much better if we could add notes or checkmarks to it too, but that isn't absolutely a must.

But I honestly feel that thumbnail view would be much more efficient than list view.

 

[mikelove]

Another good thing about saving into a text file is that Pleco makes a new header for every new day so I can keep track of where I was too. If you can solve that position saving thing then I'll have no problems. It would be much better if we could add notes or checkmarks to it too, but that isn't absolutely a must.

That should be fixable the next time we update the database format (so there's a place to save those), yes.

But I honestly feel that thumbnail view would be much more efficient than list view.

I'm not saying no to it altogether, I just want to be more confident that if we take the time to implement it people will actually find it useful.

 

[pprendeville]

Is it possible to do polls in this forum? Ask a question & people vote. Would be a good way of seeing if people are interested. In general, how many requests need to be made before a feature is added? Not saying this feature is essential but curious to know from a business perspective. Also, do you think the next version of Pleco will work well on iPhone 4 (kind of off topic) as my one has slowed down a bit since updating to iOS 6 and by the sounds of it the next update sounds big.

 

[mikelove]

Is it possible to do polls in this forum? Ask a question & people vote. Would be a good way of seeing if people are interested. In general, how many requests need to be made before a feature is added? Not saying this feature is essential but curious to know from a business perspective. Also, do you think the next version of Pleco will work well on iPhone 4 (kind of off topic) as my one has slowed down a bit since updating to iOS 6 and by the sounds of it the next update sounds big.

It's possible but I wouldn't trust the results - people are always happy to say yes to a random new feature. We'd have to either present them with a specific feature we would be doing this instead of, or present them with a whole long list of features to choose from with this being one of them.

iPhone 4 should be fine, we're still primarily I/O- rather than CPU-dependent so the multi-core 4S/5 didn't add that much outside of a few particular CPU-intensive areas like OCR.

 

[pprendeville]

People - you just can't trust the Feckers. I'm off back to my robot family now to do a poll to see what's for dinner.

 

[radioman]

Well so was cursive - I'm not particularly old and attended a relatively progressive school and we still spent an awful lot of 3rd grade being rigorously drilled on cursive writing, which had been an integral part of grammar school curricula in the US I believe since the 19th century; it's now being rapidly phased out, and few people have raised any objections to that.

And on a similar note...

My gosh, I remember the long division speeches I'd get from my teachers. "... What will you do when you are out on an engineering job and have to get the calculation done, and you find yourself with no calculator???". Oh, without exemplary long division skills ... what will you do. Of course there is value to mathematics - but my teacher's concerns never manifested, ever. And I have never had to do long division outside of school without the use of a calculator, ever.

Same for handwriting. Setting aside cursive writing, even my printing is arguably 难看。 I find native writers of a language (and probably speakers as well) get sloppy, probably because they understand the ultimate bounds of what would pass as readable will making minimal effort. Learners do not know the bounds. I remember working in Singapore with a woman engineer from Indonesia, and she wrote english like a typewriter. It was amazing. As for me, I can type fast and 99.999% of my text-based communication in the past decade has been via keyboard.

And I have read more than one article that talks about students in Japan just not remembering how to write anymore because they just type and text everything.

Here is my prediction.

- With regard to university classes for Chinese in China, I figure that for at least the next five years, nothing will change - you will read/write/speak/listen.
- And I certainly do not see that changing for Chinese Nationals. Break out the pencil box, there is no escape.
- HSK will go computer input.

With regard to HSK, I do not see why they will not "punt" completely on the writing requirement for foreigners - sooner than later. Maybe it already has (if so, give me the link!). Some thoughts here http://goo.gl/Y0Hlx. My friend just took the CPA qualifications in China, given once a year. They moved to a completely computerized system. People over 45 were allowed to just do it by hand. Otherwise, you had to use their computer at their testing center. It just makes sense to me that Chinese testing would move in the same direction, especially with people using computers, not paper for their communications.

 

[character]

OCR seems to struggle with this character: 裏 (inside). Unfortunately, it's quite common in the Traditional material I have. Is there any way to get it included in the OCR database? It's really the biggest problem I've had with OCR recognizing low-level Traditional texts.

 

[mikelove]

OCR seems to struggle with this character: 裏 (inside). Unfortunately, it's quite common in the Traditional material I have. Is there any way to get it included in the OCR database? It's really the biggest problem I've had with OCR recognizing low-level Traditional texts.

In general they seem to be mainly focused on simplified, unfortunately, but I'll ping them right now and see if there have been any recent improvements on the character set front.

 

[Bendy-Ren]

Don't know if this is the right place, but I looked around and couldn't find anywhere else—

Is there a planned release date for the "big update" for iOS that keeps getting mentioned? Or at least a rough time frame?

 

[mikelove]

Is there a planned release date for the "big update" for iOS that keeps getting mentioned? Or at least a rough time frame?

Nope - the biggest factor at this point is the completion of our customized new font file, and while they've been saying "end-of-the-year" I could easily see it taking a bit longer.

In retrospect, we ought to have chunked this up into several smaller updates - we've got a whole lot of new features that we could release more-or-less right now, but the long wait means that people expect more improvements, which means that we have to make more improvements, which makes the wait even longer. The font change is key to this because we think that will go a very long way towards making it "feel" like a big enough upgrade that people will be satisfied, even if it's really just one new element among many; a lot of the really complicated under-the-hood stuff we've been working on (merged multi-dict search / improved variant handling, e.g.) isn't really very exciting at first glance, and would leave us with a lot of disappointed users if that's all we did, and module-specific features (EPUB support, preliminary iCloud sync for flashcards, PDF support and line height auto-detection in OCR) are only of interest to people who own those modules.

But after this I think we're going to try to make everything much more incremental and gradual - ideally 1-2 "big" updates per year, even if those updates are occasionally less visually exciting or only apply to one or two modules (like flashcards, which are due for a lot more improvements).

 

[character]

In general they seem to be mainly focused on simplified, unfortunately, but I'll ping them right now and see if there have been any recent improvements on the character set front.

Thanks Mike. I think it's worth asking for that character to be included. It's used throughout The Lady and the Painting, for example, a text most beginners learning Traditional characters will likely encounter. Have a good holiday.

 

[caesartg]

Hi Mike

Is it possible that you could change the New Card function's Character Headword input screens so that they remember whether they were last set to "HWR" or "Key"?

Cheers

Ben

 

[mikelove]

Is it possible that you could change the New Card function's Character Headword input screens so that they remember whether they were last set to "HWR" or "Key"?

Yes, good idea.

 

[alanmd]

What will you do when you are out on an engineering job and have to get the calculation done, and you find yourself with no calculator???

Now it is more like "what will you do when you don't have Matlab? I will use Excel. When you don't have Excel? I will wait..."

I charge (what I think are) quite high fees to tutor Undergraduate and Masters students who are about 15 years younger than me, and I am constantly astonished at the simple calculations that they are unwilling to either attempt or even approximate in their head. I feel like crying when I see them enter 10x10 into a calculator without thinking...

Here is my prediction.
- [...]
- HSK will go computer input.

Your prediction has already happened: I took an HSK exam in Edmonton, AB, Canada the day after you wrote that (Sunday 21st October). We were a mix of all HSK levels from 1 to 6, and all took the exam on the computer. We were told that we could either use the pinyin IME on the computer for the writing sections, or could optionally choose to handwrite those sections. No-one put their hand up to ask for paper to hand write those sections. It was the first all-computer HSK exam that our Confucius Institute had given, and a guy had flown in from somewhere (Vancouver?) to make sure that everything went smoothly. After the exam I was interviewed on video about how I liked the 'online' test format.

 

[radioman]

Your prediction has already happened:

See, I'm a genius! One day after my suggestion, they pick up the ball and decide to implement!

Did they indicate that this would be coming more wide spread? Where did you take the test exactly?
Think I will alter my study accordingly.

Point well taken on the Engineering jobs and 10X10... pretty funny, but true...

Here is some more interesting fodder via slate.com
http://goo.gl/QBQyJ