iPhone Feature Requests

[thrice12]

Been using Pleco ever since i arrived in China to help me with my studies. Not sure if this has been mentioned but something i would love to see is that ability to this:

For example, if i write 'Help' in the search bar i obviously get quite a few results and within each result are all the meanings that the dictionary gives me. It would be really convenient if i could scroll from left to right to see all those meanings instead of having to tap into the actual character. I'm thinking this would work best using the CC dictionary. This would let me to stay on the same screen, allowing me to still see the other characters but also giving me the ability to see all the meanings the CC dictionary gives to that specific character without having to leave the character list screen.

Thanks

 

[mikelove]

For example, if i write 'Help' in the search bar i obviously get quite a few results and within each result are all the meanings that the dictionary gives me. It would be really convenient if i could scroll from left to right to see all those meanings instead of having to tap into the actual character. I'm thinking this would work best using the CC dictionary. This would let me to stay on the same screen, allowing me to still see the other characters but also giving me the ability to see all the meanings the CC dictionary gives to that specific character without having to leave the character list screen.

Not quite sure if I follow you - so you'd like to see more definitions for a particular Chinese word without leaving the search screen? Have you considered enabling the "Two-panel mode" option in Settings / Dictionary / Overall Interface? (applies automatically when your device is in landscape orientation)

 

[thrice12]

For example, if i write 'Help' in the search bar i obviously get quite a few results and within each result are all the meanings that the dictionary gives me. It would be really convenient if i could scroll from left to right to see all those meanings instead of having to tap into the actual character. I'm thinking this would work best using the CC dictionary. This would let me to stay on the same screen, allowing me to still see the other characters but also giving me the ability to see all the meanings the CC dictionary gives to that specific character without having to leave the character list screen.

Not quite sure if I follow you - so you'd like to see more definitions for a particular Chinese word without leaving the search screen? Have you considered enabling the "Two-panel mode" option in Settings / Dictionary / Overall Interface? (applies automatically when your device is in landscape orientation)

That's correct, i'd like to see more definitions without leaving the search screen. The way i'm suggesting is in portrait mode; so if you type help into the search bar and use 帮 as the example, instead of having to tap into it to see the other CC definitions (we can only see 4 out of 12 from the search screen), it would be nice to be able to scroll right to left to see the remaining definitions.

 

[mikelove]

That's correct, i'd like to see more definitions without leaving the search screen. The way i'm suggesting is in portrait mode; so if you type help into the search bar and use 帮 as the example, instead of having to tap into it to see the other CC definitions (we can only see 4 out of 12 from the search screen), it would be nice to be able to scroll right to left to see the remaining definitions.

How about if we just added an option to make list items longer if there's more text to show? We already have an option to show more lines, but for performance reasons we have to make every item the same size, so shorter entries end up with a lot of white space; however, thanks to some improvements in newer versions of iOS we might now be able to display the full text for the first few item without adding lots of extra white space to the remaining ones.

The swipe gesture is an interesting idea but seems like it has the potential to confuse people - swiping feels like it should get you to something totally different (a list of options, say, or a result from a different dictionary) rather than simply more text from the same entry.

 

[scykei]

The swipe gesture is an interesting idea but seems like it has the potential to confuse people - swiping feels like it should get you to something totally different (a list of options, say, or a result from a different dictionary) rather than simply more text from the same entry.

I completely agree. The worst thing is when developers try to do something that is different from the expected behaviour. I have been completely thrown off a few times in the past because I didn't get what I expected.

 

[Deleted member 4086]

Have you thought about adding some sort of importance weight, perhaps by frequency? Using the previous example, when searching for 'help' quite a few results show up. It would be nice to see how relevant a certain term is for my studies.

 

[mikelove]

Have you thought about adding some sort of importance weight, perhaps by frequency? Using the previous example, when searching for 'help' quite a few results show up. It would be nice to see how relevant a certain term is for my studies.

Already done for our next update.

 

[pprendeville]

Wondering if its possible to have a search feature within Reade. When the character one is looking for is typed in and user hits return it is highlighted everywhere it appears in the text. Reason I'm asking is because when I'm studying flash cards and I'm having difficulty remembering a character I find it good to read in context. Most of the characters I study are from dialogues which I have OCRd into Pleco. For example 挺 is proving a sticky one at the moment and it only has one example sentence in the TL dictionary.

 

[mikelove]

Wondering if its possible to have a search feature within Reade. When the character one is looking for is typed in and user hits return it is highlighted everywhere it appears in the text. Reason I'm asking is because when I'm studying flash cards and I'm having difficulty remembering a character I find it good to read in context. Most of the characters I study are from dialogues which I have OCRd into Pleco. For example 挺 is proving a sticky one at the moment and it only has one example sentence in the TL dictionary.

I believe this is the #3 reader request after PDF and EPUB support - anyway, it's in the works, just not sure if we'll be able to get it into the Big Update since it would also be expected to work with the still-being-worked-on EPUB support.

 

[Shun]

I would like to be able to search for words inside flashcard definitions. Currently, only Headword and Pronunciation searches are possible. If that uses too much CPU, a definition search that's limited to Custom Flashcards would also be very useful for me. It would be a nice English-Chinese or German-Chinese dictionary for all the words I am learning or have already learned. Do you already have something like this planned for the next major release?

 

[mikelove]

I would like to be able to search for words inside flashcard definitions. Currently, only Headword and Pronunciation searches are possible. If that uses too much CPU, a definition search that's limited to Custom Flashcards would also be very useful for me. It would be a nice English-Chinese or German-Chinese dictionary for all the words I am learning or have already learned. Do you already have something like this planned for the next major release?

We've added support for that to user dictionaries, but we're waiting to work out all of the kinks in that before porting it over to the flashcard database as well. (that user dictionary full-text support is already experimentally included in our Android app, but there aren't a whole lot of people using it yet)

 

[moelicious]

Hey, I've got a problem. Maybe there is already a great solution for that somewhere inside Pleco, if not, maybe you could consider taking this problem into account for future releases. I'll try to explain:
I've started studying Chinese with the Integrated Chinese Level 1/Part 1 book, building all the flash cards on my own, for example "张 - classifier for 照片". Later I started using more advanced textbooks and created a new flashcard duplicate (stupid, i know) "张 - classifier for 飞机票, 照片, ...". Same character/pronounciation, slightly more complex definition.
Right now I'm in the process of trying to really understand the massive functions of Pleco and want to use it much more efficient. So I thought about a clean-up of all my hundreds of duplicates.
On my new iPad I had a clean install of Pleco, so I wanted to import all my 7000 flashcards (including 2000+ duplicates) from the iPhone, allowing "merge categories" in the import options screen. It worked fine, however, it won't let me choose exactly which one of my multiple definitions for "张" from my flashcard duplicates I would like to use for the new merged, single, cleaned-up flashcard. Instead (as far as I understand it) it will just overwrite one definition with the next one, sometimes overwriting my newest, most advanced and useful definitions with some really crappy/simple ones from the very beginning of my Chinese studies. Then I turned on "Duplicate cards -> Prompt" in order to get more options when dealing with duplicates in the import/merging process. But Pleco is basically just telling me "I'm going to overwrite your most advanced definition for 张 with a really simple one. You can choose Go, Skip, Stop Import or Create Duplicate". Sure, I can choose "create duplicate" and later go to "Flashcards -> Search Cards -> search duplicate", then go from there and try to clean it up like this. But I think this way is kind of time consuming and not very practical. Any ideas?
It would be great if Pleco asked me during the import process (and also while creating new flashcards from dictionary entries): "You're about to import/create a flashcard with definition for 张 and I've noticed this flashcard already exists in your database, but with a differing definition. Please pick from the following which definition should be used for the new, merged flashcard.".
Hope you can understand what I mean, and maybe it's only me dealing with this scenario. I'm happy for any piece of advice. Besides that, Pleco is really awesome!

 

[mikelove]

It would be great if Pleco asked me during the import process (and also while creating new flashcards from dictionary entries): "You're about to import/create a flashcard with definition for 张 and I've noticed this flashcard already exists in your database, but with a differing definition. Please pick from the following which definition should be used for the new, merged flashcard.".

Reasonable enough request - we actually added an experimental "Update Text" option to the importer on Android as an attempt at a partial solution to this, so at the very least we'll certainly have that included in the big iOS update, but that does not yet support actually choosing which definition to use for a particular card, or, if you have multiple duplicate cards for the same definition, choosing which card to apply the updated definition too, so it's far from a complete solution.

With the current app, though, the best approach I can think of is to reimport your custom definitions as a user dictionary and then remap all of your cards to that - if you update them again in the future, create another new user dictionary and do another remap. That'll keep your scores / category structure / etc totally intact, all you're doing is updating the linked definitions.

 

[gato]

When the "open on reader" option is enabled when there is new content on the pasteboard, the first word should be automatically highlighted. This would save one tap for a dictionary lookup. I don't see a downside.

 

[mikelove]

When the "open on reader" option is enabled when there is new content on the pasteboard, the first word should be automatically highlighted. This would save one tap for a dictionary lookup. I don't see a downside.

Seems potentially confusing for new users, and actually for almost anyone - adds an extra step to get out of this state if you didn't actually want to be in it and makes it less obvious which screen you're in and why you were put there. Also, in many cases you might have a long text clipping in the pasteboard reader in which you don't necessarily want to look up the first word, in which case we're adding extra steps (or at least extra thoughts) compared to tapping on the word you want to look up initially.

This might be reasonable if we add the option for a reader definition palette to be locked to the bottom of the screen (which it appears that we probably will do in spite of my strenuous pedagogical objections) but I don't think it makes sense otherwise.

 

[gato]

Why would new users be confused? The open in reader option is off by default, so new users would not even see it. You said before having it go into reader by default would be too confusing for new users. So in practice, most users probably don't even know this feature exists and never see it.

Are you sure for those who do use this feature, the more common use case is copying over long texts? I use it almost only to look up words.

 

[mikelove]

Why would new users be confused? The open in reader option is off by default, so new users would not even see it. You said before having it go into reader by default would be too confusing for new users. So in practice, most users probably don't even know this feature exists and never see it.

The transition into the popped-up state is not very obvious - my concern is that people get to this screen and it's not really clear how they get out of it. Even an experienced could have a trouble figuring out how they got here (is this a new lookup or an interrupted previous one that was somehow restored?), which is already problematic enough with this feature. (a feature that we took out altogether on Android, incidentally, in favor of a separate reader launch icon, sadly not possible on iOS)

Are you sure for those who do use this feature, the more common use case is copying over long texts? I use it almost only to look up words.

Certainly, but do they always want to look up the first word? If not then we've added an annoying extra step to get to the word they're looking for.

 

[gato]

do they always want to look up the first word? If not then we've added an annoying extra step to get to the word they're looking for.

It is the first word if only one word is copied, which almost the only way I am using it. Are you saying that many are using it to copy sentences?

 

[mikelove]

It is the first word if only one word is copied, which almost the only way I am using it. Are you saying that many are using it to copy sentences?

Yes, actually with one or two words I believe people normally avail themselves of the option to have the clipboard text come up in the dictionary search screen instead. (check the settings - there's an option to set a cutoff # of characters below which it jumps you to the dictionary instead of the reader)

 

[gato]

Oh, I had that set to 0. Didn't realize the pasteboard content would be copied to the dictionary if the pasteboard content is shorter than the cutoff. That achieves the same effect that I wanted then. Thanks!