iPhone Feature Requests

[rypervenche]

Hi there Mike,

I just bought the Handwriting Recognizer tonight and I must say that I love it. I have a request to offer the HWR as a tool outside of Pleco and as a normal keyboard. Is there any chance that that could become a reality? If not, is there any chance on jailbroken iPhones through Cydia or something? I would love to use this tool in any environment/window and I know that all of my Chinese teachers would get it, (they all use the normal HWR to type on their iPhones).

 

[mikelove]

Possibly, but offering a separate jailbreak version of our app is very dicey in terms of keeping Apple happy. And at this point it's even kind of dicey time-investment-wise, with it getting more and more likely that iPhone OS 4.0 will support multitasking and (hopefully along with it) third-party IMEs - there are lots of other uses for this (voice recognition, alternate keyboards, etc), and it's something Android does (though that's partly due to the paucity of input methods built into Android), so it stands to reason Apple would want to add it officially too.

 

[gato]

I just bought the Handwriting Recognizer tonight and I must say that I love it. I have a request to offer the HWR as a tool outside of Pleco and as a normal keyboard

iPhone's built-in Chinese handwriting recognition IME is pretty good. It recognizes cursive writing quite well. I think it's licensed by Apple from Hanwang, the same developer Pleco licenses from.

 

[mikelove]

It's not based on Hanwang, sadly, at least it doesn't seem to be - there was a rumor for a while that it was, but based on our examination of how it handles certain border cases （已／己 for example) - kind of a "signature" of a particular handwriting algorithm - it seems like it's more likely based on Apple's old Advanced Chinese Input Suite project from the late '90s. Though of course there's no way to know for certain about that...

 

[ConfuciusTse]

So we'd be adding some sort of a thick border around the entry list in the middle of the transparent handwriting screen? I'm worried that might cover up useful text, though - would it maybe help if we just added the option for a button to quickly toggle transparent handwriting on and off?

No, not "in the middle" actually, just around the border of the handwriting area, nor even "thick". So currently, I just write a big "kou" (square) to demonstrate where people are allowed to write. Anything outside of the square would trigger unintended consequences (of course I delete it before they start writing). That's what I would want in an attractive, permanent way. Only thick enough so it would stand out enough when I say "Please keep your writing within that square."

 

[mikelove]

Ah, makes sense. Should be an extremely easy feature to implement, so we'll see what we can do about it in a future release - maybe along with the long-awaited transparent handwriting speed boost / lagginess decrease we've been working on.

 

[Shenzeng]

Hey Mike,

First of all, great app! I like how it's possible to compare the output from the different dictionaries, and how it's possible to have many customisations. I'm looking forward to the flashcard option! What I was wondering for the flashcard function (forgive me if it has been mentioned before in the thread, it was quite lengthy..), is it possible to add own flashcard entries, which are not based on the dictionaries? In previous flashcard apps I used I sometimes couldn't add an entry (of for example sayings) because it wasn't in the dictionary. Obviously, I still want to study these words/sayings. If it would be possible to add own entries it would really be great!

 

[mikelove]

Yes; there are actually two different ways to do that. You can add a new entry to a user-created dictionary on your device and then link a flashcard to that new dictionary entry, or you can create a standalone flashcard that carries its own definition and doesn't link to a dictionary at all.

 

[character]

This may be a dupe: how about a way to search for settings? Each setting could have a set of keywords associated with it, so users won't have to match the exact setting name.

 

[radioman]

Yeah, just another vote for this. I think on a big computer, Chinese locals (and myself I guess...) would like to type Pinyin. But it seems to be natural for some (maybe because the keyboard is NOT natural on the iPhone for the unaccustomed... ) to just write it using HWR.

Hi there Mike,

I just bought the Handwriting Recognizer tonight and I must say that I love it. I have a request to offer the HWR as a tool outside of Pleco and as a normal keyboard. Is there any chance that that could become a reality? If not, is there any chance on jailbroken iPhones through Cydia or something? I would love to use this tool in any environment/window and I know that all of my Chinese teachers would get it, (they all use the normal HWR to type on their iPhones).

 

[mikelove]

It doesn't look like they'll be adding support for third-party input methods officially in 4.0, and I'm wary that doing a jailbreak app might get us in hot water with Apple (not to mention the fact that it's a bit easier to pirate that way, definitely an issue when you're dealing with something with so much appeal for the Chinese market), so at least for now we're probably stuck with it in-app. We do plan to expand the built-in text editing functions in a future release, though, particularly since it's getting easier and easier to integrate custom-developed input methods with Apple's text handling controls inside of an app, so combine that with other OS 4.0 features like multitasking / in-app composition of SMSes and you might be able to get something pretty close to a full-blown input system.

 

[numble]

Here are two features I am interested in if I decide to migrate to doing flashcards on Pleco instead of Anki:

Progress statistics displayed textually and graphically:

 

[mikelove]

Certainly doable - we've already got most of the relevant data tracked, about the only thing we can't generate from statistics we already keep is that past Reps graph since we don't keep a record of card review times before the most recent one. (flashcard files would be a lot bigger if we did, and we don't have the luxury of a desktop to store them on)

 

[taijidan]

I'd also like to see the stats features requested by numble.

 

[smeenz]

Translating sentences, and stroke-by-stroke undo in HWR

Hi,

When entering a multi-character sentence in chinese, say a sign that I've seen or similar, it's hard to know where the word breaks are, however pleco knows, and only translates as far as it can, ignoring any further characters.

For example, if I enter 你好你好吗, pleco will only translate the first 你好, and essentially ignore the rest of the line. In order to translate the remaining characters, I have to position the cursor after the part that it did understand, and then backspace those characters, hit Done. It then translates 你好吗. In a longer sentence this can be very time consuming.

What would be absolutely wonderful is left and right buttons, that allow you to move left and right between phrases, so after showing the translation for 你好, I would press one button and have it highlight and translate 你好吗.

A second thing I've noticed, (after upgrading from the palm version), is that when using HWR, the ipod version doesn't seem to be an undo stroke function like the palm did, so if I make a mistake with a stroke, I have to erase the whole character and start again. I tried the intuitive method of shaking the ipod, and it paused then came up with a system message saying "Nothing to undo". Is there a way to erase stroke by stroke like there was on the palm ?

 

[numble]

Re: Translating sentences, and stroke-by-stroke undo in HWR

A second thing I've noticed, (after upgrading from the palm version), is that when using HWR, the ipod version doesn't seem to be an undo stroke function like the palm did, so if I make a mistake with a stroke, I have to erase the whole character and start again. I tried the intuitive method of shaking the ipod, and it paused then came up with a system message saying "Nothing to undo". Is there a way to erase stroke by stroke like there was on the palm ?

It's buried within settings somewhere:
http://www.pleco.com/ipmanual/settings.html

Search for "Undo when drawing."

 

[smeenz]

Re: Translating sentences, and stroke-by-stroke undo in HWR

It's buried within settings somewhere:
http://www.pleco.com/ipmanual/settings.html

Search for "Undo when drawing."

Cheers !

 

[scorpiojing]

I personally would like to see the following on the iPhone Pleco:

1. Classical Chinese dictionary with modern Chinese definitions
2. Idiom dictionary with explanations of the idiom (background story)

 

[hairyleprechaun]

I know I have said this before, but I need to say it again to keep the fire lit... Please count me in for those two dictionary requests, especially for a SEPARATE Chinese idioms dictionary to make it easy to browse through idioms in succession and for the background story that many idioms have.

Since this time I chose not to opt in on the beta test of the Flashcard module, I am hoping they will be coming out soon. Do you feel that you are getting closer to announcing a release date yet Mike?

Regards,

Darrol

 

[mikelove]

smeenz - we're actually planning to deal with this problem by splitting up long words like that into multiple blocks of search results (each with their own section header, just like in many other lists of things on iPhone). Shouldn't really have any impact on performance - database searches are incredibly fast, it takes Pleco far longer to draw a list of search results on the screen than it does to generate that list of results - and it'll make it very easy to scroll through things like this.

One alternative a lot of people find useful right now is to use the handwriting recognizer with a "transparent" background - Settings / Panels / Handwriting Interface / Background. That way, you can see the search results emerge behind the thing you're writing, so you could stop after that second 你 fails to add any new results. (the reason this isn't on by default is that it makes the handwriting recognizer input a big laggy, at least on the original iPhone / iPhone 3G)

scoripiojing - lots of requests for both of those things; however, since they'd both be Chinese-to-Chinese titles (Chinese-English idiom dictionaries being few and far between) we're a bit worried about whether they'd sell enough to justify the license cost. So we need to find a publisher who not only offers a good-quality Classical or Idiom dictionary but is not going to demand a gigantic up-front royalty advance.

hairyleprechaun - it's in Apple's hands now, so the release date will be whenever they decide to approve it