October 1st

[mikelove]

Oops, didn't even notice ipsi's post there. Sorry about that...

Full-width punctuation will be usable everywhere, yes; we may not get all of the data files switched over to it right away, but in general I agree that half-width punctuation marks look silly when surrounded by Chinese text.

I agree that we should err on the side of caution with the beta expiration dates, but if we're planning a new beta every month or so then a four month window seems like it should be pretty safe.

And yes, traditional characters should appear just about everywhere in the finished version, though since the two new dictionaries were originally developed in simplified characters only (and the 21st Century dictionary is really freakin' huge) we may not be able to hand-check all of the traditional character conversions and you may run into the occasional glitch / mis-converted character; we'll try to gradually remedy this in post-2.0 releases. The stroke order diagrams do indeed support both character sets, though the font/style for simplified and traditional characters differs.

 

[ipsi]

Fair enough. I'm sure you have a lot on your mind right now

Yay! Full-width punctuation!

I hadn't realised that you were planning on coming out with Betas that often. If that's the case, then yeah, a four month window should be perfectly fine (if not, just release Beta 1.1, with a new expiry date...)

Are you having the computer do as much work as possible, and then only checking by hand the ones where there's a one-to-many mapping from S to T? I'm not fussed on the font for the stroke order diagrams, just so long as it is nice and clear.

 

[mikelove]

Beta 3 may not come out until after Thanksgiving (11/22 for you non-Yanks), actually, since the goal for that is to have the software in a completely final state features-wise, but in the case of Beta 2 at least, there will likely be at least a couple of showstopper bugs / conflicts we're not aware of in Beta 1 which will prevent some people from even using the beta at all until we fix them, so we'd like to get those corrected and a second beta out ASAP. Which means any features missing in Beta 1 will probably still be missing in Beta 2, but the features that are there should be relatively stable.

And yes, we've adopted that approach with our other dictionary conversions and we'll be using it with this one too; even checking those few characters can be very time-consuming, though.

 

[gato]

See this thread on Simplified-Traditional conversion:
http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?t=6086
Thoughts on implementing 簡體字 <---> 繁體字 conversion system

 

[Aunty]

... after Thanksgiving (11/22 for you non-Yanks), ...

Phew, thanks for that Mike. Since one of the numbers is bigger than 12, I see you mean 22/11. :twisted:
I get so confused with USA dates.

For the sake of the stats, I'll raise my hand and say yes I use only traditional characters, that's all I'll need to know, and I don't want to encounter simplified until around the middle of next year when my knowledge will be sufficient to learn both without confusion. So yes Mike, all your hard work converting this stuff to traditional is very much appreciated!

 

[mikelove]

gato - thanks; it's a little trickier in dictionaries, though, since often the only way to know which traditional character is the correct one is to look at the English headword (or another part of the definition).

Aunty - That's actually always been a pet peeve of mine - why is it that so much of the world insists on using day/month/year format? It's completely backwards... with time, pretty much everyone uses hours:minutes:seconds, and of course with numbers in general we always put the largest/most significant digit first (big endian in computer parlance), but for some reason with dates people start with the day and end with the year. The only other place I can think of where we do that is in mailing addresses, where the name/suite comes first and the country comes last, but even that's done in the opposite order in some places (e.g. China).

Now of course in the US we use the equally wacky month/day/year format, but at least with that the month and day are still in the correct order - putting days before months just feels downright silly to me.

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Yeah, I agree with you on this one Mike. China is, in my opinion going in the right direction by putting the significant/most important information first. But I have to admit that I never did get used to the year/month/day format while in China, though it was due to my backwards U.S. inculturation. Ha ha ha!

But then again the U.S. is still using the wacky English system of measurements when most of the world, including those who developed the English system of measurements, has switched over to the international metric system. Wouldn't it just be easier if our kids could think of there being 1000ml in a L then have to guess how many ounces, cups, pints or quarts are in a gallon? Or what about 5280 feet in a mile, 12 inches in a foot and 16 sixteenths in an inch? It just seems ridiculous to me, and seems like it puts our kids at a disadvantage when it comes to mathematics, because even simple measurements of volume, distance and weight are not obvious or straightforward here like they are in so much of the rest of the world (even the majority of the underdeveloped countries use a better system of measurements then we do in the United States). Rant . . . rant . . . rant . . . rave . . . rave . . . rave . . .

Anyway, today's date should be 2007/09/22, right?

Cheers!

Darrol

 

[Aunty]

Actually, today is 2007-09-23 in the international format.
In case anyone still can't work it out, I'll give you a hint: it's early Spring now.

I'm looking forward to using PlecoDict a lot during my Summer holidays which start 6/1 next year, only a few days after the beta period is due to finish.

One has to be especially careful when making promises plans and reports, since each member of your audience is likely to assume you are speaking to them in their language, and might not even be aware that other countries have these differences.

 

[mattdove]

...But then again the U.S. is still using the wacky English system of measurements when most of the world, including those who developed the English system of measurements, has switched over to the international metric system....

Actually, they still use miles per hour as opposed to kph in the UK (though they are in the process of metrication).

mattdove

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Thanks Matt,

I had heard that they haven't completely switched over. Am I correct in believing that they have switched over most other forms of measurement, for example volume, weight, and distance (not speed)?

 

[Shadowdh]

Hairyleprechaun you are pretty much correct... the evil dictators of the wannabe superstate otherwise known as the EU have forced this change upon us... we mostly, there has been resistance groups who have I believe had limited success in getting the imperial and metric to be allowed to be displayed side by side... speed is still in MPH (probably because it would cost the government and not the people to change all the signs... therefore they allowed that to remain) cant remember off hand about distance... I think its miles but I could be wrong... at least whenever I get directions or use the aa.com maps its all in miles... plus we always talk about so and so place being x miles from well the pub usually... (the pub is a standard unit of reference for anyone giving directions)... (please not tongue in cheek about the evil dictators thing...)

 

[daniu]

Hi!

Am I just thinking that way or is this thread really going quite off topic?

regards Daniel

 

[daniu]

Re:

daniu - there certainly might be something a few days early, the documentation/website work is going to take a week or so so if we can find a way to efficiently get people their 2.0 keyfiles we might be able to release something with the same code as Beta 1 but with no manual and none of the new paid upgrades a couple of days before 10/1. (with no e-mail announcement, and released mainly to ensure that there isn't some complete showstopper bug that we're unaware of)

ok - that is not a promise ... but ... how is it?

Daniel

 

[mikelove]

Not going to happen, unfortunately, thanks to that "efficiently get people their 2.0 keyfiles" bit - we could post a demo version on Friday but the website keyfile generator won't be working until Monday so there's not much of a point. (and posting it early for the sake of people with slow connections is a bad idea just in case we discover and fix some keyfile-related bug over the weekend)

 

[daniu]

OK ok ... then I am going to wait till wednesday.
Since that is our "national day" (not sure if we germans are allowed to have something like that ) I got plenty of time to play with it ...

regards
Daniel

 

[sfrrr]

Aha. It was just your little joke--the new dictionaries and upgraded flashcard applets, the far-less corruptible user dictionaries. Fine. Just fine. Well, I, for one, yan4 fan2le. I'm outa here.


On the other hand, um, when do you think the keyfile thing will work or will we have to wait until you get back from vacation?

Still hoping after all these years...

Sandra

 

[mikelove]

No, no, no, it just won't be working before the deadline. That's all. The keyfile stuff should be working fine on Monday.

 

[sfrrr]

All our waiting will soon be over!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, if you're on vacation for as month after the first beta release, are we on our own vis a vis reporting bugs, demanding new features, and castigating the developer?

Thanks for the good news.

Sandra

 

[mikelove]

Actually I trimmed the vacation down to just a few weeks, and I'm not leaving until the end of October, and since most of the places where I'm going are incredibly boring at night I'm probably still going to be fixing bugs. So there'll be a Beta 2 out before I go and likely a Beta 3 within a week or two after I get back.

(moved the real vacation to March, by which point we'll probably be at 2.0.1 or 2.0.2)

 

[sfrrr]

Mike--sorry you had to change your vacation plans. But glad you'll be around during the most trying (as it were) times of the first and second betas. Where are you going that has boring nights?

Sandra