Official iPad Thread

[radioman]

I could SWEAR I sent this already ... but I think I killed the draft...but anyway...

With regard to the reader, I understand about the crutch. The reason I wanted the text at the bottom was to be out of the way. But I have to say that I would likely depend on that more than I should. I liken this to the situation with pinyin being present. i gravitate to it, so would like a way to just bring the pinyin in and out.

The text bubble is distracting as it is too close to the text and interferes with the context. It makes me feel "confined", rather than being able to look at a the overall text without interference. So I certainly do not want to always see it as I use the arrows to progress through the text.

One idea that I had was that, with the navigation arrows (or some sort of navigation like you find in "Meteor Blitz"), you could progress through the text. The text would be highlighted as you read along, one word highlighted at a time as it does now, but with NO bubble or split display.

HOWEVER...

If you hit a "Show Definition" button, then the definition would be displayed, either as a popup or at the split portion of the screen. In this way, there would be:
1) no "crutch" with a definition always being displayed.
2) no need to move your hand away from the conveniently placed cursor controls at the bottom of the iPad to get the definition.

 

[mikelove]

character - understood. And if we manage to be successful at licensing a classical Chinese dictionary that would be another case where people might need the crutch. (that would also be an impetus for us to finally let you customize the dictionary search order for individual document files)

stephanhodges - the reflow problem isn't just on our end, though, it also affects users - makes it hard to find your place once you go back to the "normal" text size. It almost seems like we'd be better off adding font size controls in a toolbar and a pinch-zoom option that didn't cause a reflow.

radioman - game-like scrolling controls are a very interesting idea, actually; variable-speed / "analog" scrolling could be very useful. I also like the "show definition" idea - we could open up the split-screen definition area when you tapped that button (and leave it open until you closed it, maybe).

 

[radioman]

And just a note on reflow/font sizing that the iBooks Font sizing method seems pretty logical. Utilization of that approach would at least be familiar to anyone using iBooks. It just resizes everything and flows it accordingly. I do not believe they do anything fancy with regard to cursor positioning so after resizing, you might be in a different place than when you started.

 

[mikelove]

It's logical for reading books in English, but I tend to think a big part of the reason for pinch-zooming in Pleco's reader would be to get a better look at a particular character / couple of characters that you can't make out clearly, in which case a temporary zoom without a reflow would be best; is there any other reason why people are interested in zooming in besides that?

 

[radioman]

I personally would use the pinch and zoom for simply setting overall font size. In this way, it would be similar to the way that the font resizing is used for English applications.

 

[stephanhodges]

I'd say (not yet having an iPad) that if you want "temporary magnification" that you implement it as a magnifying glass and just drag it around, etc. Perhaps it could "dock" as a small icon when not in use (put back on the shelf, etc).

Pinch/zoom just seems more natural as a way to change the entire screen's "size", i.e. resizing the letters. I'd be expecting it to stay that way unless I changed it back, etc. Just my $.02... it just seems more of a natural extension of that metaphor that way...

All said, however, I AM going to get an iPad, but perhaps not until end of summer, or (judging how Apple does things), perhaps the second generation one next spring...

 

[character]

As long as there's a way to resize/reflow text, IMO there's no need to for it to be via pinch-zoom. Having it in a "view settings" popover would be nice, for example. I'm finding the fewer gestures the better, personally, as when I intend one gesture it sometimes gets misinterpreted as a different one. Resizing/reflowing text isn't something one is going to be doing many times per document, so IMO having it "immediately" available all the time via pinch-zoom isn't as critical as having the scroll gesture always correctly interpreted, for ex.

 

[mikelove]

I'm iffy on the need for pinch-zoom gestures in general too, given that that magnify-a-few-characters thing I mentioned can already be done with the official character magnification function, and that there may be more critical gesture-related needs to address (moving to the next / previous word, e.g.) - a simple font toolbar a la most of the big iPhone ebook readers might make more sense.

 

[radioman]

Chiming in again, Thinking about this more, I don't think I necessarily need pinch and zoom. I continue to think that the way iBooks implemented text resizing is intuitive and accessible.

 

[numble]

Appears to be a bug when using the reader within an entry while the HWR is up:

Also, my prior complaint about the arrow buttons in the reader are when they arrows are on the bottom, the "hit" area is much larger when moved to the top. I think I would prefer bottom to top, but a swipe method might be preferable to both, since I tend to hold the iPad in different orientations. I also find it slightly annoying that the + button is on the opposite side of the arrow keys.

 

[mikelove]

numble - yeah, already had a few reports of this - should be fixed in the much-simpler-than-2.1.1 2.1.2 update, which we plan to submit to Apple as soon as we're satisfied that there aren't any brand new major bugs on OS 4 or the new iPhone 4 that we haven't already dealt with. In the meantime, the problem will go away if you turn off "Show bottom bar during input" in Settings / Dictionary / Overall Interface.

As an alternative to swiping, how would it be if we simply made the left / right quarter of the screen tappable as previous / next buttons when the popup reader is open? (outside of the parts of those areas covered by the reader bubble) The only wrinkle is that if you go through several lines' worth of text, the bubble might eventually reposition itself in the area on the screen where your finger alighted to start tapping... perhaps we could set a period of, say, half a second such that if you tap again within that time, even if your tap was within the bubble it'll be interpreted as a scroll gesture. Or we could reposition the scroll up / down / switch dictionary buttons at the bottom of the bubble in the center of the screen and make the entire left / right tappable.

 

[numble]

I'm no UI expert, but sure--that might work? I just feel that something that might be constantly "struck" should have a larger hit area or something that is context sensitive, and not feel like I'm reaching across the screen. I do sometimes hit the next arrow more than I probably should, but on the iPad, even though it feels like I'm reaching across, it's still better than poking at the individual characters.

I think the setup actually works great for the iPhone--with the phone in my hand, I can touch most all parts of the screen with my thumb, so it's a non-issue from moving my thumb between the next arrow and + arrow or any other things on the screen, from individual words, to the expand/decrease arrows. On the iPad, I'm moving my entire hand back and forth, and that feels more inefficient.

 

[radioman]

Sorry, know i am being repetitive here Just reiterating my interest on this one. i like the idea of keeping my hand in one place, say the right hand just running a controller of arrows some how to move me forward highllighting text as i move along - and hitting a Dictionary D button next to the arrows/cursor device would either bring up or update a split screen configuration or optional bubble. Push the D again and it disappears.

 

[mikelove]

numble - well we'll see how it feels here, maybe try it as an experimental off-by-default option in 2.1.2 and get some feedback that way.

radioman - are you not able to reach both of the arrows in the current reader configuration, or do you just not like where they're located? We were sort-of aiming for that with the existing system (which is why the arrows aren't evenly spaced, and why there are options in Settings to swap top-bottom and left-right). A button to toggle the new dictionary "palette" remains likely for 2.2 though.

 

[radioman]

The positioning of the arrows (lower right for me right now) seems fine. I think the only semi-complaint that I have is that the arrows/toolbar might be better sized to the size of an icon in height. Right now I think the arrows are about half that height.

radioman - are you not able to reach both of the arrows in the current reader configuration, or do you just not like where they're located? We were sort-of aiming for that with the existing system (which is why the arrows aren't evenly spaced, and why there are options in Settings to swap top-bottom and left-right). A button to toggle the new dictionary "palette" remains likely for 2.2 though.

 

[mikelove]

Little tricky to redesign our icons in an unlimited number of sizes, but good point, they do look kind of small in there now.

 

[stephanhodges]

One option would be to design some arrows / buttons as characters in a special font, or perhaps just add them into a font you're using, if that's possible.

Little tricky to redesign our icons in an unlimited number of sizes, but good point, they do look kind of small in there now.

 

[mikelove]

Actually it turns out the arrows are vector graphics - I'd forgotten that - so they'd be relatively easy to scale to a few more sizes. Anyway even zoomed I suppose they'd look better than lost little icons in the middle of a big void...

 

[character]

Mike, would you care to talk about what you're working on for the next release for the iPad? Dual-pane reader? Licensed content deals? Integrated Chinese cross-licensing? AI-driven Chinese tutor? Subliminal audio for learning while one sleeps?

:wink:

 

[mikelove]

For 2.2, mostly UI stuff - dual-pane reader, two-column settings screens, > / 字 / links coming up in popup windows instead of taking up the whole screen, etc. We're playing around with a new technique for Live Mode which would work in PDF / Office / RTF documents as well as in web pages but we're not sure if we'll ever get it working well enough to ship. (some would argue that Live Mode doesn't work well enough as-is...)