Palm webOS and Pleco
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Great! A native version of Pleco for webOS isn't really possible with webOS' current JavaScript-only development environment (at least not unless it's server-based and the Pleco app just serves as a front-end), but there's certainly hope that Palm might support native / binary application development in the future, which would make Pleco for webOS a definite possibility.
Oh it's certainly not impossible, in fact per http://www.precentral.net/palm-pre-homebrew-31-apps-official-app-catalog-30 there are already more unofficial native apps for Pre than there are official non-native ones. We can't afford to develop a version of Pleco for an unofficial environment like that, but the potential is definitely there anyway.
Dr Grace / Mike
I use Pleco on a Windows Mobile Palm Treo 750v, but it is dying (not pleco, the phone).
I love the look of the Pre, and the sound of WebOS, but have some hesitations. Could you be so kind as to address the below:
1. Chinese on the Pre - I use CE Star for Pinyin input, what is there for the Pre/WebOS? Is it good, fast, reliable?
2. Pleco on the Pre - are there any differences with Pleco on the Pre compared to a WM phone?
3. Pleco via Classic - how much time does it take to launch Pleco this way? How many clicks to start it? How is the speed once running? Can you run other programs at the same time?
4. Mike - will future versions 2.01 and up, be available on the Pre? for at least two years?
5. Any other overall comparisons between a WM and WebOS phone that should sway my decision one way or the other?
If it doesn't sway me, I guess I will have to wait for a new external or bottom sliding keypad (I don't like changing from vertical to horizontal for sideways slide out keypads) or this one in November http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/24/hp-t ... -obsidian/ or a cheaper second had Pro, or the future HTC device that I dream about but they haven't announced
Thanks so much.
I use Pleco on a Windows Mobile Palm Treo 750v, but it is dying (not pleco, the phone).
I love the look of the Pre, and the sound of WebOS, but have some hesitations. Could you be so kind as to address the below:
1. Chinese on the Pre - I use CE Star for Pinyin input, what is there for the Pre/WebOS? Is it good, fast, reliable?
2. Pleco on the Pre - are there any differences with Pleco on the Pre compared to a WM phone?
3. Pleco via Classic - how much time does it take to launch Pleco this way? How many clicks to start it? How is the speed once running? Can you run other programs at the same time?
4. Mike - will future versions 2.01 and up, be available on the Pre? for at least two years?
5. Any other overall comparisons between a WM and WebOS phone that should sway my decision one way or the other?
If it doesn't sway me, I guess I will have to wait for a new external or bottom sliding keypad (I don't like changing from vertical to horizontal for sideways slide out keypads) or this one in November http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/24/hp-t ... -obsidian/ or a cheaper second had Pro, or the future HTC device that I dream about but they haven't announced
Thanks so much.
I've never used WM so I can't answer most of those questions, but:
3. If Classic isn't running yet and you have it in your quicklaunch bar like I do, it takes two taps to launch. Total launch time is roughly 10 seconds, of which about 8 seconds is Classic's launch time. If Classic is already running, it's still two taps but only a couple seconds for Pleco to start up. If Classic is already running Pleco, then it's one tap and a second or so to wait for the task-switching animation. You can run other Pre apps at the same time but not other PalmOS apps (i.e., webOS lets you launch multiple apps but Classic doesn't because PalmOS doesn't.)
3. If Classic isn't running yet and you have it in your quicklaunch bar like I do, it takes two taps to launch. Total launch time is roughly 10 seconds, of which about 8 seconds is Classic's launch time. If Classic is already running, it's still two taps but only a couple seconds for Pleco to start up. If Classic is already running Pleco, then it's one tap and a second or so to wait for the task-switching animation. You can run other Pre apps at the same time but not other PalmOS apps (i.e., webOS lets you launch multiple apps but Classic doesn't because PalmOS doesn't.)
Based on what you wrote, I'd recommend that you stick with WM. With WebOS, you'd have to put up with the general immaturity of the system, which means some obviously missing functions and options. There's no Chinese input, and you can't even use a web-based Chinese input method because there's no way to copy from a website. You can only copy and paste inside input fields. However, there are people working on this. There are a few people in Hong Kong, I believe, who have gotten hold of a Pre and are hacking its Linux internals. However, the app catalog has still not been opened up to more than a few developers, and the SDK has only recently been released to the public.
Of course, the Pre has much to recommend it if you can live with its (hopefully temporary) shortcomings. As I wrote above, Pleco works pretty well inside Classic. However, Classic itself is a CPU- and battery-hog and relatively unstable. And because Classic has access to the underpinnings of WebOS in a way other apps don't yet, its crashes can actually freeze/reset the device. Thus, I don't keep it running all the time. So there is a bit of a wait each time I have to load Classic to run Pleco.
Of course, the Pre has much to recommend it if you can live with its (hopefully temporary) shortcomings. As I wrote above, Pleco works pretty well inside Classic. However, Classic itself is a CPU- and battery-hog and relatively unstable. And because Classic has access to the underpinnings of WebOS in a way other apps don't yet, its crashes can actually freeze/reset the device. Thus, I don't keep it running all the time. So there is a bit of a wait each time I have to load Classic to run Pleco.
While I'm here, a few observations after running Pleco on the Pre for a little while, in no particular order. Executive summary: Pleco still good, finger input bad.
Drawing complex characters with a finger on a small screen is hard. Maybe it's just my poor manual dexterity but I go from having handwriting that always evokes, "Wow, I wish my handwriting looked that good" reactions from Chinese people (stylus or pen) to writing like a drunk five-year-old finger-painting in an earthquake. With a pen you can use just the fine muscles in your hand to move the tip both vertically and laterally over a range that covers a significant portion of the screen. With a fingertip you have a limited amount of vertical movement and an even more limited amount of lateral movement before you have to use your much less precise arm muscles to move the "cursor."
That said, the handwriting recognizer usually manages to figure out my illegible scrawls, so it's not quite as bad as I'm making it sound, but I think few people will bother turning on the sketchbox in the flashcard preferences. I used to use that to actually practice my handwriting but there's no chance of that with finger input.
The small sketchbox input mode on the main UI screen is basically useless; the area is far too small to write anything beyond stuff like "人“ or "口". I wish I could remove it from the list of input modes that Pleco cycles through. I do, however, find myself using the full-screen handwriting recognizer box a lot more than I ever did on the Treo; the fact that it will often show the character I want in its list of candidates before I'm finished writing is a real godsend since I can often completely skip trying to write the intricate parts of a character. The nice large font in the candidate list makes it easier to select the correct one than it is on the main page's small list of candidates.
One more on handwriting: sometimes when I've dragged my finger a short distance on the screen to draw a stroke, it shows up as a single pixel on the screen. Usually only happens for short strokes. The handwriting recognizer usually copes with that okay, though.
On a similar note, hitting some of the Palm controls with a finger is sometimes a bit frustrating. For example, when I can't make the recognizer recognize a character, I switch to radical input, but hitting the up and down arrows on the stroke-count menu -- or for that matter, hitting the entry in that menu that you intended to -- is next to impossible because the target area is so small.
There is no keyboard shortcut (that I can find) for switching Classic's keyboard from text-entry mode to "emulate the Palm hardware buttons" mode; you have to hit a little icon in the bottom corners of the Classic display. This is actually pretty difficult to do if there are any notification icons in the notification bar because the bar covers up about 75% of the target area of that corner. (That's Classic's fault, not Pleco's, but given how imprecise finger-based input is, I find myself wanting to switch back and forth between input modes a lot so I can use the cursor buttons to navigate the UI.)
If you enable sound, performance is noticeably slower even when no sound is playing. (Again, a Classic issue, not a Pleco issue.)
I guess that's about it. Pleco is still my most-used mobile app but I do find myself using it a bit differently than I used to, almost all because of the imprecision of fingertip input.
Drawing complex characters with a finger on a small screen is hard. Maybe it's just my poor manual dexterity but I go from having handwriting that always evokes, "Wow, I wish my handwriting looked that good" reactions from Chinese people (stylus or pen) to writing like a drunk five-year-old finger-painting in an earthquake. With a pen you can use just the fine muscles in your hand to move the tip both vertically and laterally over a range that covers a significant portion of the screen. With a fingertip you have a limited amount of vertical movement and an even more limited amount of lateral movement before you have to use your much less precise arm muscles to move the "cursor."
That said, the handwriting recognizer usually manages to figure out my illegible scrawls, so it's not quite as bad as I'm making it sound, but I think few people will bother turning on the sketchbox in the flashcard preferences. I used to use that to actually practice my handwriting but there's no chance of that with finger input.
The small sketchbox input mode on the main UI screen is basically useless; the area is far too small to write anything beyond stuff like "人“ or "口". I wish I could remove it from the list of input modes that Pleco cycles through. I do, however, find myself using the full-screen handwriting recognizer box a lot more than I ever did on the Treo; the fact that it will often show the character I want in its list of candidates before I'm finished writing is a real godsend since I can often completely skip trying to write the intricate parts of a character. The nice large font in the candidate list makes it easier to select the correct one than it is on the main page's small list of candidates.
One more on handwriting: sometimes when I've dragged my finger a short distance on the screen to draw a stroke, it shows up as a single pixel on the screen. Usually only happens for short strokes. The handwriting recognizer usually copes with that okay, though.
On a similar note, hitting some of the Palm controls with a finger is sometimes a bit frustrating. For example, when I can't make the recognizer recognize a character, I switch to radical input, but hitting the up and down arrows on the stroke-count menu -- or for that matter, hitting the entry in that menu that you intended to -- is next to impossible because the target area is so small.
There is no keyboard shortcut (that I can find) for switching Classic's keyboard from text-entry mode to "emulate the Palm hardware buttons" mode; you have to hit a little icon in the bottom corners of the Classic display. This is actually pretty difficult to do if there are any notification icons in the notification bar because the bar covers up about 75% of the target area of that corner. (That's Classic's fault, not Pleco's, but given how imprecise finger-based input is, I find myself wanting to switch back and forth between input modes a lot so I can use the cursor buttons to navigate the UI.)
If you enable sound, performance is noticeably slower even when no sound is playing. (Again, a Classic issue, not a Pleco issue.)
I guess that's about it. Pleco is still my most-used mobile app but I do find myself using it a bit differently than I used to, almost all because of the imprecision of fingertip input.
Looks like the only unanswered question here is #4, so on that: I can't make any promises at this point about how long we'll keep supporting Palm OS; there are a number of features that we'd really like to implement which we can't until we drop Palm OS support, so we'd have to see some very significant sales materialize on the Pre / webOS for us to be able to continue developing the Palm OS version of Pleco past 2.1 or so.
On koreth's comment about handwriting input: we've literally tried every possible way of extracting pen movements from the screen without getting any more dots than we do now, so it seems like the awkwardness / lack of quick tracking of pen movements is due to something inherent in Classic or webOS rather than something Pleco-specific. We've actually written MotionApps about this but nobody's bothered to respond to us as yet. Scroll arrows at least can be helped by pinch-zooming, though we eventually do need to do something to make those easier too.
One other platform possibility might be running Pleco on a Symbian phone via the StyleTap emulator - most (all?) Symbian phones with touchscreens use resistive / stylus-driven technology like Palm/WM rather than capacitive / finger-driven technology like the Pre and iPhone, so I think handwriting at least would be considerably better on those. (StyleTap also seems to outdo MotionApps somewhat on the customer-service front, though MotionApps may be having difficulty with that lately due to the massive surge of interest in Classic)
On koreth's comment about handwriting input: we've literally tried every possible way of extracting pen movements from the screen without getting any more dots than we do now, so it seems like the awkwardness / lack of quick tracking of pen movements is due to something inherent in Classic or webOS rather than something Pleco-specific. We've actually written MotionApps about this but nobody's bothered to respond to us as yet. Scroll arrows at least can be helped by pinch-zooming, though we eventually do need to do something to make those easier too.
One other platform possibility might be running Pleco on a Symbian phone via the StyleTap emulator - most (all?) Symbian phones with touchscreens use resistive / stylus-driven technology like Palm/WM rather than capacitive / finger-driven technology like the Pre and iPhone, so I think handwriting at least would be considerably better on those. (StyleTap also seems to outdo MotionApps somewhat on the customer-service front, though MotionApps may be having difficulty with that lately due to the massive surge of interest in Classic)
I've just seen the preview videos for the iPhone app, and all I can say is Wow!
Based on the lack of low-level access in the Pre's SDK, I'd imagine that your producing a Pre version of Pleco soon is not likely.
Just for Pleco, I'm tempted to buy an iTouch (although I hate to have to carry 2 devices), or if the iPhone ever comes to Sprint or Verizon, I might even switch from the Pre. Would you consider giving us a "crossgrade" discount if we already have a PalmOS Pleco license (including dictionaries)?
Based on the lack of low-level access in the Pre's SDK, I'd imagine that your producing a Pre version of Pleco soon is not likely.
Just for Pleco, I'm tempted to buy an iTouch (although I hate to have to carry 2 devices), or if the iPhone ever comes to Sprint or Verizon, I might even switch from the Pre. Would you consider giving us a "crossgrade" discount if we already have a PalmOS Pleco license (including dictionaries)?
A Pre-native version might be a while off, but you never know - Palm's done a lot of other unorthodox things with Pre, they could get native development working sooner than anyone expects. I'm very pleased that they're allowing developers to load apps independently through a web browser without any sort of Palm approval / commission; I'm keeping my fingers crossed that with all 5 other major smartphone platorms now allowing some sort of loading of apps outside of the manufacturer's store Apple might feel pressure to do so as well.
And we're certainly hoping to offer a good upgrade path for iPhone - we just won't know about that until after it's been submitted to / approved by Apple, they could always decide to force us to do everything through iTunes.
And we're certainly hoping to offer a good upgrade path for iPhone - we just won't know about that until after it's been submitted to / approved by Apple, they could always decide to force us to do everything through iTunes.
You mean within Classic, or as a potential native app? For the PalmOS app within Classic, the most annoying thing is that it's hard to tap on very small characters, e.g. in the definition window for the English-Chinese dictionaries, and even harder to select a group of two characters so they can be moved to the query line. Scrolling is the next most annoying thing, and of course resizing the definition window, as Benzhen noted. Character input is not the best, but it's been usable. I guess, from what you've written, that the drawing response can't be improved much within Classic. Of course, Classic itself is a bit of a problem because it's fairly slow to load, unstable and something of a resource hog. However, I imagine that Classic will be improved in time. As of WebOS 1.3.1 it's been better behaved for me (although many other people report that it's been very unstable, but those problems should be sorted out with the 1.3.5 WebOS update.) Obviously a native app would be much better. Also, I would love to be able to search for characters that use various parts, as you've implemented on the iPhone app.
OK, Mike, now that Palm has announced the Plugin development kit (PDK), to be released in March, that will allow C/C++ code, is there any chance for a native Pleco version for the Pre?
http://developer.palm.com/index.php?Itemid=20&id=1850&option=com_content&view=article
http://developer.palm.com/index.php?Itemid=20&id=1850&option=com_content&view=article