Pleco for Android 2.3.11-14 Bug Report Thread

[isidoro]

Hello,
I've been using Pleco Reader Add-on in my Xperia Arc S (Adroid 2.3.3) without any problem. But last week I decided to upgrade my firmware to ICS (4.0.4), and now Pleco Reader shows a lot of font glitches. When I press over a word and dict popup appears, right characters are shown; but if I scroll down text those glitches returns. These are some snapshots:

 

[mikelove]

With search window and tab keyboard on "中" , tapping the suggested character(or suggested string) generally brings a single word + its definition (*). This is what I would like to see in the History / Dict tab ; when only one word has been displayed, I guess that there is no confusion and it could be listed with its definition.

But we'd still bring the search back (rather than just showing the definition) when it was tapped on? This is theoretically doable but I'm worried about the inconsistency - people wouldn't like / understand the fact that some entries would include definitions and others would not. (maybe some hybrid option where it would always show the first definition but also "and X more..." if there was more than one?)

I've been using Pleco Reader Add-on in my Xperia Arc S (Adroid 2.3.3) without any problem. But last week I decided to upgrade my firmware to ICS (4.0.4), and now Pleco Reader shows a lot of font glitches. When I press over a word and dict popup appears, right characters are shown; but if I scroll down text those glitches returns. These are some snapshots:

Did you turn on the developer mode option to force hardware acceleration? If so, turn that option off - it messes up a lot of apps, including our document reader. (we're already going to be hardware-accelerating all of the parts of Pleco that can be safely hardware-accelerated in an upcoming release anyway)

 

[abhoriel]

I've been using Pleco Reader Add-on in my Xperia Arc S (Adroid 2.3.3) without any problem. But last week I decided to upgrade my firmware to ICS (4.0.4), and now Pleco Reader shows a lot of font glitches. When I press over a word and dict popup appears, right characters are shown; but if I scroll down text those glitches returns. These are some snapshots:

Did you turn on the developer mode option to force hardware acceleration? If so, turn that option off - it messes up a lot of apps, including our document reader. (we're already going to be hardware-accelerating all of the parts of Pleco that can be safely hardware-accelerated in an upcoming release anyway)

I had glitches with the pleco reader on 2.3.14, where after scrolling through a document, the text would become invisible. It was solved by turning off forced hw acceleration - many thanks

 

[isidoro]

Did you turn on the developer mode option to force hardware acceleration? If so, turn that option off - it messes up a lot of apps, including our document reader. (we're already going to be hardware-accelerating all of the parts of Pleco that can be safely hardware-accelerated in an upcoming release anyway)

No, hardware acceleration was disabled. I've tested enabling this option and characters are shown right, but I can only see the first 100 lines of each document, and text scrolling becomes very slow.

 

[ziggy]

Mike,

I'm confused with your reply : "But we'd still bring the search back (rather than just showing the definition) when it was tapped on?"
I don't understand what you mean.

I'm just say that each time I enter a word and see its defintion, it would be useful to see it listed in the History "dict" tab.

Maybe I'm not clear...but I can't figure out why.

Today, if I enter "geng", for example, and then click on the suggested character 更, I can read its definition.
But when I go to History, it does not appear in the "dict." tab, where definition are shown.
It only appears in the Search tab, where definitions are not shown.

Where would be the "inconsistency" that you mention if one could see all words entered in the "search" windows and their defintion in "History" / "Dict". tab ?

 

[mikelove]

I'm confused with your reply : "But we'd still bring the search back (rather than just showing the definition) when it was tapped on?"
I don't understand what you mean.

The behavior would be the same as when you tap on an item in that screen now - i.e., rather than bringing up a full-screen version of the dictionary entry, we'd copy the search term to the input field and display the results.

Where would be the "inconsistency" that you mention if one could see all words entered in the "search" windows and their defintion in "History" / "Dict". tab ?

Which definition do we show? There are a lot of other characters with the pronunciation "geng."

 

[mfcb]

just a guess, maybe ziggy means by "suggestion" of 更, that his IME like google pinyin suggests it, and he does in fact a search for the character already... that way he does not need to tap on the search result and therefore does not have it in his dict history...

mike, missed my post? (last on previous page)

 

[ziggy]

Yes, Mfcb !

I exactly mean this : when I type 更 or 翻译 or 政治 ... or any Chinese word, actually - I see their defintion (or the definition of the closest word to what I just typed), and very generally, it's just what I'm looking for.
When I see these definitions, I usually do not need to tap on the word to "open" the full dictionnary entry. And these "quick" defintions that I see just after entering he word in the search window, I would expect to have them saved in the Histroy list ("Dict" tab).

So I don't understand Mike's question "which definition" ? The answer is obvious to me : the first one that appears on the screen once I have entered a search word.

Don't know if it would be good for others, though...

PS : By the way, is there an easy method for including pics in the posts (without external party interaction if possible) ? it would help.

 

[mikelove]

mike, missed my post? (last on previous page)

Oops, yeah, I did - sorry. Task manager would probably explain it - the keyboard closing behavior can be a little weird because of the API gymnastics we have to do to get it to open and close on command for handwriting e.g.; has it happened again since then?

I exactly mean this : when I type 更 or 翻译 or 政治 ... or any Chinese word, actually - I see their defintion (or the definition of the closest word to what I just typed), and very generally, it's just what I'm looking for.
When I see these definitions, I usually do not need to tap on the word to "open" the full dictionnary entry. And these "quick" defintions that I see just after entering he word in the search window, I would expect to have them saved in the Histroy list ("Dict" tab).

That makes sense - the inconsistency was regarding Pinyin searches, which have a much smaller likelihood of turning up the correct result in the first entry. Though there are quite a few character searches like 干 that yield multiple entries too. Also, in general by showing the definition below the search term we imply to users that tapping on the search term will give them that definition and no other, which would make them wonder how to actually bring back a previous search term...

Would it help if we maybe added an option to always add the first search result to the "Dict" history, even if we had no reason to think that was the entry you were interested in? That seems like a fix that a) doesn't confuse anyone, since it's an off-by-default option and b) requires minimal work on our part to implement (and to continue to support, since it can be done entirely in cross-platform engine code).

PS : By the way, is there an easy method for including pics in the posts (without external party interaction if possible) ? it would help.

Yes, click on the "Upload attachment" tab below the box where you type your post.

 

[ziggy]

"..if we maybe added an option to always add the first search result to the "Dict" history"

Yes, it would definitely help !
For beginners like me, who generally learn simple characters and words, I'm sure that it would be very useful to be able to informally review all previous searches, just by an easy scrolling of the "Dict" list.
I noted that most of the times, if not always, when I chose to tap a Chinese character after typing the pinyin, the first definition shown is what I need.

Thank you for considering this option in a next release.

 

[mikelove]

For beginners like me, who generally learn simple characters and words, I'm sure that it would be very useful to be able to informally review all previous searches, just by an easy scrolling of the "Dict" list.
I noted that most of the times, if not always, when I chose to tap a Chinese character after typing the pinyin, the first definition shown is what I need.

OK, successfully added (and working fine in our development builds) so you should see it in the next major update. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[ziggy]

My pleasure ! Thank you for your quick reaction to address this.

 

[Wan]

Minor glitch:

When in a flashcard session, testing for handwriting characters:
A card with a longer definition comes up, the top of the entry is shown. This is good. I write the characters (no matter if correct or not) and “check answer”. Now, the definition screen is scrollable.
If I scroll down in this definition and then proceed to the next card, this happens: The top of the next card is shown (good), I enter characters and “check answer” (good), and then, when this card’s definition should appear from the beginning, it doesn’t. Instead it shows somewhere in the middle (because I had scrolled down on the previous card).

 

[Wan]

Rather a mysteriously missing feature then a bug: In Pleco for WinMobile, the stroke order diagrams could be displayed in different shades of grey, the stroke order being represented from light = first stroke to dark = last stroke. This would save you from having to watch the animation. Is this gone in Android or do I simply not find the option to activate this feature?

 

[mikelove]

When in a flashcard session, testing for handwriting characters:
A card with a longer definition comes up, the top of the entry is shown. This is good. I write the characters (no matter if correct or not) and “check answer”. Now, the definition screen is scrollable.
If I scroll down in this definition and then proceed to the next card, this happens: The top of the next card is shown (good), I enter characters and “check answer” (good), and then, when this card’s definition should appear from the beginning, it doesn’t. Instead it shows somewhere in the middle (because I had scrolled down on the previous card).

Ah, this is actually a manifestation of a bug we've seen in quite a few screens - relates to Google's scrollable view being rather lazy about resetting the scroll position around content. Anyway this should be easy to fix in the next update.

Rather a mysteriously missing feature then a bug: In Pleco for WinMobile, the stroke order diagrams could be displayed in different shades of grey, the stroke order being represented from light = first stroke to dark = last stroke. This would save you from having to watch the animation. Is this gone in Android or do I simply not find the option to activate this feature?

That one's more a lack-of-interest thing - we don't support it on iOS either (it doesn't work very well aesthetically with the Song-style characters in our current stroke order diagrams) and in 2.7 years I think you're only the first or second person to complain that it's missing. We're trying very hard to get some nicer Kai-style stroke order diagrams, though, and we manage that we can reconsider adding it then. (though in general I'd rather put in a little more work and find a way to automatically add numbers and direction lines a la a printed stroke order diagram)

 

[isidoro]

Hello,
I've been using Pleco Reader Add-on in my Xperia Arc S (Adroid 2.3.3) without any problem. But last week I decided to upgrade my firmware to ICS (4.0.4), and now Pleco Reader shows a lot of font glitches. When I press over a word and dict popup appears, right characters are shown; but if I scroll down text those glitches returns...

Good news (for me). After upgrade my Xperia Arc S firmware to new version 4.1.B.0.587, Pleco Reader bug was fixed , so the problem was Sony's firm, not Pleco.

 

[Wan]

Flashcard session crashes

Hi again,

just wanted to point out, flashcard sessions still occasionally crash after being saved. I’m unable to reproduce this, it just happens from time to time. Latest Pleco version, Android 2.3, Xperia Mini. No other problems.

 

[lzcrider3]

Huge Issue with the new OS on the Droid Razr.

Everytime I plug my phone into my computer it doesnt give me the option to select "charge only" Just use as a mass storage device. Consiquently deleting all of my pleco flashcards .... EVERYTIME! Can someone plz help.

 

[mikelove]

just wanted to point out, flashcard sessions still occasionally crash after being saved. I’m unable to reproduce this, it just happens from time to time. Latest Pleco version, Android 2.3, Xperia Mini. No other problems.

Would you send me your crash log the next time it happens? (run the free aLogcat utility immediately afterwords)

Everytime I plug my phone into my computer it doesnt give me the option to select "charge only" Just use as a mass storage device. Consiquently deleting all of my pleco flashcards .... EVERYTIME! Can someone plz help.

The flashcards should still be there when you unplug it - they'd disappear if you start Pleco with the phone connected to the computer, since it has no way of accessing files stored on the SD card while it's attached, but if you reopen Pleco after disconnecting they should reappear. (you may have to exit Pleco via Settings / Applications and then reopen it first, if the phone's manufacturer didn't design it to notify apps correctly when the card is reactivated)

 

[alex_hk90]

Re: Flashcard session crashes

just wanted to point out, flashcard sessions still occasionally crash after being saved. I’m unable to reproduce this, it just happens from time to time. Latest Pleco version, Android 2.3, Xperia Mini. No other problems.

I had something like this recently as well. But it didn't crash per se, just kind of reset and regenerated a new set of cards to review. It's only happened once though and it was a fairly large session (over 500 cards to review).