Pleco for Android 2.3.7 Bug Report Thread
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
I tried installing Pleco OCR from the Android Market and it seems to install fine. When I click the icon to launch, I get an error message stating "Software not found: Sorry, we could not find a copy of Pleco installed on your system blah blah blah". Any ideas here?
Using HTC Sensation (rooted with custom ROM) on a China Unicom SIM.
Using HTC Sensation (rooted with custom ROM) on a China Unicom SIM.
Here are a few things I've noticed - apologies if they have already been reported. In case it's relevant I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S2
1) Manage profiles. After re-ordering profiles (by dragging then around), they shuffle back to their original order. Not immediately but after several hours or the next day!
2) I want my Chinese to English test to ask a Chinese word only using simplified characters. However, the questions shows traditional as well. I do have "Simplified-only" selected under the "Character set" option (I have tried with and without "Force Character Set" enabled)
Not sure if this is a bug or I am misunderstanding the settings.
3) When editing a flashcard during a review session, the changes don't show up when I go back to the "test" . They have taken effect though because they do show up next time. (They also show up if, after editing during a test, I look a dictionary entry and _then_ go back to the flashcard.)
4) Also not sure if this is a bug. I also hope my description of the problem makes sense!
If I look up a word in the dictionary and then add it to my flashcard list, it includes the full dictionary entry including examples which is perfect. I often then "convert to custom card" and trim the entry - so far so good. However, if while testing flashcards, I look at a dictionary definition and then try and add that dictionary definition, I am prompted with a "Are you sure you want to permanently change this flashcard to use this new dictionary entry?", clicking "yes" seems to replace my original entry - which is OK. However, when I then try and convert it to a custom card, the examples disappear! This seem strange and inconsistent with what happens when I make flashcard directly from a dictionary entry, outside of reviewing flashcards
5) This is not a bug but a suggestion. Within flashcard statistics, the average score is given. This is a simple arithmetic average. Would it be possible to give a geometric average as well (or instead). I think when using an SRS test, this is quite useful because it can be used to tell you the average no. of cards needs to review per day, whereas the arithmetic average doesn't.
6) I noticed that in the flashcard settings, there are still a few double percentage signs. (Most seemed to have been fixed with 2.3.7) Unfortunately I can't tell you where they are because I couldn't find them when I went back to look for them!
1) Manage profiles. After re-ordering profiles (by dragging then around), they shuffle back to their original order. Not immediately but after several hours or the next day!
2) I want my Chinese to English test to ask a Chinese word only using simplified characters. However, the questions shows traditional as well. I do have "Simplified-only" selected under the "Character set" option (I have tried with and without "Force Character Set" enabled)
Not sure if this is a bug or I am misunderstanding the settings.
3) When editing a flashcard during a review session, the changes don't show up when I go back to the "test" . They have taken effect though because they do show up next time. (They also show up if, after editing during a test, I look a dictionary entry and _then_ go back to the flashcard.)
4) Also not sure if this is a bug. I also hope my description of the problem makes sense!
If I look up a word in the dictionary and then add it to my flashcard list, it includes the full dictionary entry including examples which is perfect. I often then "convert to custom card" and trim the entry - so far so good. However, if while testing flashcards, I look at a dictionary definition and then try and add that dictionary definition, I am prompted with a "Are you sure you want to permanently change this flashcard to use this new dictionary entry?", clicking "yes" seems to replace my original entry - which is OK. However, when I then try and convert it to a custom card, the examples disappear! This seem strange and inconsistent with what happens when I make flashcard directly from a dictionary entry, outside of reviewing flashcards
5) This is not a bug but a suggestion. Within flashcard statistics, the average score is given. This is a simple arithmetic average. Would it be possible to give a geometric average as well (or instead). I think when using an SRS test, this is quite useful because it can be used to tell you the average no. of cards needs to review per day, whereas the arithmetic average doesn't.
6) I noticed that in the flashcard settings, there are still a few double percentage signs. (Most seemed to have been fixed with 2.3.7) Unfortunately I can't tell you where they are because I couldn't find them when I went back to look for them!
spinez said:
You have to download the regular Pleco app too - the OCR app is just a little launcher for it. (basically a way for us to give the OCR function its own separate launch icon without forcing that extra icon on everyone who downloads our app)
HedgePig said:
Thanks - we actually fixed that one just yesterday so it should be gone in 2.3.8.
HedgePig said:
Could you be more specific? That option mainly relates to headword display - if you've got a custom definition with traditional characters in it they'd stay in traditional on the card. Also, if you have a custom card where the headword is only in traditional, the system would not be able to automatically convert it to simplified for you so it'd stay in traditional.
HedgePig said:
Thanks - that should be fixed in 2.3.8 too.
HedgePig said:
Are the examples configured to hide when you look at the card in the test? Could be a really obscure bug relating to that dictionary remapping feature...
HedgePig said:
That's actually something that's waiting on some low-level improvements to our flashcard system - a lot of the internal statistics stuff was written back in 2006/7 to run on Palm Pilots and hence used 16- and 32-bit integers, which would very quickly overflow if you started trying to do geometric means with them. But we're moving to 64-bit (double-precision) floating point numbers in an upgrade we're planning for later this year, and once we finish that migration we'll be able to do much more interesting things with statistics, including a geometric mean.
HedgePig said:
Well let me know if you spot them again.
Thanks for all the feedback!
Hello Mike
Thanks for your reply and all the information. I've added some more comments below - hopefully these will help.
Almost all of my cards are custom cards, so it's possible that it is isn't happening where I have a dictionary based card. (I'll try and keep a lookout)
This has happened with both the ABC and PLC dictionaries.
Something else which I have noticed is that in the very few cases where I have replaced an existing flashcard entry with dictionary definition, when I go to edit it, if I don't save changes, I will then see my previous definition appearing again. I've only seen this a couple of times (because I very seldom do replace a flashcard during a test with a dictionary definition), so my description may not be quite right. (Sorry, this is pretty vague information!)
Glad to hear that you are considering including a geometric average!
Thanks for your reply and all the information. I've added some more comments below - hopefully these will help.
Where I'm seeing this happen, is in the headword display. i.e. if there is a traditional character headword as well as a simplified character headword, when I'm asked the question I see the simplified characters for the word followed by the the traditional characters in square brackets (actually just the traditional character when it differs from simplified, with -'s where they are the same)mikelove said:
Almost all of my cards are custom cards, so it's possible that it is isn't happening where I have a dictionary based card. (I'll try and keep a lookout)
No, under "Card Text" -> "Definition sections" I have "show all" selected.mikelove said:
This has happened with both the ABC and PLC dictionaries.
Something else which I have noticed is that in the very few cases where I have replaced an existing flashcard entry with dictionary definition, when I go to edit it, if I don't save changes, I will then see my previous definition appearing again. I've only seen this a couple of times (because I very seldom do replace a flashcard during a test with a dictionary definition), so my description may not be quite right. (Sorry, this is pretty vague information!)
Glad to hear that you are considering including a geometric average!
HedgePig said:
If simplified-only is selected then the bracketed characters shouldn't appear... try going into Card Info / Edit Card Text for one of these cards: are the simplified and traditional in their separate fields, or does the "simplified" field have both the simplified and traditional characters in it?
HedgePig said:
Hmm... perhaps it's reading the definitions in some other way, then. Should hopefully be pretty easy to fix, though in general we're not encouraging people to do a whole lot of dictionary-entry-to-flashcard conversion right now since a future release will add the ability to add custom fields / notes / etc to a card while continuing to link to the original dictionary definition.
HedgePig said:
Sorry, I don't quite follow - so you tap on Edit card text to edit the card, you cancel instead of saving, and then the card hasn't changed? Seems like it's not supposed to change in that case, but I'm probably misunderstanding you.
mikelove said:
OK, I've sorted this out too. This is actually deliberate - when you have a card with a custom definition, convert it to a dictionary-linked card, then convert it back to a custom card, we bring back the previous custom definition rather than copying the dictionary definition to it once again. We've had one or two complaints about this, but in general we think that it's the best approach since it prevents people from accidentally discarding a painstakingly-written custom definition through a careless dictionary switch.
mikelove said:
I think the sequence of events which give rise to this is as follows
(1) Replace my custom flashcard with a dictionary definition
(2) Convert the dictionary definition to a custom card and go and edit the definition. However, I don't save the changes.
(3) Then when I go back out again I see my _original_ custom definition, not the dictionary definition I replaced it with. I seem to see this reversion only when I go back to the "organise" flashcards and look at the entries - that's when I noticed that they were back to the original definition.
However, as I mentioned, I've only seen this problem a few times, so I may not be correct. (Yes, I realise how helpful this is!)
Once again thanks for your replies - and I'm glad that you've managed to reproduce the other two intermittent bugs.
mikelove said:
When I am running through the flashcards testing myself, I see the dictionary definition. If I then edit the card, I still see the dictionary definition before converting it to a custom card. However, after converting to a custom card and then editing the card text, I see my original definition. (And if I save changes, then the dictionary definition is replaced with my original definition,)
The same behaviour occurs if I "search" my cards and the edit card after finding it this way. I'm 99% sure it also happens when I "organize" my cards and then edit a card which has had my custom definition replaced with a dictionary definition.
I hope this helps.
Yes, I agree it does sound similar to the other issues. Thanks for looking into this and I look forward to 2.3.8!
The main reason I go back to the dictionary definition is to get the sentence examples. I'll often use a custom definition for the actual translation of the word but want some example some sentences as well - and I don't want to type these in myself. So I want to convert my custom flashcard to back to the dictionary definition, then convert it to a custom definition and then finally change the translation of the word back to what I had originally (I just type this in) but keep some of the example sentences (from the PLC or ABC dictionaries.) It would be really great if there were a nice way to harvest and combine sentences from various dictionaries - that way I'd simple copy the relevant bits from the dictionary and them into my custom definition. I guess that that would also run into all sorts of licensing problems.
You said somewhere earlier that later on in the year you are hoping to release signficantly updated flashcard functionality - looking forward to that too. Thanks so much for all your feedback.
The main reason I go back to the dictionary definition is to get the sentence examples. I'll often use a custom definition for the actual translation of the word but want some example some sentences as well - and I don't want to type these in myself. So I want to convert my custom flashcard to back to the dictionary definition, then convert it to a custom definition and then finally change the translation of the word back to what I had originally (I just type this in) but keep some of the example sentences (from the PLC or ABC dictionaries.) It would be really great if there were a nice way to harvest and combine sentences from various dictionaries - that way I'd simple copy the relevant bits from the dictionary and them into my custom definition. I guess that that would also run into all sorts of licensing problems.
You said somewhere earlier that later on in the year you are hoping to release signficantly updated flashcard functionality - looking forward to that too. Thanks so much for all your feedback.
HedgePig said:
Doing something better with example sentences has been on our agenda for a long time - the tricky thing is that examples in dictionary entries tend to do a much better job of demonstrating a particular usage of a particular word than generic example sentences pulled from an example sentence database would, so simply lumping all of the examples for a word together discards some valuable functionality. Not a licensing issue, though, just a design one.
HedgePig said:
Yes - right now we're focused on finishing up a few things in dictionary search / management, which will then be rolled into the much-anticipated 2.3 update on iOS and will be accompanied by a whole bunch of new dictionaries. But after 2.3 and its associated bug fixes are out we'll be turning our attention to flashcard and document reader improvements for 2.4 - a few of those may be iOS-specific, at least initially (EPUB support in the reader, inter-device sync in flashcards - even if Google does add an iCloud-like sync service in Android 5, that probably won't start to show up in significant numbers of devices until early 2013), but most of them are cross-platform engine stuff and should show up on both platforms at around the same time.
dont know its a bug or a feature, but starts to nag me...
when i start pleco via the "reader shortcut" with something in the clipboard, i have to press "back" several times to get out of pleco again, at least 2 times to leave the reader and one more time to finally leave the main screen also...
sometimes 4 or 5 back are necessary... as its a little unpredictable, sometimes i also accidentally close the app i want to go back to...
i use swipepad to invoke the reader, dont know if its related...
when i start pleco via the "reader shortcut" with something in the clipboard, i have to press "back" several times to get out of pleco again, at least 2 times to leave the reader and one more time to finally leave the main screen also...
sometimes 4 or 5 back are necessary... as its a little unpredictable, sometimes i also accidentally close the app i want to go back to...
i use swipepad to invoke the reader, dont know if its related...