Pleco for Android 3.1.3 Beta 1

[mikelove]

Releasing a beta for this bug-fix update because it's also an attempt to (dramatically, we hope) improve startup speed, mostly based on a couple of ideas yours truly had in the shower this morning.

Please let us know:

a) Whether this makes startup faster, and how much (as fast as the old version now? if not, how much slower?)

Note: the very first time you run this it may actually be a tiny bit slower than before, but if you exit / task-kill and reopen again it should be much faster after that.

b) Whether you see any new bugs, especially in the areas of typography or text-to-speech.


If you previously signed up for beta-testing through Google Play, this new beta should show up as an update within a few hours. Otherwise, you can get it:

a) Through Google Play. Sign up for our Android Beta Testing group at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pleco-android-beta-testing

And then sign up for beta versions of Pleco at:

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.pleco.chinesesystem

after which you should be able to get it right from them. (this isn't up yet but should be in a few hours)

b) Directly from our website; APK at:

http://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-140622p-313b1.apk

The Google Play version makes it easier for us to collect crash reports, so please use that one if you can

 

[Wan]

Time needed for starting significantly reduced with this update. Down to about 4 (very acceptable) seconds on my oldish phone. How did you do that?

 

[alex_hk90]

a) Whether this makes startup faster, and how much (as fast as the old version now? if not, how much slower?)

Note: the very first time you run this it may actually be a tiny bit slower than before, but if you exit / task-kill and reopen again it should be much faster after that.

Startup seems faster for me (on a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, running KitKat 4.4.2) - improved from around 2.5 seconds previously to around 1.0 seconds with this version. Good work!
The first time was about the same as previously (2.5 seconds or so), then after that down to 1.0 seconds when re-opening.

 

[mikelove]

Glad to hear it!

Mostly a case of realizing that a particular part of the loading routine was still optimized around iOS rather than Android - they both have Unix underpinnings, but there's a subtle distinction in the way that they store / unpack application data files that happened to be causing a big performance hit on Android.

 

[mfcb]

in my case it also starts up in about half the time, but especially clipboard reader startup is still slow. on fresh start there are at least 3 seconds of empty reader, after that the clipboard content is displayed. when pleco is loaded already the clipboard is now displayed IMMEDIATELY (previously 2-3 seconds)

there is also a delay when i tap on a word in the reader, takes about 2-3 seconds until the word gets highlighted and many times i tap the word (accidentially/nervously) twice which prevents it from getting highlighted (on/off???). was that really the same behaviour in the old reader?

as my hardware is rather new and was fast with pre-pleco 3.1 i guess there is maybe some trouble with datafiles/cache/etc as i just upgraded to 3.1 (no clean install, shame on me). any hints what i can try to improve speed more?

 

[many]

Yes, does seem faster, and no problems. Before sometimes took an age (not really, 4s?) with a black screen apart from the fish but max 1-2s now.

 

[mikelove]

@mfcb - which system hacks are you running now? Try toggling the setting for "disable hardware acceleration" in Settings / Popup Definition - does that help matters with the reader display?

With slow clipboard reader startups, unfortunately those are a function of the way our launchers have to work - have to launch a different activity and then move from there into our main activity with a special flag, it's not possible for them to jump into it directly.

@many - great! Sounds like we're on the right track here.

 

[NomekSan]

I had a bug today where some soundfiles would not be played at all. This time it's not BT related, it seemed quite random.
For example: the entry 爱人 was not played, no matter how often I clicked on it. I experienced it while a flashcard session for listening where I couldn't hear about 1/3 of the flashcards (which makes a listening session pretty hard ). I tried some cards to play in the dictionary and there was also no sound.

A restart of the Pleco app solved the problem.　Since it happened totally random, I am not able to reproduce it. I will try to reconstruct it when it happens again.

Another thing:
Somebody talked about new icons on the navigation bar and there was a screen posted in another thread where the icons looked like the ones in the first picture. However, my icons look like the ones in the second picture (and I like those much better). Which ones are supposed to be in the current beta version?

 

[mikelove]

OK, thanks! Are you playing these with text-to-speech or with audio recordings?

The icons in the second picture are what you're supposed to see - the giant colorful ones are due to a bug in the firmware on that user's Samsung device.

 

[NomekSan]

OK, thanks! Are you playing these with text-to-speech or with audio recordings?

The icons in the second picture are what you're supposed to see - the giant colorful ones are due to a bug in the firmware on that user's Samsung device.

Even this seems random. I get sound for single syllables but not for some words like 爱人．As I experienced it, TTS is only used if there is no recording for the entire entry or flashcard.

Another thing I want to ask (and maybe I asked this before, if that's the case, I apologize):

Will there be some method to get the TTS of a flashcard outside the actual practice mode? I would like to go through and search my flashcards the same way I browse through the dictionary. I am able to "view as dict entry" but this only gets my existing entrys and if a card is a sentence, it get's me the first word that's found in the dictionary from that sentence. I just want to tap a flashcard entry and get the TTS. Optimal would be to be able to search flashcards the same way like I can search the dictionary. ATM this seems just to be able if I use a user dictionary in parallel. But if I add new cards, using a single textfile to which I add entrys regulary, I will get tons of duplicate entrys.

 

[mikelove]

Try tap-holding on the card in the Organize list and choosing the "Play Audio" command - does that give you the audio?

 

[NomekSan]

Try tap-holding on the card in the Organize list and choosing the "Play Audio" command - does that give you the audio?

There is no such command.

 

[mikelove]

Hmm, guess it must have gotten removed due to a bug or something - sorry about that, we'll see about getting it back in for 3.2.