Pleco for Android 3.1 Beta 3

[mikelove]

@Taichi - thanks; delayed messaging problem it seems.

@giokve - thanks. Tech-wise it's easier for the tab to stay put, and also more consistent with the two-screen behavior (where you stay in the same place scrolling through the result list with buttons).

@ohlordamen - I'm glad the lag has improved. You can still get a drawing box in flashcards by tapping on the paintbrush icon in the toolbar, right next to the audio button - is that not working somehow?

Do you know any of the specific characters that are supposed to be appearing in those shots instead of 顨?

We don't currently erase the back stack when you change your back mode setting, though we probably should since otherwise the differences between them won't be instantly apparent when switching. We opted to have the main app icon always return you to where you were before since it seems more consistent with how Android apps normally behave.

@Taichi again - broken on everything, actually; thanks.

@giokve again - yeah, we opted not to worry about that too much since we're mostly supporting English speakers but if we were developing a product for Chinese learners of English we might go with a different title.

 

[Taichi]

There's no way to stop reader TTS(Lulu). Hui doesn't have the problem.

 

[mikelove]

Lulu shouldn't even be working in the reader, actually - doesn't have an API for us to follow along with where it is in a text. In fact, we stopped selling it several months ago largely for that reason, and had been planning to announce an offer to refund anybody who bought it and no longer wants it in conjunction with the release of 3.1.

 

[Yiliya]

Installed the new beta. Actually pretty happy with it. Save for the blue words/chars/etc buttons. Just not a good idea on Android. How about replacing them with holo tabs, for example?

One more thing. Don't really like how Pleco remembers the exact screen I was on the last time. Let's say I left the program on the addons screen, cleared it from the recents etc. And when I launch it again I'm still on the addons screen instead of, you know, the dictionary. Currently using the dict launcher shortcut to get around this, but you might want to change this behavior anyway since it's not too user-friendly, especially for the newcomers.

 

[giokve]

Some characters are not rendered correctly.

EDIT: not displayed at all

 

[Taichi]

Two reader bugs: bookmark does't work. Sharing to reader crashes pleco.

I'm not familiar with phone UI stuff, but feel it's not that obvious that left pane is swipable, maybe some users even dont't realize that top-left part with 三 is clickable. Showing hints on the first launch should help.

 

[ohlordamen]

@mikelove the paintbrush works, just not like it used to. If you look at the image you see that the old version (on the right) is like when you are take a test, giving you the word choice at the bottom with a erase and done key.
You can see in the pictures (previous post) of the stroke order it should have been 白，黃，歡，換， 戴(the one correct one, only #11 out of 10). I have it set to only do 10 at a time and random, so hard to say. This is happening in the old version on my wife's phone also, so it might be related to my flashcard file?

 

[giokve]

Tapping on a word in HISTORY often takes me back to where I was in the dictionary on not to said word.

 

[mikelove]

@Yiliya - glad to hear it!

I agree the current bar is problematic on Android - too subtle when you can't rely on color=button as you can on iOS - but my inclination at the moment is to switch to boxier tabs, with a line above and between as well as below and the entire selected area filled with color; Holo tabs (especially without a font weight change, as these would need to be) seem too subtle when they're floating in the middle of a scrolling box.

Screen restoration is a bug - that should be stored in instance state (so it's only revived if you switch back to the task / reopen within a short while) rather than preferences.

@giokve - ah, that's an oversight; we added code to support an extended font for rare characters but we didn't actually put that font in Add-ons.

@Taichi - thanks. What were you sharing with the reader? (file, web page, text, etc)

Google's guidelines suggest making the sidebar visible on first run, that seems a reasonable fix. The fact that the three bars are used in Google Play and Gmail means that most people should already be accustomed to them, but we've got enough users with MIUI / FireOS / etc that we probably need to work harder than most developers to explain the concept.

@ohlordamen - that one was actually a bug; the paintbrush would sometimes bring up the handwriting box if you used it during a fill-in-the-blanks test that was prompting for characters. The reason we generally prefer the current approach is that it keeps the buttons below the definition area free, so you don't have to constantly toggle the drawing box visible / invisible if you want to use it for every card. We also assist with that by automatically clearing the box when you advance to a new card. So if we brought back the ability to see handwriting results from the box, we'd have to do it as an optional new feature and we're generally trying to add as few of those as possible to flashcards until we start revamping the flashcard system later this year.

@giokve again - is this in Search only or in other parts of history too?

 

[giokve]

Search only.

 

[Taichi]

@mikelove I'm sharing web. firefox, opera, chrome all fails.

 

[mikelove]

@giokve - thanks.

@Taichi - could you give me some sample pages? Does say zh.wikipedia.org crash when shared?

Edit: also, does the reader work correctly (without crashing) if you access it normally within Pleco?

 

[mikelove]

Here's a picture of the definition screen with Holo-style tabs to demonstrate why I don't think they work:



That being said, I'm not loving any of our other ideas either at the moment, so we may end up sticking to the current design for the initial release and leaving open the option to modify it later if we come up with something better.

 

[Taichi]

@mikelove any webpage including zh.wikipedia.org crashes after/during the "Loading..." message.
Reader works correctly. I can read txt file made from zh.wikipedia.org without crash.
I can reproduce this on xperia z ultra and xperia z.

Edit: Sharing local stuff to pleco works correctly.

 

[Yiliya]

@mikelove, make only the active tab bold (and maybe also blue) and it should work pretty well.

 

[Taichi]

does the holo style tab means it's swipable between tabs? If that's the case I want the tabs reordered to dict/words/sents/stroke/char, or make it able to cycle (i.e. swipe left on the first tab takes user to the last tab ).

 

[santiago]

Pleco crashes when using the clip and file reader in all betas . I get to crash it while running the aLogCat but it does not seem to create a crash report or anything. well, no rush I also bought the IOS licenses so I can keep using my ipad but I am surprised I am the only one with this problem.
Coolpad 5890, Android 4.1.2

 

[ohlordamen]

You call it a bug, I called it a feature, but I do have a bug for you related to it. During a fill-in-the-blanks test if you click the paint brush, then click again you can't get the writing box back, unless click home button and then rerun to your flashcard test.

A feature that would be nice would be once you have selected your card categories, tell you how many cars that you have selected. I.E.. "3 categories - 85 cards"

I still get a pop-up after a test has completed asking me if I'm sure I want cancel the test. You can see in the image the "new test" warning box, this came up after the end of session statistics pop-up. If you click yes you exit, click no then you have to click "new test".

I'm able to reproduce this only if I get a character incorrect and before I finish the review of the incorrect characters leave app and return to finish later. If I get them all correct I don't get the pop-up. And if I complete going through the review of the incorrect characters at the same time I won't get the pop-up. End-of-session, set to repeat incorrect.

The Chinese headword text on the cards is still small.

An option for the tone practice test I would like to see is to be able to hide the Pinyin. I find myself looking at that instead of the Chinese when taking that test.

Search bug
Old version: after you searched and hit the back button the search term is keep in the search field, in the new version is lost.

The new back button settings are driving me crazy. If I'm working on organizing my cards, I have to use the Pleco shortcut in order to go back to there, the dictionary launcher for dictionary and the flashcard launcher for flashcards. Unlike before I could use the flashcard launcher and it would still take me back to organizing cards and the Pleco shortcut for dictionary. I now have to use three shortcuts on my desktop and try to remember if I need to swipe to the menu to get back the dictionary or flashcard instead of just hitting the back button. I don't see why there was a big change from the way it worked perfectly fine before.

 

[Taichi]

Regarding the back button behavior "back to dictionary", back button should take users to dictionary with last query -> dictionary with empty query with keyboard shown ->home screen. Google map behaves in this way.

 

[mikelove]

@Taichi - thanks.

@Yiliya - will try that shortly, though previous experiments suggest that non-bold text tends to look awkward there. (even less like a tab bar)

@Taichi again - no, we aren't supporting swiping between tabs at present.

@santiago - it's a known bug on tablets with Android 4.1, should be fixed in the next beta.

@ohlordamen - the Pleco icon always takes you back to the last thing you were doing; you can also get there via the task switcher. In general we think this style of task switching is much easier for most users to understand than the old system - a single Pleco task and a single way to switch between functions.

It probably does make sense to have the flashcard / reader / OCR launchers resume your current task if that task is within their category, though our hope / expectation is that far fewer people will use the launchers in this new version anyway.

@Taichi again - that makes sense, yes.