Pleco for Android Beta 1+2 Feedback Thread

[Sarevok]

Hi Mike,

So I finally bought that Samsung Galaxy S2 today, as it seems the official 2.3.4 updates should be rolling out in the near future (Poland and Brazil already got theirs). Most of the issues I was worried about seem to have been addressed (based on a few unofficial 2.3.4 updates leaked during July). Moreover, I wanted to get my hands on one before some court bans it's sale in Europe, which happened to Galaxy Tab 10.1 yesterday... mostly kidding, but then again - this possibility can't be ruled out completely...

Anyways, can I transfer my current WM license to Android now or should I wait a bit? You mentioned, that such transferred licenses, which can only be used on one device, will be upgradeable for use on multiple devices (for a fee). For the time being, I can live with using Pleco on my phone only, but eventually, I would like to use it on my tablet as well. Would it be possible to "upgrade" the license later if I transferred it now?

 

[mikelove]

So I finally bought that Samsung Galaxy S2 today, as it seems the official 2.3.4 updates should be rolling out in the near future (Poland and Brazil already got theirs). Most of the issues I was worried about seem to have been addressed (based on a few unofficial 2.3.4 updates leaked during July). Moreover, I wanted to get my hands on one before some court bans it's sale in Europe, which happened to Galaxy Tab 10.1 yesterday... mostly kidding, but then again - this possibility can't be ruled out completely...

Fair enough, but has Samsung announced official Ice Cream Sandwich support yet? For all of the S2's hardware awesomeness, the changes coming in that are big enough that I'd want to make sure my new phone will be able to run it (and without a 6 month delay).

Anyways, can I transfer my current WM license to Android now or should I wait a bit? You mentioned, that such transferred licenses, which can only be used on one device, will be upgradeable for use on multiple devices (for a fee). For the time being, I can live with using Pleco on my phone only, but eventually, I would like to use it on my tablet as well. Would it be possible to "upgrade" the license later if I transferred it now?

There'll be some sort of an upgrade or discount, but it's not entirely clear what sort yet - however, whether you transfer now or later shouldn't make a difference in whether or not you'd be able to upgrade.

 

[Sarevok]

There was no such announcement from Samsung, but I was under the impression that Samsung's logo was there, when Google announced OS updade partnerships at Google I/O (the manufacturers who hopped onto that bandwagon should provide updates for 18 months after the release of any particular device, providing the HW allows it). That doesn't mean I should take the ICS update for granted, but there is a solid chance it will happen. I already skipped several generations of improvement in cell-phone technology (sticking with WM till now) and I didn't want to wait any longer - if I did, I might not be able to sell my current device anymore...

License transfer to Android went smoothly - now I can finally enjoy PlecoDroid in it's full glory :mrgreen:

EDIT: Buying Add-ons (stroke order diagrams and OCR module) wasn't so smooth - when I let Pleco check for newly purchased content in Manage Registrations, it was constantly unable to connect. I tried to revert it to demo mode and go through the registration process again, but same problem occurred. Turning Wi-Fi off and on again didn't help - rebooting the device did the trick in the end...

 

[mikelove]

There was no such announcement from Samsung, but I was under the impression that Samsung's logo was there, when Google announced OS updade partnerships at Google I/O (the manufacturers who hopped onto that bandwagon should provide updates for 18 months after the release of any particular device, providing the HW allows it). That doesn't mean I should take the ICS update for granted, but there is a solid chance it will happen. I already skipped several generations of improvement in cell-phone technology (sticking with WM till now) and I didn't want to wait any longer - if I did, I might not be able to sell my current device anymore...

Sounds like a pretty safe bet, and anyway since it's a popular phone it seems likely there'll be an unofficial one at least - I was just frustrated with the difficulty of getting our Galaxy S running 2.3 in a semi-official way.

EDIT: Buying Add-ons (stroke order diagrams and OCR module) wasn't so smooth - when I let Pleco check for newly purchased content in Manage Registrations, it was constantly unable to connect. I tried to revert it to demo mode and go through the registration process again, but same problem occurred. Turning Wi-Fi off and on again didn't help - rebooting the device did the trick in the end...

Hmm... was the internet working correctly on your device otherwise? We're using pretty standard Android system calls to fetch the registration data, I'm not sure what we might be doing that would cause problems like this...

 

[djbass]

I would like the option of storing my data files locally as the dict is something I use frequently and there is always chance I wont have an SD card with the data installed.

 

[mikelove]

I would like the option of storing my data files locally as the dict is something I use frequently and there is always chance I wont have an SD card with the data installed.

That's actually surprisingly difficult to do in a way that works reliably on all Android devices; there's a built-in system function called getExternalStorageDirectory that tells us where to find your SD card, and I believe it falls back on internal memory if there's no SD card installed, but there's no good way we know of to ask Android where to find your internal storage directory when an SD card is installed. And crawling through the system looking for any usable files takes too long (just doing that on the SD card in the current version is the reason why our startup times are so slow - addressed in Beta 3).

We could add an option for advanced users to specify an alternate file storage path, though - you'd have to dive around in your system to figure out exactly what that path was, and since this would be an advanced-user-only feature we probably wouldn't take the time to add automated file copying support (so you set up that file path, move the files manually, then reopen Pleco), but it would give you some way to get the files in internal storage at least.

 

[djbass]

Merely the option is all I meant.

At the moment even without an SD card Pleco will not recognise the data folder if stored internally.

I have a couple of apps that already work with internal storage, generally they load data from a folder in the application folder, so I'm guessing there is a function call that points to the apps own directory at least.

 

[mikelove]

Merely the option is all I meant.

At the moment even without an SD card Pleco will not recognise the data folder if stored internally.

I have a couple of apps that already work with internal storage, generally they load data from a folder in the application folder, so I'm guessing there is a function call that points to the apps own directory at least.

We've searched the Android developer site and various forums and haven't found any reliable way to do that - we could hard-code directory paths for some common devices (as those apps might be doing) but I don't think we could reliably find the internal storage on all of them.

 

[burdenofhope]

I also have another wish for Pleco. When I did a full text search (#) on my Windows Mobile device the search string was labelled/marked in the results, so when you had a long definition and a lot of examples you would not have to look too long for the string.

 

[mikelove]

I also have another wish for Pleco. When I did a full text search (#) on my Windows Mobile device the search string was labelled/marked in the results, so when you had a long definition and a lot of examples you would not have to look too long for the string.

That one should also be coming by the finished release - again, already something we do on iOS.