Pleco for Android Beta 1 Bug Report Thread

[hejincong]

When I click on a character in a definition, I get the pop-up window with the definition. Then, when I click on a character in the pop-up window, Pleco force-closes.

 

[benzhen]

hello. i can't open files in the document reader. i go to the text file i want in the file picker and tap, but nothing happens, it just stay within the file picker. if i long tap, it gives me a list of apps i can open that file with, but pleco isn't one of them.

*NEVER MIND FOUND THE OK BUTTON*

it was so awesome to see the pleco app on my homescreen

galaxy S verizon fascinate, 2.2 rooted community rom

 

[garysaville]

Might be a font file issue - we load custom fonts to render Pinyin since the built-in ones on most Android devices don't include boldface 1st/3rd tone characters. This is with stock firmware on your Desire Z, right? Does it seem to be the same characters missing in every dictionary entry or does it vary from entry to entry?

The Desire Z is running the stock firmware. I would say around 30% of fonts are missing from every entry. The missing fonts are inconsistant. For instance, 個 is missing from the entry for 你。 However, it is in the entry for 人 at times, and then other times its missing.
The character 棲 is in the place where 嗎 should be in the definition for 人。


Another bug I've found while playing around is a reproducible crash caused by selecting Chinese characters in any popup definition. The application will crash every time I do.

I'm going to turf everything and try a reinstall.


Best,
G

 

[JRyn]

When I click on a character in a definition, I get the pop-up window with the definition. Then, when I click on a character in the pop-up window, Pleco force-closes.

Mine also has this problem.

 

[garysaville]

Font Problem

I reinstalled Pleco from scratch. However, the font problem is still there.
I did find, however, that it only occurs with traditional characters. If I toggle the character mode to simplified, everything displays perfectly.

 

[neilperks]

Great stuff, been running on my LG Optimus x2 without any real major apparent issues on all the features. Programme runs as smooth as silk, yet to give a thorough "road test" but so far so good.

One small issue which garysaville referred to above. I too see the same issue with some missing characters replaced by twin squares in the detail screen. Also these characters appear fine in all other screens i've tested, just appears to be the detail sentence example screen. I noticed that having searched for NiMen it was fine, then looked at the detail screen the "Men" was replaced by twin boxes as was "Liang" further along the sentence. Probably about 5% of characters are replaced like this. Need to do further investigation.

As I said everything else, so far, appears great; fantastic job for a first beta !!!

Cheers

Neil

 

[murrayjames]

When I click on a character in a definition, I get the pop-up window with the definition. Then, when I click on a character in the pop-up window, Pleco force-closes.

I'm getting this too. I also get force closes when scrolling the pop-up window definitions in Hanyu Guifan Dictionary. Other dictionaries don't seem to have this problem.

Also, the Audio feels a bit quiet - fine sitting in a room, but on a bus, or otherwise in a noisy environment, I suspect it would be a bit *too* quiet without turning it up loud enough to destroy my ears should I start music playing having forgotten to turn it back down... Not sure if this counts as a bug or not, though.

Seconded. I was in a cafe yesterday. Even with light ambient noise, I had to hold the phone to my ear to hear the Pleco sounds clearly.

 

[neilperks]

Thirded regarding the sound issue, at first I thought it wasn't working, although I know the sound on the LG Optimus x2 is pretty low at the best of times

Cheers

Neil

 

[ipsi]

I'm seeing the traditional character issue too. Only seems to occur with characters that have different traditional/simplified versions. Easy to replicate by going to, say, a Guifan entry and repeatedly switching the character set. I've attached a couple of screenshots showing the issue. Note that in the first screenshot, the traditional characters aren't dipslayed *at all*, not even as squares! Also, there appears to be some Korean in one of the entries in the list. So definitely something weird going on.

 

[neilperks]

Whoops, one other small thing I forgot to mention. When drawing characters on the screen it tends to draw a series of dots rather than lines (a sort of stutter), UNLESS you draw very slowely; still recognises characters ok though. The LG is a pretty fast beast so was a bit surprised; it's pretty insignificant for me, but thought worth mentioning anyway.

Cheers

Neil

 

[milhouse]

On a Nexus S with Android 2.3.4:

- Search for anything (e.g., "haohao")
- Click on the headword ("好好")
- In the popup window, click on any character (e.g., the first 好)
- Crash!

 

[epox512]

On a LG Optimus V (US) with 2.2.1 (no custom firmware) and 2GB SD card.
When using the handwriting recognizer it appears there is an invisible line dividing the handwriting area in half horizontally. Anything I write is replicating itself directly below the initial entry. However I can still look up my desired character, for example, 谭，using the handwriting recognizer, it is just distracting to see a double image. Check out the screenshots from my device. And keep up the fantastic work on your products. I've been using Pleco on Windows Mobile and iPod Touch for years now and it has been an invaluable resource for learning Chinese.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for all the great feedback!

Lol. This little thing only cost me $NZ 199, and it does 95% of what the Desire does, except with a smaller screen, lower res camera, and slower CPU. Ironically, I have more free space on this than I did on the Desire, as HTC's Sense isn't hogging it all. Perhaps Pleco could better handle the situation, with something like "Sorry, you need a higher resolution screen", or even something in the installer that checks hardware capabilities meet your minimum requirements ?

Edit: Actually, I've just read the link you provided above, and the resulting link to http://developer.android.com/guide/prac ... pport.html, which goes on to talk about how android scales applications to work on any sized screen, and how developers can optimize the display to work on particularly small or large displays. That suggests to me that it should actually work, even if things get scaled a little non-optimally, rather than crash ?

We're actually planning to support it eventually, but we didn't add specific dimension resources for it and apparently instead of falling back on the dimensions from another screen size Android decides it can't start up at all in that case. Hopefully we'll have it at least minimally functional on small-screen devices in Beta 2.

Simple Android apps can be designed to scale well to any display size, but there are a lot of areas of our UI that we weren't happy with until we started customizing them for each display size; with the appearance of large-screen tablets it's likely a lot more apps are going to have screen-size-specific layouts in the future, there's just no way for a single interface design to be ergonomically optimal on every possible Android device.

when i use pleco, my hd2 android cm7 have annoying noise on speaker.
how to solve this problem.

Could you describe that noise? Does it happen all the time or only when you do some particular action in Pleco?

My droid is Samsung Captivate i897 ,but flashed with I9000 version 2.2.1 firmware, 2.6.32.9 hardcore@speedmod-i897 kernel.

My minor problem for this free pack, excluding have to force it close some time, is there are only 4 buttons efn,字Info,Stroke and Words in the definition screen not 5 buttons as in your screenshot belows. the "Chars" button disappears. I don't know whether this is a Bug or just wrong setting?

That's by design - Chars is part of the paid stroke order add-on and rather than show a blank tab we just hide it. (though it might be clearer if we showed it and put up some sort of a demo warning message - people often seem to find those annoying though)

I downloaded and installed all of the zip files on the phone, but when I go to pleco.com/getandroid, I get the following error message: "Parse Error: There is a problem parsing the package." It is a HTC Legend 2.2

Any chance the file download might have been corrupted? Or that you might have forgotten to turn on the option to allow non-Android-Market apps? What carrier / region is your phone on?

In dictionary if I search for something, mybe Dog, I get a list of words including dog.
I then tap one, mybe Gou, and it opens a explination of the word Gou.
I then tap the chinese character and I get at pop-up where I can switch between different dictionarys.
If I then tap the chinese character in this pop-up the program com.pleco makes a "unexpected stop" and crashes.

We're seeing that here too now - not sure how we missed it but it should be easy to fix in Beta 2, thanks!

1.) When making changes is the "Settings -> Dictionary -> Main Screen Interface" I have to back all the way out of Pleco and re-enter it before the changes are reflected.
2.) When scrolling in the "definition" window, if I reach the top or bottom the expected Gingerbread orange shading appears to show I'm at the top or bottom of a list. If I scroll in the list of dictionary words window and reach the top or bottom, a very artifact-y version of the orange shading appears.
3.) You mentioned to someone earlier that the "import" feature for Flashcards is off right now because the new Flashcard system will have more verbose options. Does that mean we should start rebuilding our Flashcard libraries or wait until that feature is enabled?

1) Quite right - this is a bit tricky to set up since we basically have to exit / reopen that whole screen but we should be able to get it working in the finished version at least.
2) Could you possibly capture a screenshot of that? (no worries if it's too difficult) We'll have to investigate that further... it might be that it's clashing with our list background images for some reason, but I'm not seeing it on any of our Gingerbread devices.
3) You can actually still move over your flashcard database backup file - it's the same format, just put that file (with a .pqb extension, name probably "PlecoFlash" or "Pleco Flashcards" or "Pleco Flashcard Backup" or something like that) on your SD card and delete the Pleco flashcard file that's already there and you should see your categories listed in the flashcards screen.

When I click on a character in a definition, I get the pop-up window with the definition. Then, when I click on a character in the pop-up window, Pleco force-closes.

Sounds like the same bug LaoYou mentioned... should be fixed in Beta 2, thanks.

hello. i can't open files in the document reader. i go to the text file i want in the file picker and tap, but nothing happens, it just stay within the file picker. if i long tap, it gives me a list of apps i can open that file with, but pleco isn't one of them.

*NEVER MIND FOUND THE OK BUTTON*

That's actually a little embarrassing, we carefully rolled in our own version of the popular OI File Browser component just so that we could fix that problem (make files open with a tab rather than requiring the OK button) but then we somehow managed to break that in the first beta... so the correct behavior would be for it to work on just a tap and that should be supported in the next beta, thanks.

I did find, however, that it only occurs with traditional characters. If I toggle the character mode to simplified, everything displays perfectly.

Ah, that helps to illuminate this a bit... I'm seeing bits of this on a few devices here too now, hopefully we can sort it out for Beta 2; thanks!

I too see the same issue with some missing characters replaced by twin squares in the detail screen. Also these characters appear fine in all other screens i've tested, just appears to be the detail sentence example screen. I noticed that having searched for NiMen it was fine, then looked at the detail screen the "Men" was replaced by twin boxes as was "Liang" further along the sentence. Probably about 5% of characters are replaced like this. Need to do further investigation.

Are you seeing these only in traditional character mode like he is?

I'm getting this too. I also get force closes when scrolling the pop-up window definitions in Hanyu Guifan Dictionary. Other dictionaries don't seem to have this problem.

That might be that it's detecting a tap on a character, since there's nothing but characters in those entries...

Seconded. I was in a cafe yesterday. Even with light ambient noise, I had to hold the phone to my ear to hear the Pleco sounds clearly.

Definitely sounding like we need to remaster those, yeah...

Note that in the first screenshot, the traditional characters aren't dipslayed *at all*, not even as squares! Also, there appears to be some Korean in one of the entries in the list. So definitely something weird going on.

That's decidedly weird, yes... has to be something involving the custom coding we use for tricky traditional-to-simplified mappings, though that's all supported to be resolved at the level of our cross-platform code before it ever even gets to the Android UI code so I'm not sure how it's showing up here.

Whoops, one other small thing I forgot to mention. When drawing characters on the screen it tends to draw a series of dots rather than lines (a sort of stutter), UNLESS you draw very slowely; still recognises characters ok though. The LG is a pretty fast beast so was a bit surprised; it's pretty insignificant for me, but thought worth mentioning anyway.

Go into Settings / Dictionary / Input methods / Handwriting input and turn on "Force compatibility mode" at the bottom of the screen; does that help?

On a Nexus S with Android 2.3.4:

- Search for anything (e.g., "haohao")
- Click on the headword ("好好")
- In the popup window, click on any character (e.g., the first 好)
- Crash!

Sounds like the same bug several others have reported above - should be easy to fix in Beta 2, thanks!

When using the handwriting recognizer it appears there is an invisible line dividing the handwriting area in half horizontally. Anything I write is replicating itself directly below the initial entry. However I can still look up my desired character, for example, 谭，using the handwriting recognizer, it is just distracting to see a double image. Check out the screenshots from my device.

Go into Settings / Dictionary / Input methods / Handwriting input and turn on "Force compatibility mode" at the bottom of the screen; does that help? (seems that LGs have some funny things going on with their OpenGL drivers...)

 

[neilperks]

Hi Mike,

1. Yes exactly the same as garysaville (traditional characters only), toggling character mode to simplified solves the problem .

2. Forcing compatibility mode on the LG 2x does the trick for drawing characters; silky smooth now. LG tend to customise their phones a lot, so surprised Pleco works so well and smoothly on it; great work, no major issues so far .


Cheers

Neil

 

[epox512]

When using the handwriting recognizer it appears there is an invisible line dividing the handwriting area in half horizontally. Anything I write is replicating itself directly below the initial entry. However I can still look up my desired character, for example, 谭，using the handwriting recognizer, it is just distracting to see a double image. Check out the screenshots from my device.

Go into Settings / Dictionary / Input methods / Handwriting input and turn on "Force compatibility mode" at the bottom of the screen; does that help? (seems that LGs have some funny things going on with their OpenGL drivers...)[/quote]

Hi Mike,
I enabled "Force compatibility mode" and rebooted my phone. Upon opening Pleco and trying the handwriting recognizer again everything works normal now, just like the handwriting recognizer in the iPhone version. Thanks a lot!

 

[tonz22]

Thanks for all the great feedback!

when i use pleco, my hd2 android cm7 have annoying noise on speaker.
how to solve this problem.

Could you describe that noise? Does it happen all the time or only when you do some particular action in Pleco?

hi Mike..

the sound like radio no signal but small in background all time when pleco standby in background.

 

[Jon Stewart]

Handwriting input works but doesn't display correctly until I turn on "Force Compatibility Mode."
My device is here.
Not sure this is a bug or feedback. Under Force compatibility mode it says to email but I'm not sure where to send it.

 

[rbusch]

Device:

Samsung Galaxy S i9000
Cyanogenmod ROM (nightly 16)
English (Singapore) Language

Using OCR (clicked the focus button) on some simplified characters and strangely was given a German translation...? Everything else so far has been translated to English.

Characters: 使用说明
Result: Bedienungsanleitung (f), Betriebsanleitung (S)


(from a coffee grinder manual.....)

BTW, you're a hero, thanks so much for developing the software (and releasing this beta to the public)!

 

[ipsi]

I imagine that you have HanDeDict installed, which is the Chinese -> German dictionary. A quick check shows that there is no exact match for those characters in any of the dictionaries I have installed (all of them, barring HDD) - the closest is 使用说明书. Which means that if HDD has an exact match, it will pick that over a partial match in other dictionaries, I believe. If you don't speak German, either remove HDD or modify the options to exclude it from search results (Settings -> Dictionary -> Search Settings -> Search Dictionaries -> Manage Dictionaries, then tap on the dictionary whose options you want to change).

 

[chrisberkhout]

I've been using the Beta, including OCR, on HTC Desire, and I've got problems with battery life.
Suddenly, instead of lasting the usual 1 day, I'm down to a couple of hours. It runs out in the hours after using OCR for just a minute or so. Never had the problem before, have had it all 3 days since installing Pleco.

I'm going to try forcing Pleco to stop (via Settings > Applications > Manage applications > Running) after I'm done using it, because I suspect it is doing energy consuming things in the background. The strange thing is that the Android battery use info is reporting Cell standby as the highest battery user at 38%, then phone idle at 36%, and no Pleco.

Otherwise it's looking great so far! Had the ocr frame disappear once, but exited and reentered and it was fine again.

Cheers,
Chris