Pleco for Android Beta 1 Bug Report Thread

[bbe]

I appear to be having the same problem as others with wildfire. The program is installed according to the instructions, but when I try to launch the program, it just shows a black screen for several seconds before returning to the home screen.

I'm the one with the China Mobile HTC A3380 野火. There are definitely some quirks to the device that I guess have mainly to do with the China Mobile "flavor" froyo. The default software doesn't even come with (or let you install) vending.apk. I had to use the install command through ADB to get the standard market on there, what a pain.

 

[andy_yang]

I'd like to delete the Chinese-German dictionary. Is it p2dehandict.pdb or p2handedict.pdb? Do you have a list of dictionaries/description/file names handy?

 

[ipsi]

Not sure if there is a list, but those two files are both German dictionaries. The first is German -> Chinese, the second is Chinese -> German.

 

[rbusch]

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).

Thank ipsi, I see now that those files came in the Extra Dictionary pack I downloaded from pleco.com/androidbeta.html my mistake!

Cheers,

Richard

 

[andy_yang]

Not sure if there is a list, but those two files are both German dictionaries. The first is German -> Chinese, the second is Chinese -> German.

Dear Ipsi, Ta.
Andy

 

[Syz]

I have the same problem reported by fool4christ. When I try to install the apk on my motorola milestone it says, "Parse Error: There is a problem parsing the package". I've downloaded it three separate times and had the same issue. I also have the box checked to "allow install of non-Market applications." I'm on China Mobile's crappy network in Beijing. Any ideas?

 

[garyhurtz]

Hello, very minor UI issue found: 1) hold phone in portrait mode with "two-panel in portrait mode" unchecked (default mode), 2) check "two-panel in portrait mode" and return to the app. 3) Nothing happened, screen still in "one-panel" mode. 4) Rotate phone to landscape mode, display switches to "two-panel" mode (the default for landscape mode). 5) Rotate phone back to portrait mode, now the screen reflects the menu item change.

I have found a number of similar conditions when switching back and forth between one and two panel modes, my guess is that you need to add a call to your "update the screen" routine when exiting the menuing routine.

HTC Desire, Android 2.2

 

[plecoUser]

On a samsung galaxy s2 I need to turn on 'forced compatibility mode' in order to see the trail of my hand writing when performing a search using hwr. It isn't really that smooth either considering the power of the s2.

 

[mikelove]

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 .

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!

Great! Seems like we should probably leave that on by default, then, at least on LG phones.

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

Probably has to do with our keeping an audio session running in order to allow for fast audio playback... we'll try to add some code to mute it more effectively.

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.

Thanks - so now Sony Ericsson and LG seem to need the same fix that HTC does.

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.

OCR is extremely power-intensive - basically running the CPU at 100% the whole time - but that still wouldn't explain it eating up hours of standby time after just a minute of usage, so it sounds like there may be some sort of background process issue.

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.

Pleco actually shouldn't be doing much in the background but we'll do some tests to make sure... please let us know whether killing it in the background ends up helping matters.

I appear to be having the same problem as others with wildfire. The program is installed according to the instructions, but when I try to launch the program, it just shows a black screen for several seconds before returning to the home screen.

Yeah, looks like the same issue - should be fixed in Beta 2.

I have the same problem reported by fool4christ. When I try to install the apk on my motorola milestone it says, "Parse Error: There is a problem parsing the package". I've downloaded it three separate times and had the same issue. I also have the box checked to "allow install of non-Market applications." I'm on China Mobile's crappy network in Beijing. Any ideas?

Which version of Android are you running on your Milestone?

Hello, very minor UI issue found: 1) hold phone in portrait mode with "two-panel in portrait mode" unchecked (default mode), 2) check "two-panel in portrait mode" and return to the app. 3) Nothing happened, screen still in "one-panel" mode. 4) Rotate phone to landscape mode, display switches to "two-panel" mode (the default for landscape mode). 5) Rotate phone back to portrait mode, now the screen reflects the menu item change.

I have found a number of similar conditions when switching back and forth between one and two panel modes, my guess is that you need to add a call to your "update the screen" routine when exiting the menuing routine.

Actually have to reload the entire activity, but yes, we do need to fix that.

On a samsung galaxy s2 I need to turn on 'forced compatibility mode' in order to see the trail of my hand writing when performing a search using hwr. It isn't really that smooth either considering the power of the s2.

That's odd, on an original Galaxy here it seems to be very smooth even with that mode on, and likewise on similarly-specced devices like an HTC Desire... do you mean that it's not smooth in that it lags behind your finger drawing or that it looks jagged / rough?

 

[Syz]

Mike, I'm running Android 2.1

 

[mikelove]

Mike, I'm running Android 2.1

Ah, that explains it - 2.2 is the minimum, unfortunately.

BTW, I believe we've now fixed every bug posted so far except for the lack of CDM parsing and the background noise (still working on that one though we've got a few theories) - got it working on small screens (though it's a little cramped), even found a few potential power drains (and the background noise is another candidate) - so hopefully there'll be a Beta 2 with those fixes out in a few days.

UPDATE: background noise fixed too now, but keep those bug reports coming.

 

[Sarevok]

plecoUser wrote:
On a samsung galaxy s2 I need to turn on 'forced compatibility mode' in order to see the trail of my hand writing when performing a search using hwr. It isn't really that smooth either considering the power of the s2.

That's odd, on an original Galaxy here it seems to be very smooth even with that mode on, and likewise on similarly-specced devices like an HTC Desire... do you mean that it's not smooth in that it lags behind your finger drawing or that it looks jagged / rough?

Might be because the Galaxy S II has a different GPU (Mali-400MP) as opposed to the original Galaxy S (PowerVR SGX 540)

 

[mikelove]

Might be because the Galaxy S II has a different GPU (Mali-400MP) as opposed to the original Galaxy S (PowerVR SGX 540)

Could be - I suppose that's a good reason for getting a Galaxy S II in here, though in Beta 2 we've managed to optimize the (now always-on) compatibility mode performance a good bit by reducing the amount of data we copy to hardware buffers, so hopefully it'll feel a lot smoother.

 

[Syz]

sorry -- missed the 2.2 req. thanks

 

[character]

Mike,

WRT your instructions http://www.pleco.com/androidbeta.html

On a Mac trying to install Android on a Xoom (borrowed from work) I had to get this software to transfer files: http://www.android.com/filetransfer/

 

[beirne]

Motorola Droid 2 - Android 2.2

Alas, Pleco doesn't work on my phone. Whenever I try to start it I get:

Sorry! The application Pleco (process com.pleco.chinesesystem) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.

Force close

 

[mikelove]

On a Mac trying to install Android on a Xoom (borrowed from work) I had to get this software to transfer files: http://www.android.com/filetransfer/

Good point, I need that to connect to our Xoom as well.

Alas, Pleco doesn't work on my phone. Whenever I try to start it I get:

Sorry! The application Pleco (process com.pleco.chinesesystem) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.

Could you send or post your crash logs? Easiest way to get those is with the free aLogcat or CatLog app in Android Market.

 

[horseclass]

Hi Mike,

I have a dell streak running 2.2. The handwriting recognizer didn't work at all till I forced compatibility mode.

Originally it was a statically looking screen with a vertical line of half inch spaced black dots wherever I place my finger. It was recognizing the strokes, but not writing them on the screen.

 

[horseclass]

This is not really a bug but...

I experimented with changing fonts to change the font in Pleco, replacing DroidSans and DroidFallback with various Chinese fonts.
It would change the reader font fine (Traditional characters) but would not completely change the fonts in the dictionary. Only a few were actually changed to the new font, most remained the original font, and there were also missing characters (I guess this last one was due to the font being not complete enough).

Don't know if this info will help later on - not having to license fonts etc.

 

[mikelove]

This is not really a bug but...

I experimented with changing fonts to change the font in Pleco, replacing DroidSans and DroidFallback with various Chinese fonts.
It would change the reader font fine (Traditional characters) but would not completely change the fonts in the dictionary. Only a few were actually changed to the new font, most remained the original font, and there were also missing characters (I guess this last one was due to the font being not complete enough).

Don't know if this info will help later on - not having to license fonts etc.

That's expected - we use custom font files in order to guarantee support for some characters that aren't in the built-in ones, though we might be able to provide a workaround for the finished version.