Pleco for Android Beta 5 Bug Report Thread
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
Hello!
Thanks for the new beat. I really love the new features (especially the support for multiple encodings in Reader). However, there are some annoying bugs that negatively affect the experience, and it would be better to have them fixed before the release.
The most annoying is the disappearing of the popup windows in Reader. This affects individual books (i.e. one book may become 'buggy', while the other works all right). All books work normally when opened for the first time. However, after some reading, the popups no longer appear. I am still able to add selected words to the flashcards, but not much more. This is rather painful, as Reader is the single most important feature in Pleco for me.
In Flashcards, the software crashes every time I try to enter the sketch mode. It worked all right in Beta 3.
Bookmarks are sometimes saved successfully, but often disappear. At the present stage, it is rather difficult to understand what causes this behavior.
A very minor bug, indeed. In Reader, when you select a two-character word that is split between two lines, the second character (i.e. the one that is on the second line) is replaced with the first. This does not affect the correctness of the query, and the character is fully restored once the word is deselected, so this bug is just a small hindrance.
I am using Dell Streak 10 Pro upgraded to Android 3.2. As I am a rather inexperienced Android user, I am not sure what other information I could report, but I would be happy to provide any supplementary details that would help to track down the bugs.
--Update--
I forgot to mention that the bug with disappearing popups was also present in Beta3. However, it was rather easy to get rid of it by rebooting the device, which does not help any longer.
Thanks for the new beat. I really love the new features (especially the support for multiple encodings in Reader). However, there are some annoying bugs that negatively affect the experience, and it would be better to have them fixed before the release.
The most annoying is the disappearing of the popup windows in Reader. This affects individual books (i.e. one book may become 'buggy', while the other works all right). All books work normally when opened for the first time. However, after some reading, the popups no longer appear. I am still able to add selected words to the flashcards, but not much more. This is rather painful, as Reader is the single most important feature in Pleco for me.
In Flashcards, the software crashes every time I try to enter the sketch mode. It worked all right in Beta 3.
Bookmarks are sometimes saved successfully, but often disappear. At the present stage, it is rather difficult to understand what causes this behavior.
A very minor bug, indeed. In Reader, when you select a two-character word that is split between two lines, the second character (i.e. the one that is on the second line) is replaced with the first. This does not affect the correctness of the query, and the character is fully restored once the word is deselected, so this bug is just a small hindrance.
I am using Dell Streak 10 Pro upgraded to Android 3.2. As I am a rather inexperienced Android user, I am not sure what other information I could report, but I would be happy to provide any supplementary details that would help to track down the bugs.
--Update--
I forgot to mention that the bug with disappearing popups was also present in Beta3. However, it was rather easy to get rid of it by rebooting the device, which does not help any longer.
mikelove said:
Always text file.
Also, I found another bug, but I haven't been able to reproduce it reliably: When the pop-up definition is open in the reader, after hitting the dictionary switch button, or the arrow button, the cursor suddenly jumps up to an earlier place in the file, while the pop-up still has the definition of whatever was there or the next character, not the actual character it has jumped to.
*edit* this also happens when hitting the alternate definition arrow. also jumps down...
Another bug with the reader (a really small one): if a word is cut between two lines (like 生<next line>活) and you mark it then both characters will be displayed as the first character (in this example, 生), but show the popup for 生活.
I can't reproduce the problem benzhen is having, I think. I don't change the dictionary that much. But sometime i get some strange behavior when trying to select word "on the edge". Say I have this sentence:
今天是我的生日也是我最高兴的日子. I have my font sett very high, so this sentence breaks after ...也是我...and the next line would start with ...最高兴... If I try to click on 我 i would get the definition for 最高. But not always, just very often.
I can't reproduce the problem benzhen is having, I think. I don't change the dictionary that much. But sometime i get some strange behavior when trying to select word "on the edge". Say I have this sentence:
今天是我的生日也是我最高兴的日子. I have my font sett very high, so this sentence breaks after ...也是我...and the next line would start with ...最高兴... If I try to click on 我 i would get the definition for 最高. But not always, just very often.
hey,
after my last post i tried some of the things you suggested like clearing all my strokes with 2-finger-tap in while in a flashcard-session.. it works in a way as it clears my input, but at the same time chooses the character which was preselected after what i've had already written, so instead of starting over with my input i end up with giving a wrong answer. in the new versions there's this "backspace" button which works just fine but is a little hard to hit for a left-handed guy with huge fingertips...
next to this i cannot go back a card while i'm in a flashcard session until i answered the current one. with my old windows-mobile version i used to go back in a session from time to time and practice drawing characters i got wrong or which are new to me, this is hard to do with the android version.. for example in "sketch" mode for cards i already answered it won't give me a list of characters to choose from, having to answer the next question first and not being able to train drawing makes this a very unattractive way of learning.
sometimes the orientation changes unintentionally while i'm drawing a character due to the way i hold my phone, it clears all the strokes i already had and is pretty annoying, an option to keep a chosen orientation would be very nice
i just tried to buy the stroke order and ocr-plugins but i don't see how to do it on the website.. if i try it on my phone it says "Registration failed! Contact Pleco support.". I can login with my email-adress + password at the "My orders" section of the website, but there doesn't seem to be any option of adding additional plugins, if i go to the shop after logging in on the "My orders" page it forgets who i am and asks me to register with all my contact details. If i click on "My orders" again after logging in it asks for my credentials again. I tried in Firefox and Chrome, Cookies are turned on, Screenshot attached.
Thanks for your help, lenix
after my last post i tried some of the things you suggested like clearing all my strokes with 2-finger-tap in while in a flashcard-session.. it works in a way as it clears my input, but at the same time chooses the character which was preselected after what i've had already written, so instead of starting over with my input i end up with giving a wrong answer. in the new versions there's this "backspace" button which works just fine but is a little hard to hit for a left-handed guy with huge fingertips...
next to this i cannot go back a card while i'm in a flashcard session until i answered the current one. with my old windows-mobile version i used to go back in a session from time to time and practice drawing characters i got wrong or which are new to me, this is hard to do with the android version.. for example in "sketch" mode for cards i already answered it won't give me a list of characters to choose from, having to answer the next question first and not being able to train drawing makes this a very unattractive way of learning.
sometimes the orientation changes unintentionally while i'm drawing a character due to the way i hold my phone, it clears all the strokes i already had and is pretty annoying, an option to keep a chosen orientation would be very nice
i just tried to buy the stroke order and ocr-plugins but i don't see how to do it on the website.. if i try it on my phone it says "Registration failed! Contact Pleco support.". I can login with my email-adress + password at the "My orders" section of the website, but there doesn't seem to be any option of adding additional plugins, if i go to the shop after logging in on the "My orders" page it forgets who i am and asks me to register with all my contact details. If i click on "My orders" again after logging in it asks for my credentials again. I tried in Firefox and Chrome, Cookies are turned on, Screenshot attached.
Thanks for your help, lenix
Attachments
egrebnev said:
Ah, thanks, just managed to reproduce this - looks like it relates to the length of the document (which is why it's only coming up after a while - you must be scrolling down in it). Should be easy to fix for Beta 6, but in the meantime, if you break up your books into multiple smaller chapter-sized files, the reader should work fine with them.
egrebnev said:
That one's already been reported / will be fixed in B6.
egrebnev said:
We haven't seen any bookmark-saving troubles in this beta... is the problem that newly-added bookmarks sometimes fail to save, or that the bookmarks file sometimes seems to get obliterated altogether?
egrebnev said:
Yeah, I'm seeing that too... quite odd, but shouldn't be difficult to fix.
egrebnev said:
Well that's odd... any chance that this might be related to Beta 3's issues with saving your place in the document? (so it would reset your position on a reboot and leave you at an earlier point in the document where the reader worked correctly?)
skripp said:
Thanks - we actually think we've managed to fix this now (at least on a Galaxy S with an otherwise-problematic CM nightly), and we've also found / fixed the custom font problem now.
benzhen said:
Thanks.
benzhen said:
Hmm, haven't seen that one yet; we'll see if we can reproduce it just by random testing, but if you come up with a particular thing that makes it happen consistently (specific document / place in the document, say) please let me know.
skripp said:
This sounds similar to egrebnev's bug earlier; I'm surprised it wasn't reported during Beta 3 since it seems to have been present in that too.
lenix said:
Ah, good point, we should make backspace easier to hit.
lenix said:
So you'd like the sketch box to keep working even after you've answered the question? I didn't even remember that it worked that way on WM... we can certainly think about making this an option, but it's worked this way on iOS for the entire year-and-a-half since our iOS flashcard add-on launched and I believe you're the first person to complain about it.
lenix said:
It's actually supposed to preserve the strokes in that case, though an orientation lock would be a good idea too.
lenix said:
Go to http://www.pleco.com/store for that - enter your Registration ID in the catalog page for each add-on you want to purchase before you add it to your shopping cart. (very temporary system until the finished version launches)
mikelove said:
Could you perhaps use a two-finger resize? pinch/spread either up/down or left/right?
Or, in a "largish" tablet, perhaps a control strip on the side/bottom that could jog the sizes bigger/smaller
stephanhodges said:
Two-finger gestures don't really work in OCR because of the way most people hold their devices - very few people use it in a hold-with-one-hand / manipulate-screen-with-other-hand configuration, usually they either hold it with one hand and control it with that thumb or hold it with two hands for steadiness.
I don't see live OCR on tablets taking off on the near future - furious price competition means that we're unlikely to see good cameras on popular 7-inch tablets for a while (the Kindle / Nook don't have them at all - doesn't seem like a big deal, but a good autofocus camera module can run $25 or $30 wholesale), and 10-inch tablets are just too heavy to hold up and point at things.
benzhen said:
Ah, that should make this considerably easier to reproduce - thanks!
I've been having an odd behavior when trying to open/start Pleco. I touch the icon, and screen blanks as if starting up, and then it returns to the desktop screen. The second time it always works. Generally opens to the dictionary. That's where I usually have it.
The most recent time, I had looked up a word (zhēn cè qì 侦测器). I "think" my normal habit is to either press the "back" button or "home" button to jump to another application. Other than that, nothing really different. Oh, I had also pressed (and held) the "+" key to add that word to a dictionary category.
On another tack (this reminded me), I remember that I could create a new category "on the fly" when doing press/hold for adding a card on my Palm... Not sure if it's a valid memory or a strong wish, but I'd sure like to be able to create categories on the fly!
The most recent time, I had looked up a word (zhēn cè qì 侦测器). I "think" my normal habit is to either press the "back" button or "home" button to jump to another application. Other than that, nothing really different. Oh, I had also pressed (and held) the "+" key to add that word to a dictionary category.
On another tack (this reminded me), I remember that I could create a new category "on the fly" when doing press/hold for adding a card on my Palm... Not sure if it's a valid memory or a strong wish, but I'd sure like to be able to create categories on the fly!
Related to downloading "Updated" files.
I have all the audio updates listed. Once I click to download a single one, I cannot use the "download all" button. It just doesn't do anything. (Wanted to download one first, check it, and then download "all" while I went to lunch. Now, I'm sort of stuck with doing them one by one
Ah... I found that I can click them all and they queue up, so it's quite a minor issue.
I have all the audio updates listed. Once I click to download a single one, I cannot use the "download all" button. It just doesn't do anything. (Wanted to download one first, check it, and then download "all" while I went to lunch. Now, I'm sort of stuck with doing them one by one
Ah... I found that I can click them all and they queue up, so it's quite a minor issue.
stephanhodges said:
This is a known problem. I've been calling it the "false start" problem, and was just about to post again about it when I saw your post. It would be helpful to know your device, so maybe put it in your signature?
With the current beta, I'm experiencing quite a significant improvement of the "false start" problem on my Galaxy S2. On my Galaxy Note, however, the problem is really bad. I presently get "false starts" more often on my Note than I ever did on my S2. Other apps sometimes delay on the Note, but they always start. Only Pleco has this problem of a much longer delay, and then finally returning to the home screen, where it always launches properly on the second try. On my Note, this has become kind of a dealbreaker: Pleco on the Note has let me down in the field so many times that now I'm gun shy about reaching for the Note in a situation of linguistic demand--a 7-second delay is a killer in a live situation, and the anticipation of a 7-second delay keeps the device in my pocket rather than risk the delay. I had to go back to carrying my S2 when I know I'm going to be facing social situations.
I'd love to be able to track the support and feedback on this issue, but alas, I don't want to subscribe to such a busy thread devoted to feedback on all bugs. Should the more popular bugs get their own thread?
stephanhodges said:I have all the audio updates listed. Once I click to download a single one, I cannot use the "download all" button. It just doesn't do anything. (Wanted to download one first, check it, and then download "all" while I went to lunch. Now, I'm sort of stuck with doing them one by one
Ah... I found that I can click them all and they queue up, so it's quite a minor issue.
Already reported, thanks - should be fixed in Beta 6.
JimmyTheSaint said:
We've finally solved this one, actually, so no more need to report it - it turned out to be almost entirely Google's fault, basically there are certain circumstances in which Android will revive a portion of the UI of a completely dead app (one that's been killed in the background, i.e.) with pointers to its old data intact, so that you now have that bit of UI hanging around using invalid data and crashing as soon as it tries to do anything with it. The UI for which that was happening in Pleco related to embedding the definition on the main dictionary search screen, so it would generally only appear on devices where that was the default configuration.
Beta 6 should be out to fix this and pretty much all of the other reported bugs quite soon, but in the meantime, if it really bugs you you can turn off the "Two-panel" options in Settings / Dictionary / Main screen interface to get rid of it (though this involves some loss of functionality).
JimmyTheSaint said:
Perhaps, but I'm hoping there won't be any new ones of this level of popularity until after the finished release is out
ausgang said:
Thanks, seeing that here too - Honeycomb really screwed up the way Android does preferences screens.
ausgang said:
Yes, though you might find you end up with some pulverized settings in the process - http://www.pleco.com/plecodroid-110912.apk
Pleco often crashes when I switch to another application and afterwards relaunch it by tapping the application button on the home screen. Basically, the program attempts to launch, then something fails, then I launch it for the second time, and it starts successfully. Although it happens often, I am not able to reproduce the bug at the present moment. Also, it seems that when this bug occurs, the application loses the particular place in a particular file open in the Reader, and as a result I have to do some scrolling in order to restore the position where I finished reading the previous time.
Wohoo! The OCR finally works after trying various settings on my Huawei Ideos X5 running android 2.2.1.
I had to set screen orientation to "always landscape" and camera orientation to "always 180 degrees". When choosing "always portrait" then no matter what's the choice for camera orientation, the OCR shows the book's text as rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Moreover there's a strange behavior with "always landscape".
"always landscape" + camera orientation:
1) "always 0 degrees": the book's text is oriented correctly on the OCR interface, but the OCR is not able to recognize any character. Not even simple ones like 人. Not even when rotating the book.
2) "always 90 degrees": the book's text is rotated 90 degrees clockwise on the interface.
3) "always 180 degrees": the text is oriented correctly (i.e. exactly as with "always 0 degrees"), but now it recognizes characters!
I can upload some photos if this explanation was a bit clumsy.
I had to set screen orientation to "always landscape" and camera orientation to "always 180 degrees". When choosing "always portrait" then no matter what's the choice for camera orientation, the OCR shows the book's text as rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Moreover there's a strange behavior with "always landscape".
"always landscape" + camera orientation:
1) "always 0 degrees": the book's text is oriented correctly on the OCR interface, but the OCR is not able to recognize any character. Not even simple ones like 人. Not even when rotating the book.
2) "always 90 degrees": the book's text is rotated 90 degrees clockwise on the interface.
3) "always 180 degrees": the text is oriented correctly (i.e. exactly as with "always 0 degrees"), but now it recognizes characters!
I can upload some photos if this explanation was a bit clumsy.