Pleco for Android Beta 9 Bug Report Thread

[mikelove]

As usual, we'd love to hear about any previously-reported bugs that are still present in Beta 9 as well. (really hoping there won't be many...)

 

[stephanhodges]

Updating to beta 9 and all but "current" files are missing from the "recent files".

ALL bookmarks are gone.

The only thing I had done before opening the reader was to look at some words, and look in History. I DID clear the OCR history. Also, not sure why there was any thing IN the history, since I had cleared it in version 8, and haven't used OCR since then... I also tried to clear flashcard history, but actually just to see what you ended up with for a message 8) I think the new message is very clear and informative.

 

[JimmyTheSaint]

home buttons don't work from flashcards editor

When I click on a flashcard to edit, the menu button shows six options, but clicking on any of them has no effect. Of course, switching to another app and then back to Pleco will give me the "home" behavior. As mentioned before, I'd find the "home"function useful in every possible context, including aborting from deep within settings or flashcards.

 

[mikelove]

Updating to beta 9 and all but "current" files are missing from the "recent files".

ALL bookmarks are gone.

The only thing I had done before opening the reader was to look at some words, and look in History. I DID clear the OCR history. Also, not sure why there was any thing IN the history, since I had cleared it in version 8, and haven't used OCR since then... I also tried to clear flashcard history, but actually just to see what you ended up with for a message 8) I think the new message is very clear and informative.

Did your flashcards disappear? Or any other add-ons? Strange that just the bookmarks file would go away - it's stored in the exact same directory as your flashcards, and it's only opened when the software is actually in the process of reading from (or writing to) it.

When I click on a flashcard to edit, the menu button shows six options, but clicking on any of them has no effect. Of course, switching to another app and then back to Pleco will give me the "home" behavior. As mentioned before, I'd find the "home"function useful in every possible context, including aborting from deep within settings or flashcards.

Looks like for some reason it's showing the menu from the definition screen... easy to fix, anyway. Adding Home in flashcard settings and info screens is a good idea for a later update but we're not really adding even minor new features like this anymore for the first official release.

 

[mfcb]

hmmm, maybe i remember it wrong, but i think before beta 9 i did not need to answer an "encoding" dialog, when opening a file in reader... is that new, or is my memory faulty...

 

[stephanhodges]

Still have flashcards. Also, the previously OPEN document in the reader was still in the reader. That was the only name in the "Recent Files" tab. I had 4 other documents in that tab before the update.

Does the reader automatically generate a "furthest read" bookmark? If so, does it also keep a separate "current position" mark? It would be nice to be able to see these in the bookmark viewer. I'd also like to request an enhancement to see the character position of the bookmark in the bookmark viewer. That helps if I'm using some other reader, or on my laptop.

Of course, still hoping to eventually see an integrated export/import of all settings, including bookmarks, etc.

I'm going to "pitch" Pleco to a friend today, who has an iPad. I'd really like to get to play with Pleco on an iPad too, to compare, if nothing else haha. :wink:

 

[mikelove]

hmmm, maybe i remember it wrong, but i think before beta 9 i did not need to answer an "encoding" dialog, when opening a file in reader... is that new, or is my memory faulty...

It's not new but it is document-specific - some files include a code at the start to indicate the encoding, so there's no prompt for those.

Still have flashcards. Also, the previously OPEN document in the reader was still in the reader. That was the only name in the "Recent Files" tab. I had 4 other documents in that tab before the update.

Perhaps something is corrupting the file, then - we'll investigate. The previously open document is stored in a different place so there's nothing strange about that staying put - did it remember your place in the file?

Does the reader automatically generate a "furthest read" bookmark? If so, does it also keep a separate "current position" mark? It would be nice to be able to see these in the bookmark viewer. I'd also like to request an enhancement to see the character position of the bookmark in the bookmark viewer. That helps if I'm using some other reader, or on my laptop.

Only a "current position" one - "furthest read" is a good idea but mostly makes sense once you have a sync system (so that people can sync their book progress between devices). Could consider it, I suppose, but I'd rather wait until we have a better idea about what sync is going to look like on Android.

Of course, still hoping to eventually see an integrated export/import of all settings, including bookmarks, etc.

Good idea, but in the meantime you can back up your bookmarks (or even export them) anytime by just copying out the docbookmarks.json file from your /Android/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/files/databases/ folder.

I'm going to "pitch" Pleco to a friend today, who has an iPad. I'd really like to get to play with Pleco on an iPad too, to compare, if nothing else haha.

They're actually pretty similar, though the iPad is going to be good bit more tablet-optimized as of the next update (since unlike Google, Apple doesn't force us to totally overhaul our UI in a way that doesn't work on most current devices in order to make it fully support tablets).

 

[stephanhodges]

No, it didn't remember the position I was at. It started at the beginning. Of course, there's no visible "cursor" and it's a large screen... But, it should have been on a different page, so this time I can definitely say it didn't "remember".

Thanks for the reminder on how to save the file. Also, thanks for the sales "tip" when I present to my friend.

 

[mikelove]

No, it didn't remember the position I was at. It started at the beginning. Of course, there's no visible "cursor" and it's a large screen... But, it should have been on a different page, so this time I can definitely say it didn't "remember".

OK, that helps to clarify that it's the entire bookmark file that went missing (rather than just the document links being corrupted somehow) - thanks!

 

[aiwen]

Here is a list of some points that are still a bit annoying (or I just do not know how to do it...):
- Full-text search: According to the manual, there should be a button to toggle between normal search and full-text search mode: "You can insert or remove this character automatically by tapping on the "Full" button, the rightmost button in the row of buttons below the Search Field." But I cannot find such a button..
- How can I easily insert new entries into the user dictionary? So far, I just found the following way: 1. Clear the search field. 2. Switch to the User dictionary. 3. Select any entry and go to it's definiton. 4. Press on "Edit entry". 5. There I can enter a new one.
Is there a simpler way to do this?
- Import flash card file: By default, the definitions come from a dictionary, even if I deselect this in the Pleco settings. I would like to use the entries in the flash cards. If there would be a batch command that can do this, this would also be helpful. (I tried the following file: http://hskflashcards.com/d/npcr_2_plecodict2.xml)
- Reader (may be this is a question of personal preference): If I have selected a text passage (with pop-up visible) and I would like to switch to another passage, I have to click twice: First to go back to the reader (without pop-up) and select the new text passage (the pop-up apperas again). Would it be possible to do this in only one click? Even the arrows do not help: This will only jump to the next character or word. The same applies also to texts in dictionary definitions or examples.

Good news for those who use Pleco on a rooted Sony PRS-T1 reader: I found the location where to put custom font files:
/mnt/sdcard/Sony_Reader/data/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/files/fonts/chinese/
With the font from my Windows Mobile phone (ZYSong.ttf), Pleco looks now really great!

 

[stephanhodges]

I was just going to post about how hard it is to add to user dictionary. I found a word 转接器 zhuan3jie1qi4 when I looked up the English "adapter". I wanted to add it to my user dictionary.

1. You can select all three characters from the dictionary entry but CANNOT copy all three to clipboard. It only copies first two.

2. Manually entering all three, there's no way to add to user dictionary. I haven't even been able to select USR dictionary from there. At least aiwen came up with a method. S/He's smarter than me! :mrgreen:

This is way harder than it was for the Palm. I have the same frustrations from the reader app.

Because it's so hard to just copy something, it makes it hard to paste/create.

At least a good "step by step" or two of examples in the manual at this point? I know it's probably too late for the release schedule.

 

[mikelove]

- Full-text search: According to the manual, there should be a button to toggle between normal search and full-text search mode: "You can insert or remove this character automatically by tapping on the "Full" button, the rightmost button in the row of buttons below the Search Field." But I cannot find such a button..

Sorry, glitch in the manual - we got rid of that button (and the Wild one) because we needed space for the speech and OCR buttons (and they fit better thematically anyway). So to invoke full-text search on Android, simply insert a # at the start of your search term.

- How can I easily insert new entries into the user dictionary? So far, I just found the following way: 1. Clear the search field. 2. Switch to the User dictionary. 3. Select any entry and go to it's definiton. 4. Press on "Edit entry". 5. There I can enter a new one. Is there a simpler way to do this?

Do steps 1-2, then close the keyboard and you'll see a nice friendly "Add New Entry" button.

- Import flash card file: By default, the definitions come from a dictionary, even if I deselect this in the Pleco settings. I would like to use the entries in the flash cards. If there would be a batch command that can do this, this would also be helpful. (I tried the following file: http://hskflashcards.com/d/npcr_2_plecodict2.xml)

Did you already have dictionary-linked flashcards created for those words? It would link to those cards (and their associated dictionary entries) if so; to change that, set "Duplicate cards" to "Allow" on the Import Cards screen.

- Reader (may be this is a question of personal preference): If I have selected a text passage (with pop-up visible) and I would like to switch to another passage, I have to click twice: First to go back to the reader (without pop-up) and select the new text passage (the pop-up apperas again). Would it be possible to do this in only one click? Even the arrows do not help: This will only jump to the next character or word. The same applies also to texts in dictionary definitions or examples.

What device are you using this on? In general our feeling is that since the popup bubble and its toolbars cover so much of the screen, there isn't much point in making other characters tappable on the rare occasions when you want to jump to something that's still visible behind the bubble - better to use that tap as a simple "dismiss" gesture so that you can avoid having to move your finger all the way down to the back button when you're just going to have to bring it back up to the screen again to tap on the next word you're interested in.

Good news for those who use Pleco on a rooted Sony PRS-T1 reader: I found the location where to put custom font files:
/mnt/sdcard/Sony_Reader/data/data/com.pleco.chinesesystem/files/fonts/chinese/
With the font from my Windows Mobile phone (ZYSong.ttf), Pleco looks now really great!

Interesting - haven't seen that used as an external storage directory before.

1. You can select all three characters from the dictionary entry but CANNOT copy all three to clipboard. It only copies first two.

Not seeing that problem here - all three seem to copy just fine. Did you copy them by tapping on the clipboard button in the reader toolbar, or by some other method?

This is way harder than it was for the Palm. I have the same frustrations from the reader app.

Difficult to avoid since we have so many fewer buttons / menu options on a finger-driven touchscreen, but I don't think the method I outlined above is too bad. When we have the time to do a wider variety of tablet UI optimizations we might be able to give it a dedicated button, but there's unfortunately no time for that for the initial release.

What are you finding harder about the reader, though? Very similar interface to what we had on Palm, we just moved the buttons to a dedicated toolbar on the bottom of the screen. There's no Instant Access but that's impossible on Android.

 

[mikelove]

Updating to beta 9 and all but "current" files are missing from the "recent files".

ALL bookmarks are gone.

Finally got to the bottom of this; it turned out that proguard (the utility we use to scramble the names of our application's various functions / variables / etc so that hackers can't easily figure out what it's doing) had done exactly what it was supposed to do and randomly changed the names of the items like "file path" and "last location" and "bookmark" in the bookmarks file. So the old file looked like invalid gibberish and was therefore replaced. Anyway, we can easily fix this for the finished release - thanks very much for pointing it out.

This means that bookmarks will be erased again in the finished version, however, so I'd recommend not investing a whole lot of time into creating bookmarks for Beta 9.

 

[MintPastille]

Using flashcards, when doing self-graded reviews showing audio, you can only re-listen to the audio three times (by pressing the button in the corner). After that, a dialog box pops up saying that you need to change the review mode so that audio is the prompt, which already is the case. Now, this is probably also a bug on my part since I shouldn't have to listen to the word more than three times, but still!

 

[mikelove]

Using flashcards, when doing self-graded reviews showing audio, you can only re-listen to the audio three times (by pressing the button in the corner). After that, a dialog box pops up saying that you need to change the review mode so that audio is the prompt, which already is the case. Now, this is probably also a bug on my part since I shouldn't have to listen to the word more than three times, but still!

Very good catch - you're actually getting hit by the "max # of replays" setting in Test Settings, but the same alert is coming up regardless of whether that setting or the lack of audio in "Show" is responsible for the audio not playing. Anyway, we'll put up a better error for the release version, but you can work around it now just by setting "Max # of plays" to "Unlimited." Thanks!

 

[Alexis]

Minor Bug:
I have the NWP dictionary set as the first dictionary for English-Chinese.
I search for the word "reaction". The dictionary sits at the word "reactionary" in the NWP, instead of switching to my next dictionary which has the word "reaction".

 

[ausgang]

Selecting category when adding flashcards:

When I long-press the "+" Button to add the entry as a flashcard the pop-up for category-selection appears.
Problem: I can't select sub-categories, it's only possible to add the entry to the main-categories. How to?
`
Because of the port to android I can now sell my iPhone and get rid of apple. Thanks!

 

[quartzie]

OCR issues compared to first beta

Comparing to plecodroid-110912 apk, the new beta has a lot more issues with my camera (Xperia Ray, stock Android 2.3.4).

The original beta worked well, while in the new version, the image is squeezed into the top half of the screen if phone is in portrait orientation, and the OCR frame doesn't match the underlying image. As a result, the OCR detects characters somewhere above or below the frame and the whole image has a wrong aspect ratio.

This is with Default camera orientation and Auto screen rotation. No other combination gives the proper results.
Camera Natural orientation with phone in portrait gives a superwide stretched image over the whole screen.

I tried uninstalling the whole application and reinstalling, no change.

 

[mikelove]

Minor Bug:
I have the NWP dictionary set as the first dictionary for English-Chinese.
I search for the word "reaction". The dictionary sits at the word "reactionary" in the NWP, instead of switching to my next dictionary which has the word "reaction".

That's actually been around for years - we can't quite decide how to deal with it; we don't want to switch you out of your current dictionary for a partial match (since you'd inevitably end up getting moved to 21C in every search owing to its greater number of entries) so honestly it will probably only get dealt with once we extend merged multi-dict searches to English-Chinese.

When I long-press the "+" Button to add the entry as a flashcard the pop-up for category-selection appears.
Problem: I can't select sub-categories, it's only possible to add the entry to the main-categories. How to?

Turn on "Multi-level prompt" in the flashcard settings and that will let you select from multiple levels. (more awkward UI, which is why we keep the single-level list the default)

This is with Default camera orientation and Auto screen rotation. No other combination gives the proper results.
Camera Natural orientation with phone in portrait gives a superwide stretched image over the whole screen.

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with this - in general the last few betas have improved matters on most phones, but it's impossible for us to predict the effect they'll have on every phone's camera unless we increase our current test device collection from 12 to 100...

Does OCR work correctly in landscape orientation?