reader freeze-up, translate Facebook

[markoshun]

I was trying to find away to translate my friend's Facebook post/page on the phone and so saved a file as pdf and then opened it in the reader. It came up, but all garbled, presumably since all the Facebook code was still in there.
But now I can't use the reader at all. keeps coming up black screen and eventually times-out with choice to send report.
So, now I cant open a different file to clear it, and I've tried copying things to clipboard to no avail.
Is there some way to clear it out of there without screwing up all my settings and stats?
Been through the inst manual a couple times and found nothing referring to this kind of situation.

And back to my original problem, since you can't copy paste in/from Facebook is there then no way to translate postings from there?
Thanks,
Mark

 

[mikelove]

I was trying to find away to translate my friend's Facebook post/page on the phone and so saved a file as pdf and then opened it in the reader. It came up, but all garbled, presumably since all the Facebook code was still in there.

No, it's just that the reader doesn't support PDFs - we've already added code in the next beta to detect that a file has a .pdf extension and put up an error message to that effect. (sorry for the confusion)

But now I can't use the reader at all. keeps coming up black screen and eventually times-out with choice to send report.
So, now I cant open a different file to clear it, and I've tried copying things to clipboard to no avail.
Is there some way to clear it out of there without screwing up all my settings and stats?

Sorry about that (also fixed in the next beta) - for now, if you simply delete that PDF file that should prevent the reader from opening it.

And back to my original problem, since you can't copy paste in/from Facebook is there then no way to translate postings from there?

Try the "Share" / "Send" command in your web browser; in most cases Pleco can parse the original web page and extract the text from that.

 

[markoshun]

Great,
Was able to clear the stuck pdf file just by opening another Facebook page from browser using the share function.
Unfortunately Facebook seems to somehow block a direct sharing and all I seem to be able to get into the reader is a "Please log in first... blah,blah, blah" page.
I tested with other web pages and it works great. So nothing wrong on your end. Very nice function, btw. The further I get along in my Chinese study the more I appreciate what you've done in creating/developing Pleco.
But in regards Facebook, without a copy/paste or a sharing function, there seems to be no way to translate Facebook on the fly. I will send a request to them.
Incidentally, I tried to do the same operation on my iPod and there doesn't even seem to be a share function to connect with Pleco reader. But... they "have an App for that". Found FBTranslate on App store and it works. Maybe I'll just get an iPhone now the new ones are out, they look pretty cool. Or maybe someone will create an app for android, anyway...
thanks so much,
Mark

 

[mikelove]

Incidentally, I tried to do the same operation on my iPod and there doesn't even seem to be a share function to connect with Pleco reader. But... they "have an App for that". Found FBTranslate on App store and it works. Maybe I'll just get an iPhone now the new ones are out, they look pretty cool. Or maybe someone will create an app for android, anyway...

Actually on iOS we do this with an in-app web browser instead, since (oddly enough) iOS is easier-to-hack than Android in that regard and we were able to rig up a way to automatically make Chinese characters on most web pages tappable.

 

[markoshun]

Hmmm.. I can't make that web browser work any different on my iPod for Facebook. Facebook seems to be somehow different than any other page, at least on my iPod and Android. Does the Pleco web browser only work on ios 6? I'll see if an upgrade will work, I'm still on 5.
How did you do it? It seems to act the same same for me as all the other browsers on Facebook, read only.

 

[mikelove]

Hmmm.. I can't make that web browser work any different on my iPod for Facebook. Facebook seems to be somehow different than any other page, at least on my iPod and Android. Does the Pleco web browser only work on ios 6? I'll see if an upgrade will work, I'm still on 5.
How did you do it? It seems to act the same same for me as all the other browsers on Facebook, read only.

It only works with the paid Document Reader add-on; if you've purchased that, there's a Web option in the "Reader" tab where you can tap on the address bar / tap on the "Live" button above it to indicate that you want to load a page with this mode enabled.

 

[markoshun]

Okay, now that is really cool. But never would have found that secret handshake on my own.
Thanks a lot.
Will seriously consider iPhone, seems to be just a bit better for translating. Now I have two ways on my iPod to translate FB, none on Android.