Setting to show example sentences

[shiki]

I understand you guys don't want to make the popup be filled up too much because obviously some dictionaries have so many examples but I don't understand how just allowing 1 example (or better, let us choose like 1-5) under each meaning is unreasonable.
I mean I'll be happy with even just 1 example, even if the font has to be made slightly smaller for the example sentence.

I just feel like the example sentences can be so valuable but tapping a button to then being taken into the main app is not very immersive and I basically never do that. Because, that's extra work and more importantly because it takes your out of the reading immersion. (It's annoying and unintuitive) The meaning and nuance can be really understood well by seeing example sentences but by the way the app is set up, I need to constantly open up the main app to see that for each word I encounter.
Yes common words sometimes have many meanings like 是 but having example sentence(s) in the popup would greatly help to distinguish all the different meanings and uses in an instant way.

Okay if it makes my little rant any better, I bought one of the dictionary packs this year. I make comments because I love the app and want it to improve. Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

To be honest, the main thing we designed the popup reader for is to help you look up specific words you don't know and thus enable you to read texts that might otherwise be beyond your skill level, with a secondary feature that you can also bookmark those words for later flashcard review. So the expectation is that in a case like 是 you'd either a) already know the meaning or b) recognize it was a complicated enough word to want to study in more detail, but in either case that you would not be learning about it through a popup bubble.

Also, while it's wonderful that you're able to make use of example sentences that are only in Chinese, that is not the case for the majority of Pleco users, and an example sentence with Pinyin and English is obviously a whole lot harder to squeeze into that bubble.

One workaround that occurs to me - and would work in 4.0 too - would be to import your own copy of MOE or LAC (or both) as a user dictionary. Arrange it with simplified[traditional]<tab>pinyin<tab>definition, one entry per line, and import it into a user dictionary created through Manage Dictionaries. We don't currently hide any text in user dictionary definitions, so whatever text appears in the user dictionary text for 是 would be exactly the text that appears in the reader bubble, even if it's quite long.

We're not really considering any new options for our legacy 3.0 app, but we can certainly think about having a 'don't hide anything' option for the popup reader in 4.0: there's been some back and forth about how we're going to juggle the need to make the app easier to use with fewer settings against the need to support people with very specific needs with more settings and I think we're probably going to land on having a buried page of expert settings - listed under 'tweaks' or some such - somewhere.

 

[shiki]

Thanks for the quicky reply!
I wasn't even thinking of the Chinese example sentences in monolingual dictionaries like LAC and MOE actually, that was just the screenshot I happened to have. Here's some better ones with the other dicts. I often reference several dictionaries actually, when trying to get a bigger grasp of the word.

I think I understand your thinking but with all due respect I don't think that's an effective use of a popup dictionary for learning a foreign language. I say this as someone who has already learned Japanese to a high level in a relatively short time period specifically thanks to a great popup dictionary. I guess the popup is undervalued or underestimated but I actually think it's the most powerful tool there is. Yes I know you don't technically learn language while seeing definitions, it's comprehensible input but that's exactly what the popup is doing, making immersion more comprehensible.

So I have no expectation of seeing the pinyin or worse, a translation of the example sentence. You said the popup reader was mainly designed to "help you look up specific words you don't know" so I think it can assumed that the words being looked up are..not so common and so..have fewer meanings. I think an example sentence wouldn't take up much space at all in this intended use then lol.
I only used 是 as an example because of its grammatical meanings. Using a popup is great for reinforcing grammar (which tbh is the hardest part about grammar, forgetting the pattern and that sort of thing), especially if there's examples. They clarify the meaning and usage when it's not so obvious.

 

[mikelove]

It's a pretty popular feature, it's just that the thrust of a lot of the feedback we get is to that it's too much information to get through rather than too little; a top-5 support request for us is 'how do I get the popup bubble to default to showing just definitions from CC-CEDICT because they're shorter than the ones in such-and-such other dictionary.' And the thing people are most often comparing our popup definitions to are glossary entries in graded readers and textbooks and "article of the day" subscription apps, which tend to have even less information since they're zeroing in on that one meaning in context and nothing else.

It would be easy to show all of the text there, and it would also be easy to make it cover most of the screen in order to show that text, so it's certainly not a case of undervaluing that feature, it's just our sense of what it's designed for. But because it's easy it's also easy to support it through an option, it's just not something we've had all that many requests for up to now.

 

[shiki]

I see. Thank you for clarifying. I wouldn't have expected most people requesting less popup info. I wonder if most people requesting that are from Android or Iphone. Well, are most of your customers from the apple store? Seems strange choice to me but that could explain the difference in thinking. Android and iphone users are different in good and bad ways lol but is that honestly a struggle to manage the different platforms ? I can't imagine trying to appeal to everyone, it's just not always possible.
I think you mentioned considering an expert/advanced settings and I think that's a great idea.

 

[mikelove]

It's pretty even - we don't really see a significant difference in people's usage of Pleco between platforms, aside from some geographical differences based on OS popularity (iOS is dominant in the US but much less so in the EU e.g.).