Some thoughts on desktop vs. web based pleco

ldolse

状元
Hey,

Taking my very first formal chinese classes, and giving Pleco a beating. As I'm rapidly adding words for review during class I really wish there was some way to organize what I've noted down at the end of the day. Will post some bugs too, but was more interested in posting some thoughts on the desktop/web based versions of Pleco. Hoping some other users can chime in and agree/disagree for some useful discussion.

I've been looking forward to a desktop version of Pleco generally speaking, but this class has made me re-think what is important along with some other problems I've had over the years using Pleco. Here are the things I consider most important for a companion to Pleco:
  • I want a tool to organize my flashcards using a desktop-like environment
  • Flashcards need to be backed up off of my phone automatically (daily changes, etc without user intervention) - IMPORTANT
  • My user dictionary should be backed up in the same way - Equally important
  • flashcard changes done on the desktop (categories, entry changes, etc) should be synced back to the phone
  • I'd love to have a better interface to create user dictionary entries (but not critical)
  • I'd love to be able to automatically add flashcards from other services like Chinesepod (also not critical)
  • I don't particularly care about reviewing flashcards anywhere except on Pleco mobile
  • I don't particularly care about reviewing dictionary entries on the desktop

As I thought about this I realized that a dedicated desktop app isn't necessarily the best way to fulfill the reqs, in fact for some, like automatically backing up my data, it's got some major downsides. One would still need to back up the desktop data, and Pleco Desktop would need to develop a syncing function for three different device types across two platforms for it to work ideally. Beyond that it's very likely that someone could be studying or traveling in China without a PC, and those are the times that the most data would be input into Pleco, and those are the times where the data is most vulnerable. At the moment I'm taking this class and my pc is with me, but following that I'm leaving the pc behind in shanghai to travel a bit more lightly.

My phone was just stolen by a pickpocket yesterday, so it's now the second time this year I've lost all the new data in Pleco, and the fourth or fifth time since purchasing Pleco 3+ years ago that I've lost most of my data. So the ability to back up easily has come to be a bit near and dear for me. One could argue that it's my fault for not backing up, which to some degree is true, but the fact is that windows mobile is hideous for backups. (iphone is much better, not sure about Palm)

Beyond that, when I thought about the other items listed above it became apparent that all of them could easily be done through a web based application. Organizing and tagging/categorizing lists is all easily done with the web, and it's possible using AJAX, etc to create some very effective interfaces to do that. Doing this stuff via web would often be much more useful for the student/traveler, as they may not have a laptop with them, but 'net cafes are extremely common. And of course being web based the syncing problem goes aways as the mobile could sync directly to the cloud. Not sure what it would take to do differential syncing to make sure the data costs weren't too high, but that was the only major stumbling block.


All that said, I know there are contractual obligations to put out a full desktop version. I'm not sure how easy it will be for a desktop version to do all the above, since it's inherently a port of the mobile app. Would I still buy it if it didn't do all that? Probably, but it depends on the costs - I wouldn't want to have to re-acquire all my dictionary licenses. The biggest advantage I see for the full desktop version is that I don't know of anything else out there that can do a pinyin search like Pleco. It would also need to support mac, as I've pretty much abandoned windows.
 

gato

状元
My sense is that currently only the high-end phones that have screens big enough and browsers powerful and compatible for a web-based Pleco. One needs to keep the cost of such phones in mind.

I can pretty much only use the browser on my Palm Centro to read basic text only sites, for example....

Another problem is, of course, latency (i.e. response time), which is the bane of web-based programs, and network-based programs, in general. It's great if you can download at 1MB/s, but if there's a lag of 30 seconds, it doesn't work very well for an interactive program.
 

ldolse

状元
I wasn't thinking of using a browser based Pleco from the phone. Most of the time the desktop version of Pleco has been discussed it's been called a 'Desktop Companion', so it seems the assumption is that existing Pleco owners would will be able to purchase access to a tool/upgrade that can work from a desktop in conjunction with the existing Pleco on their mobile device. What I'm saying is that for most of the tasks that interest me it seems that a web based companion may be more useful.

Other people may think having a full fledged Pleco dictionary on their desktop is more important though, which was part of why I started the thread.
 
Personally, I have no desire to use Pleco on a desktop. Most of the time I want to look up a word or do a flashcard session, I'm out and about.

So, for me, a web version would be much better than a desktop version. Maybe Mike could even outsource the work to build a thin iPhone/Android/WebOS/WinMob/Symbian wrapper for such a web app... Wouldn't be much work (for a single wrapper) but would make the app much more mobile friendly. This would also largely protect against the ever changing landscape of mobile platforms.

Oh, and there could be an RIA for the desktop also using the same webapp to do all the leg-work. This would satisfy those who prefer to use the larger screen for certain functionality.
 

radioman

状元
Desktop version for me makes a lot of sense, especially as I work a lot with sentences. I would not want to be dealing with sentences on a large scale with a handheld.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Sorry I didn't weigh in on this earlier.

The design / feature set of the desktop product is kind of up in the air at the moment thanks to the Apple Tablet - if that turns out to be running OS X, it seems likely that a couple of dozen other similar products running Windows will show up soon after, and in order to support all of those we'll need something with a similar design / touchscreen emphasis to our handheld software that's capable of running on a desktop-type OS. Something which would, fortunately, be very easy to develop, given how many APIs are shared between iPhone OS / OS X and between Windows Mobile and desktop Windows. So in that case, the desktop version would be heavily leaning towards that market, with the "companion" aspects toned down a bit (and perhaps shifted to some partly web-based stuff).

If, on the other hand, the market moves in the direction of larger-screened devices running mobile OSes, the argument for a dedicated desktop companion program becomes greater, since then you're really looking for something to do the heavy lifting / data management work that's difficult / awkward to do on a device without a keyboard.

But I really don't know what makes the most sense at this point - have to wait and see how the tablet / netbook market develops over the next few months and how people respond to our iPhone version.
 

Jim

榜眼
Pleco Desktop
by james » Tue Sep 06, 2005 12:14 pm

Mike, do you have a rough idea of when the desktop program might be released?

by mikelove » Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:38 am

Funny to see this old thread... should be pretty obvious by now that "sometime in 2006" won't happen, "sometime in 2007" seems likely but I don't want to look stupid again so all I'm going to say at the moment is "sometime this decade."
________________________________________________________

No hurry Mike, looks like you still have anywhere from 4 to 16 months depending on which years you consider the beginning and end of the decade.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Well that projection predates the announcement of iPhone - if we'd skipped the iPhone version we'd have had something available for desktops months ago.
 
Hi Mike - I was wondering what your thoughts are on an Offline Desktop app vs. an RIA.

For me, the main problem with Pleco is the restriction that it works on only a few platforms - all of which are minority platforms (including iPhone which has a much smaller market share than Blackberry and Symbian). I'm sure I'm not the only one who has purchased Pleco but later stopped using it because of the platform-limitations. This is not a complaint because I knew this when I bought it. However, to me it makes far more sense to develop for the web which is accessible from all platforms. This way, no matter which devices the user decides to buy, they will always have a way to get to their dictionaries and flashcards (which would no longer need to be backed up by the user because they would just be synced with whichever client the user happens to be using).

Building a web app, you could publish an API which other client-side developers can code against. Users pay you for the dictionaries and then they can purchase cheap (or even free) client apps depending on which device they own. An experienced Android developer can knock something up reasonably quickly. An AIR/Flex developer can sort out your desktop clients - in fact Flex apps will also work (well) on Android pretty soon, so they say.

I have a feeling the problem here is in the licensing...?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Licensing and features also - there's a lot of stuff that still can't be done in a web-based app, particularly on mobiles.

We don't support BlackBerry because it's Java-only and not particularly speedy and it would be next to impossible for us to develop a decent version of Pleco for BlackBerry; even if we did, the lack of handwriting recognition would take away a lot of the benefits for many of our potential customers. I suspect, though, that RIM may soon be forced to reopen BlackBerry to native-code development (as they were up until a few years ago) in order to remain competitive outside of the corporate market, and we certainly might explore a BlackBerry port if they do.

Symbian just doesn't seem to have much of a future - Nokia's not particularly committed to it (playing around with Maemo and other OS options as well), it's never managed to gain any traction whatsoever in the US (in fact thanks to the Centro I imagine they might get outsold by Palm OS here even in 2009), the old UI system is getting replaced with Qt (requiring all existing S60 apps to be heavily rewritten, so thank goodness we don't already have a Symbian version) which is likely to only make the already-bleak third-party software situation even bleaker - they jack up their sales numbers by including it on so many phones, but as a third-party software platform it's really not very promising.

So really the only interesting mobile platform which we don't support / aren't about to launch a version for is Android, and a port to that is still a possibility if the technical limitations don't prove to be too bad - of course it'd help matters immensely if they'd come up with a way to write fully native-code applications (rather than a native core but a Java-based UI).

Absent that port, though, a web-based version certainly might make sense as our next project after the desktop version, assuming we can in fact get the licensing worked out.
 

gato

状元
We don't support BlackBerry because it's Java-only and not particularly speedy and it would be next to impossible for us to develop a decent version of Pleco for BlackBerry; even if we did, the lack of handwriting recognition would take away a lot of the benefits for many of our potential customers. I suspect, though, that RIM may soon be forced to reopen BlackBerry to native-code development (as they were up until a few years ago) in order to remain competitive outside of the corporate market, and we certainly might explore a BlackBerry port if they do.
A lot of companies, like my employer, don't allow third-party applications to be installed on company-issued BlackBerries.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Interesting - another reason not to develop a BlackBerry version, I guess. Though we might be able put together something at least moderately useful using the BlackBerry's built-in web browser.
 

ldolse

状元
Been out wandering China for about a month now, haven't checked into the board for a long time. I'm pretty sure the Apple tablet will be running some variant of OS X. I guess the question comes down to market in some respects, would the most revenue come from new users from either web based or desktop, or existing users looking at a way to improve their existing study habits. For someone studying full time in a school environment the desktop may have some value, but for people doing day to day study in Asia it seems like the handheld platform will always be number one. Of course being an existing handheld user I'm a bit biased.

In terms of competition the only other decent thing out there I know of is Wenlin, and reality is Wenlin just isn't trying to compete with anyone - no updates for two years and still no ability to purchase the software online. Definitely something to be said for offering a few advantages over that.

Anyway, the biggest things I'm personally looking for is flashcard organization and backup, just to reiterate. Hoping whatever solution you come out with can take care of those two things.
 

mfcb

状元
as many already mentioned, a desktop version *MUST* include flashcard management/backup/mass-import/export/manual-input abilities. its much more convenient to do these actions on a pc.

for me it would be also nice if i have (at least some) of the normal pleco dictionary functions. why? when i surf the net, when i chat, when i read some documents i may encounter words i don't know. what i do now is that i check these words on the internet (http://www.yellowbridge.com) and later in the day, i go through the words i looked up and add them to my pleco.
so it would be a massive improvement, if i could look up the words already in pc-pleco, add them to my flashcards on the fly.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
ldolse - Well I certainly hope it's running OS X, wouldn't be much fun it if it was as locked-down as an iPhone. (this isn't even a worried-about-AppStore-approval thing as much as a you-really-ought-to-be-able-to-share-document-files-between-different-applications thing) But remember this would still be designed around touchscreen PDAs rather than keyboard-equipped desktops, mainly at least - we'd be using a variation on our quick-access, dictionary-oriented interface as opposed to a more conventionally desktop-y / reader-oriented one like Wenlin, so I don't think even in that case we'd be direct competitors.

mfcb - well yes, providing a way to easily create flashcards from words looked up / documents encountered on a desktop would certainly be a big advantage to having a desktop version I suppose.
 
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