The improvement I'm most looking forward to in version 2.0

[mikelove]

Yikes, that sounds rather painful... as an interface designer you always hate to see people having to go through a convoluted procedure like that just to get their software to do what they want.

If we put any kind of an editor function in 2.0 it would likely be extremely rudimentary - not even integrated with the dictionary at first, just a way to save you the trouble of buying a separate Chinese input/display system to compose basic documents. But if that proves popular there are certainly a lot of ways we could expand it - integrating it with the Palm (or Pocket PC) memo/contact/task databases, for example.

 

[character]

I've been using PlecoDict mainly for flashcards. I wonder if these features/improvements are being considered:

1) It would be nice to have the flashcard characters (the ones the flashcard is about) would wrap instead of going off the edge of the screen.

2) I don't know if this is possible with your licenses, but it would be an aid to learning if the definition didn't replace the flashcard characters/pinyin with '~'. It would make reading the definition and examples a bit more natural.

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

1) This would actually be rather tricky on Palm; our text fields can't currently support multiple font sizes at the same time, so there's not really any mechanism by which the extra line of headword characters could push down the rest of the card text; we'd have to rearrange the controls on the flashcard screen every time a new card came up.

We could, however, put a duplicate copy of the characters in the definition field for words that were too long to fit across one line of text on that screen - that might help make the problem a little less annoying at least.

2) This actually isn't a license issue but rather a data issue; at the moment there's not really any way for the software to tell what to replace the ~ with, whether it's Pinyin or characters, whether (in the case of English) the word needs to be modified to fit into the sentence, and so forth. The original data files from the publishers all include those ~s, so the software has to figure out what to fill them in with itself.

 

[character]

We could, however, put a duplicate copy of the characters in the definition field for words that were too long to fit across one line of text on that screen - that might help make the problem a little less annoying at least.

Thanks; that would be nice.

2) This actually isn't a license issue but rather a data issue; at the moment there's not really any way for the software to tell what to replace the ~ with, whether it's Pinyin or characters, whether (in the case of English) the word needs to be modified to fit into the sentence, and so forth.

Leaving aside English, for the other cases if you can replace the ~ the logic for doing so doesn't look too bad for characters/pinyin.

If you find a string has a ~, you can look at the previous/next word and see if it is pinyin or a character and only then insert the correct version of the Chinese word/phrase. It looks like the ~ is always in the same font (bold, normal, etc.) as the character/pinyin phrase it belongs to.

Anyways, just a thought. On the PDA screen the flashcard characters/pinyin are quickly hidden from view when scrolling through the definition.

 

[caesartg]

Not sure if you already planned to do this, but how about including some kind of corpus search facility, like Wenlin has. Perhaps just a folder or folders where we can deposit GB/BIG5 docs and, when looking at a character or word can get it to full-text search the corpus folder (or a selected one) and just pull up a sentence (or surrounding 40 character context for example) where that character string appears. (Kind of similar to one of the functions of the Sketch Engine you looked at). Or maybe for version 3???

 

[mikelove]

character - that's true, the logic isn't too dreadful in those cases, but some of our source data files are less-than-perfect and I suspect that if we did implement this we'd discover that there were hundreds if not thousands of entries which were somehow coded / arranged in such a way that it wouldn't work.

A better bet might simply be to offer an option leave the headword / Pinyin in place while you scrolled through the rest of the definition - we used to do this in our old Oxford Dict software, got rid of it in PlecoDict since we decided it was taking up too much screen space, but there's certainly something to be said for bringing it back.

caesartg - might be more of a version 3 thing, though thanks to the indexed full-text search feature we're adding for dictionaries in version 2 this seems like it would actually be pretty easy to implement. Depositing the raw documents in a folder would be problematic, since indexing them on a limited-memory PDA would be extremely time-consuming, so you'd have to run them through some sort of desktop-based converter first.

A big question would be whether or not people would actually use this feature unless we supplied the documents too - I suspect the answer is no, so we'd need to look into licensing a large body of text too, which is part of what would push this to version 3.

 

[character]

If it's not possible to show tone marks over characters in flashcards, would it be possible to have the characters be different colors based on their tone?

I find reviewing with pinyin too easy, but the tone is the last thing I memorize. So it would be nice to be able to change the flashcard display from characters and pinyin to tone color-coded characters to plain characters.

 

[mikelove]

It's not a question of actually rendering the characters: both tone marks and colors are quite easy in that regard. It's mainly a matter of making sure that we determine the correct tones for them; since there can potentially be three or four different pronunciations for a given character, this is somewhat trickier than just looking up the tone for each character and inserting it.

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Hello Mike,

I have found that I frequently wish I had a Chinese thesaurus (book of synonyms), in order to find similar Chinese words or meanings, so that I don't end up having to use the same words over and over again. Not only would it help to freshen up my writing, but it would also help in the many cases where I am trying to find a particular word, and I can rememeber a word that is similar to the word I want, but cannot remember the word itself.

Have you had any other requests for this feature?

Darrol

 

[character]

It's not a question of actually rendering the characters: both tone marks and colors are quite easy in that regard. It's mainly a matter of making sure that we determine the correct tones for them; [....]

I'm glad to hear it will be easy to implement tone marks.

If someone adds a flashcard by pressing the + button, use that tone. If they want that character to have a different tone, they have to delete the character and add the correct version.

This is really an important feature for flash cards. I hope you will move past the analysis paralysis stage on this and pick a method and add it in 2.0. I would love to show this feature to others in my Chinese class also struggling to memorize tones.

 

[mikelove]

hairyleprechaun - we've had a few people mention this, but to be honest we haven't been able to find a good Chinese thesaurus to license yet - I don't think it's a concept that the mass market in China has quite been sold on. However, our upcoming Chinese-Chinese dictionary may help a little on that front; it may not be designed specifically as a thesaurus, but thanks to the standalone nature of Chinese words it may provide some thesaurus-like word alternatives anyway.

character - sorry, I thought you were talking about characters in flashcard definitions. We could certainly add them to the headword characters, but I'm still not quite sure why we'd bother when the Pinyin is right below them.. if we did do this I think colors would make more sense, since they might help people to develop an unconscious association between the characters and the colors.

 

[character]

character - sorry, I thought you were talking about characters in flashcard definitions. We could certainly add them to the headword characters, but I'm still not quite sure why we'd bother when the Pinyin is right below them.

The Pinyin provides too much information; and one ends up looking at the Pinyin instead of the character.

For hard to memorize characters, the memorization process seems to be:
1) Recognize having seen the character before
2) Remember the English definition
3) Remember the Pinyin but not the tone
[or sometimes 3, then 2]
4) Remember the tone

So it would be helpful to have some display of the character and tone (tone marks, colors, numbers, whatever) so that one doesn't rely on the Pinyin.

 

[mikelove]

I see. We're actually already planning a flashcard test mode that specifically focuses on tones (gives you the characters and toneless Pinyin and has you choose the correct tones) so I suppose this would complement that somewhat... I'm still not sure if very many people would use it, though. Anyone else want to chime in in support of this feature?

 

[sfrrr]

I think I wouldn't use such a feature. When I'm using my flash cards honestly (most of the time, really), I don't sneak a peek at the pinyin. this feature seems redundant, given the other features of even the 1.x version of PD.

Sandra

 

[johnh113]

hanzi with tone marks

Dear Reader,

I agree with Sandra, I wouldn't use the new functionality of a test of pinyin without the tone marks.

From my limited experience, Chinese sounds without the proper tones are completely useless. No Chinese person other then your teacher is going to be able to understand the sound without the proper tone. So "Character's" method of learning the sound, then the tone seems a bit odd. I think it's necessary to learn the sound and the tone at the same time.

For my flashcard sessions, first the hanzi comes up. Then, in my mind I formulate the sound and the tone; and then I press the reveal box to reveal the pinyin with the right tones.

I do think the new audio files will be helpful in that when I press the reveal box, I will be able to hear the correct pronunciation for the hanzi.

Unfortunately, my old Clie T650C, according to the Sony support site, only supports 128MB of memory stick, which is not enough to host the new audio files. Other than that, I love my Clie. It seems much better designed and built than most of the current model PDAs and has a 320x320 color screen.

John

 

[character]

Re: hanzi with tone marks

So "Character's" method of learning the sound, then the tone seems a bit odd. I think it's necessary to learn the sound and the tone at the same time.

I agree; the problem is that I and others may not be able to remember the tone. I.e., the correct tone is the last thing learned about a character.

The audio will be great for when I have headphones handy or am not studying in the bathroom at work.

 

[mikelove]

johnh113 - 128 MB should actually be enough to hold a smaller or lower-quality version of the audio files, but the big problem is that you're still running Palm OS 4 - Pleco 2.0 should still run on Palm OS 4 devices, but the audio feature likely won't, since we're using a fairly processor-intensive audio codec.

character - I've had similar problems in my own studies, learning the syllables but forgetting the tones. I guess the main question for me is whether adding tone marks or colors to the characters would really help with building an association - I suppose it might be worth a shot as an experimental feature, but probably not until a post-2.0 release.

 

[hairyleprechaun]

I have the same problem with being able to remember the sounds of the characters but not remembering the proper tones. So, while I don't have any suggestions at the moment, I just want to say that I definitely will appreciate any features added to PlecoDict that are geared to helping one remember the proper tones of characters. I realize that this is not an easy task since there are many 多音字, both characters with entirely different sounds, and characters with the same sound but with different tones.

皇帝加油！

Darrol

 

[caesartg]

I agree with Character. The lecturers at my university really focused hard on ironing out first year students' problems with tones and these problems come from all directions - hearing the tone, saying the tone, remembering a character's tone, how the tones gell together, etc, etc. One of the tests we used was indeed adding the tone marks to characters over words or sentences and this included applying the tone rules for things like two third-tones and the character bu4 (not). When I went to Taiwan, I noticed that the main textbooks out there also had these kinds of reading exercises in the elementary stages (I.e. The first 3 months of most courses). Tones are important and, bearing in mind that we learn in multiple different ways at different stages of learning Chinese, this is one valid way (among many) of practising them.

After three years of Chinese, probably I wouldn't use such a feature often. However, I would certainly have made good use of it in my first year and did indeed use other applications that have this feature.

The supporting of the student of Chinese throughout their studies, from beginner all the way to fluency, is IMHO what makes Plecodict a truly great product and one that wholly justifies recommendation to most students of Chinese, even those who previously had no interest in PDAs. I think that this feature of having the option of pinyin tones over the headword, or associated colours for tones would be useful, while the pinyin test that you're already incorporating (ed?) into Plecodict will be of great benefit to many beginners and would have been too for myself.

 

[Ma Guo Tou]

Tradable databases

I'm the kind of guy who will use a gadget for months before suddenly discovering some useful function that I'd previously overlooked. I never get around to finishing the instruction manuals.
In creating entries for the dictionary, I'm not sure whether they can be set up as a seperate database. As a translator with a couple of specialized fields, I often find that a lot of the words I need aren't in any standard dictionary (such as terms for schools of contemporary art, something I use a lot).
What would be great in the future is a way to turn user created entries into databases that are tradeable. For instance, I could hand out a file of art terms, or ask around for one on commiespeak. The possibility of such files doesn't seem to tricky, but how to manage the trading...