The PlecoDict Beta Feedback Thread
- Thread starter mikelove
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A
Anonymous
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Can't see traditional chars w/ Oxford
I'm able to see traditional chars when using the ABC dict (C->E), but when I use Oxford (E->C), the definitions are all simplified. My character options are set to use Big5 encoding, but there is no "Force traditional char conversion" in this PlecoDict version as there was before.
Any suggestions to get trad chars?
I'm able to see traditional chars when using the ABC dict (C->E), but when I use Oxford (E->C), the definitions are all simplified. My character options are set to use Big5 encoding, but there is no "Force traditional char conversion" in this PlecoDict version as there was before.
Any suggestions to get trad chars?
We haven't gotten around to adding traditional characters to the Oxford files yet. In the previous version, the "force traditional char conversion" option did the traditional character conversion automatically, but was "dumb" in that it didn't distinguish between the potentially 3 or 4 different traditional characters that might correspond to a single simplified one. In the new version, traditional characters have to be manually added to the data files, and thus far we've only done that for the NWP and ABC; those took priority because the people who've purchased them don't have the option of falling back on the older Oxford E&C software. But we should have updated Oxford data files available with the finished version.
Problem with Fonts/Font24.pdb
Very impressed with PlecoDict beta, but have just found a problem with the Large-High Resolution Font. qian2bao1 de bao1 appears with zi4ji3 de ji3 underneath rather than si4. It doesn't effect the Small-High Resolution Font or the magnified font, but does effect most, but not all, of the Large-High Resolution font characters that contain bao1.
Very impressed with PlecoDict beta, but have just found a problem with the Large-High Resolution Font. qian2bao1 de bao1 appears with zi4ji3 de ji3 underneath rather than si4. It doesn't effect the Small-High Resolution Font or the magnified font, but does effect most, but not all, of the Large-High Resolution font characters that contain bao1.
A
Anonymous
Guest
I have the same problem about the scrolling using the hardware buttons. I can scroll down but it keeps juming back to character written on the input line.
I run it on a TE.
I run it on a TE.
Anonymous said:
While I don't have this problem on my TT I still see something resembling a cursor bar darting through the dictionary text pane: whenever I use the scroll up and down buttons on my TT the cursor bar darts either up or down the page, only afterwards the display gets scrolled. Looks as if this is related to your problem...
A
Anonymous
Guest
Re: G-C encoding
The UTF-8 import of Chinese-German text works allright.
But is it possible to edit the user dictionary with German umlauts as well ? I tried everything with and without using CJKOS, but no strategy seems to work.
Any Ideas ?
thanks Ole
haraldalbrecht said:
The UTF-8 import of Chinese-German text works allright.
But is it possible to edit the user dictionary with German umlauts as well ? I tried everything with and without using CJKOS, but no strategy seems to work.
Any Ideas ?
thanks Ole
Re: G-C encoding
Ah, I see: I probably could import as well but I did not realize that because I immediately edited the flashcard containing the umlaut, so I was under the false impression that the import failed. Instead it is a problem with the flashcard edit dialog.
Anonymous said:
Ah, I see: I probably could import as well but I did not realize that because I immediately edited the flashcard containing the umlaut, so I was under the false impression that the import failed. Instead it is a problem with the flashcard edit dialog.
Mike's post of Sun Mar 13, 2005 1:49 am>
Back and Forward arrows? Yes the documentation seemed to indicate that, but I don't see any on the screen (up and down: yes - Back and Forward: no) and this was then a source of confusion. So what I was using were the Back and Forward menu items (or their shortcuts) from the Dict menu.
In what spot on the screen should these arrows appear?
So this is maybe a different manifestation of the same problem (my originally posted problem).
I'm on a Tungsten T3.
pat
Back and Forward arrows? Yes the documentation seemed to indicate that, but I don't see any on the screen (up and down: yes - Back and Forward: no) and this was then a source of confusion. So what I was using were the Back and Forward menu items (or their shortcuts) from the Dict menu.
In what spot on the screen should these arrows appear?
So this is maybe a different manifestation of the same problem (my originally posted problem).
I'm on a Tungsten T3.
pat
A
Anonymous
Guest
Re: G-C encoding
In the beginning my attempts to import UTF8 German-Chinese failed
out of the size of the files. I tried to import a couple of thousands entries, that didn?t work. But in chunks of about one hundred everything went allright. Laborious, but that might be helpful to consider.
But I am still hopeful there is a solution for the Editing- Entry-Problem...
Please talk about your experiences, I am really curious.
thanks, Ole
haraldalbrecht said:
In the beginning my attempts to import UTF8 German-Chinese failed
out of the size of the files. I tried to import a couple of thousands entries, that didn?t work. But in chunks of about one hundred everything went allright. Laborious, but that might be helpful to consider.
But I am still hopeful there is a solution for the Editing- Entry-Problem...
Please talk about your experiences, I am really curious.
thanks, Ole
A
Anonymous
Guest
PlecoDict is AWESOME
This is a great product, I can't wait to ditch the old OX Dict and completely convert over.
Some Flash card questions...
* CRASHES: I crashed 3 times today trying to use different options in the flashcard sessions. All were related to options under "Card Settings" Anytime I had anything other than "Mode: All cards" I had problems.
-The simplest in "Fixed # of cards mode" the counter would reset at 11 back to one each time, never reaching the selected 50.
-Trying to use "endless Loop" or "Frequency adjust" options I crashed 3 times, all fixed by a soft boot with no loss of data.
* FLASH CARDS: Is it just me or do the flashcard ranks seem backwards. Shouldn't rank one be the top, the cards you know best, then each time (or whatever setting you have it on, after 2 or 3 times, etc.) you get it wrong it gets demoted DOWN to rank 2, then 3, etc.??? Its a difference in working on identifying and emphasizing those you don't know, rather than identifying and emphasizig those you do know. In playing with it for the first time today, it seems like cards all starting at 1, in essence the worst ranking, move slowly up, so you have a lot of cards in and around rank one and two, but the 2 or 3 cards I got worng every single time had no where to go, and I really needed to emphasize them more. This felt to be making a slow distinction between them. Seams to me if it went the other way, you would more quickly emphasize you truely weak flashcards as they plummet from 1 down to 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. fast everytime you get them wrong, and cards that you are mamahuhu on are more likely to alternate right and wrong shots at hover closer to rank one and two. Those that are in your best never move from one. o.k. This may be just me needing to get more familiar with the program.
* IMPORT / EXPORT: Finally, what's up with the import export. Is going to allow me to draw in my hundreds or thousands of flashcards off of Oxford Dict when the 1.0 version comes out next month?
- As a result of a failed import, I now have a dictionary option of "USR" that has about 20 listings all jibberish, I think this was a result of a failed import but I don't know how to get rid of it.
- do you have or will you be making a posting site for custom ditionaries?
Thanks for the great work!!!
This is a great product, I can't wait to ditch the old OX Dict and completely convert over.
Some Flash card questions...
* CRASHES: I crashed 3 times today trying to use different options in the flashcard sessions. All were related to options under "Card Settings" Anytime I had anything other than "Mode: All cards" I had problems.
-The simplest in "Fixed # of cards mode" the counter would reset at 11 back to one each time, never reaching the selected 50.
-Trying to use "endless Loop" or "Frequency adjust" options I crashed 3 times, all fixed by a soft boot with no loss of data.
* FLASH CARDS: Is it just me or do the flashcard ranks seem backwards. Shouldn't rank one be the top, the cards you know best, then each time (or whatever setting you have it on, after 2 or 3 times, etc.) you get it wrong it gets demoted DOWN to rank 2, then 3, etc.??? Its a difference in working on identifying and emphasizing those you don't know, rather than identifying and emphasizig those you do know. In playing with it for the first time today, it seems like cards all starting at 1, in essence the worst ranking, move slowly up, so you have a lot of cards in and around rank one and two, but the 2 or 3 cards I got worng every single time had no where to go, and I really needed to emphasize them more. This felt to be making a slow distinction between them. Seams to me if it went the other way, you would more quickly emphasize you truely weak flashcards as they plummet from 1 down to 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. fast everytime you get them wrong, and cards that you are mamahuhu on are more likely to alternate right and wrong shots at hover closer to rank one and two. Those that are in your best never move from one. o.k. This may be just me needing to get more familiar with the program.
* IMPORT / EXPORT: Finally, what's up with the import export. Is going to allow me to draw in my hundreds or thousands of flashcards off of Oxford Dict when the 1.0 version comes out next month?
- As a result of a failed import, I now have a dictionary option of "USR" that has about 20 listings all jibberish, I think this was a result of a failed import but I don't know how to get rid of it.
- do you have or will you be making a posting site for custom ditionaries?
Thanks for the great work!!!
JamesJ - we're aware of the problems with the large high-resolution font; it looks like somehow the Japanese versions of characters managed to sneak in there (at least I think that's the problem). In the finished version, we'll be using the nice free Chinese-government-standard Beijing font, the same one we use in Oxford E&C.
haraldalbrecht - this is actually a different problem, a long-standing bug in our text field system (I think it even affected Oxford E&C) that we've never quite managed to fix. I'm optimistic that we'll come up with a solution soon, though.
Ole - could you be a little more specific? What exactly happens when you try to enter German umlauts when editing a dictionary entry? Do they show up incorrectly or fail to appear at all? And is Input Field Compatibility enabled in preferences?
patfla - the arrows will only appear if you add them to the toolbar in Preferences. But the menu commands should work. Try performing a Pinyin search entering one character at a time, and see if the Back command works correctly after that (jumping back to the entries that came up after each letter) - it may simply be that you were scrolling down through the Entry list one entry at a time, so that the Back command quite naturally moved you back up the entry list.
Dan (武士), since I already responded to your e-mail about this I'll just post that response here for the benefit of everyone else:
We've gotten a number of bug reports about crashes in different flashcard session modes; it seems like some of them may be related to people's Palms running out of memory, but anyway we're aware of the problem and are working on a fix.
The flashcard rank system was mainly designed for use by students and others who are constantly adding new vocabulary to their repertoire; in that situation, you would want to review a word very frequently when you first add it to the flashcard list (and you're still trying to learn it), but gradually review it less and less often as your recall improves. This fits in with the overall purpose of our flashcard system as an enhancement to the dictionary; when you see a useful word you don't know, you add it to your flashcard list so that you can start working to learn it. But your position on this is very interesting; I can certainly imagine that many other people might feel the same way, for example if they've already built up a large Chinese vocabulary and are simply trying to retain words that they might not use very often. It's too late to make any major changes to the flashcard rank system in 1.0, but it certainly might be worth considering something like this as an option for version 1.1. In the meantime, if you simply treated the "correct" button as "incorrect" and vice versa, and customized the frequency settings so that flashcards at higher ranks would appear more often, you could come pretty close to the system you're talking about. Or you could use the "Reset all cards to rank..." option to start off all of your flashcards at the highest rank, though since there's no way to set a default rank, newly-created cards would still start at rank 1.
Import/export will indeed allow you to import your flashcards from Oxford Dict; if you install the "Flashcard Converter" program at http://www.pleco.com/oxforddownload.html that will allow you to dump your flashcards to a text file which you can then import into PlecoDict.
If you want to delete listings from the user dictionary, simply go to the add/edit entry screen (in the Edit menu) for each entry and press the Delete button to delete it. You can also get to that screen through a toolbar command. We're considering adding a separate "delete entry" command as well (for use in cases like yours where you might have a lot of entries you want to quickly delete)
And we do plan on offering some sort of a custom dictionary sharing site once we've released the new version of MakeDict. (which unfortunately won't be ready with 1.0)
haraldalbrecht - this is actually a different problem, a long-standing bug in our text field system (I think it even affected Oxford E&C) that we've never quite managed to fix. I'm optimistic that we'll come up with a solution soon, though.
Ole - could you be a little more specific? What exactly happens when you try to enter German umlauts when editing a dictionary entry? Do they show up incorrectly or fail to appear at all? And is Input Field Compatibility enabled in preferences?
patfla - the arrows will only appear if you add them to the toolbar in Preferences. But the menu commands should work. Try performing a Pinyin search entering one character at a time, and see if the Back command works correctly after that (jumping back to the entries that came up after each letter) - it may simply be that you were scrolling down through the Entry list one entry at a time, so that the Back command quite naturally moved you back up the entry list.
Dan (武士), since I already responded to your e-mail about this I'll just post that response here for the benefit of everyone else:
We've gotten a number of bug reports about crashes in different flashcard session modes; it seems like some of them may be related to people's Palms running out of memory, but anyway we're aware of the problem and are working on a fix.
The flashcard rank system was mainly designed for use by students and others who are constantly adding new vocabulary to their repertoire; in that situation, you would want to review a word very frequently when you first add it to the flashcard list (and you're still trying to learn it), but gradually review it less and less often as your recall improves. This fits in with the overall purpose of our flashcard system as an enhancement to the dictionary; when you see a useful word you don't know, you add it to your flashcard list so that you can start working to learn it. But your position on this is very interesting; I can certainly imagine that many other people might feel the same way, for example if they've already built up a large Chinese vocabulary and are simply trying to retain words that they might not use very often. It's too late to make any major changes to the flashcard rank system in 1.0, but it certainly might be worth considering something like this as an option for version 1.1. In the meantime, if you simply treated the "correct" button as "incorrect" and vice versa, and customized the frequency settings so that flashcards at higher ranks would appear more often, you could come pretty close to the system you're talking about. Or you could use the "Reset all cards to rank..." option to start off all of your flashcards at the highest rank, though since there's no way to set a default rank, newly-created cards would still start at rank 1.
Import/export will indeed allow you to import your flashcards from Oxford Dict; if you install the "Flashcard Converter" program at http://www.pleco.com/oxforddownload.html that will allow you to dump your flashcards to a text file which you can then import into PlecoDict.
If you want to delete listings from the user dictionary, simply go to the add/edit entry screen (in the Edit menu) for each entry and press the Delete button to delete it. You can also get to that screen through a toolbar command. We're considering adding a separate "delete entry" command as well (for use in cases like yours where you might have a lot of entries you want to quickly delete)
And we do plan on offering some sort of a custom dictionary sharing site once we've released the new version of MakeDict. (which unfortunately won't be ready with 1.0)
A
Anonymous
Guest
mikelove said:
Hi Mike,
If "Input field compatibility - mode" is off, with CJKOS or not , I can ? t access the keyboard to enter international symbols, it is blocked.
If "Input field compatibility - mode is on, u s i n g CJKOS, I am able to enter the keyboard but the input of umlauts gets gibberish as soon as I press the "done"-button.
If "Input field compatibility - mode is on, n o t using CJKOS , I am able to use the keyboard and sometimes successfully get an umlaut done, but loosing the entry in the pinyin field, the behaviour changes with the chosen external text encoding, but I am afraid I don?t understand the logic behind.....
...but I am a fan of PLECODICT.
thank you
Ole
jing4
I'm not sure if this counts as a display bug or not. The right side of the Pleco character 径 shows up as the right side of 经 in the ABC in Wenlin. I stumbled across this when looking up the character as part of the word lu4jing4ming2 in a computer program I was working with. It appears that the second form is the correct one but I can't say for sure. FWIW, there may be some general confusion on this. When I tried entering the character through the XP IME, it showed the signific from the second form in the choice list but displayed the first form once I accepted it.
I'm not sure if this counts as a display bug or not. The right side of the Pleco character 径 shows up as the right side of 经 in the ABC in Wenlin. I stumbled across this when looking up the character as part of the word lu4jing4ming2 in a computer program I was working with. It appears that the second form is the correct one but I can't say for sure. FWIW, there may be some general confusion on this. When I tried entering the character through the XP IME, it showed the signific from the second form in the choice list but displayed the first form once I accepted it.
ranks and german chars
mike,
i think your idea about a 'delete menu' for custom entries is good.
with regard to the ranking system, i think it works great as it is now. i use 9 ranks; if i import a list with some older vocabulary that i might be already familiar with, i set the whole list to rank 5 and configure the rank settings in a way that makes cards i got wrong decend by 2 ranks and those i got right ascend by 1. that way i won't be buggered too much by the stuff i already know and the words i don't know will come up more often.
concerning the german chars, the primary problem is definitely the input field compability mode. that is just a logical consequence of ChOS and CJKOS using GB and BiG5 encoding and not UTF-8. those encodings will interfere with german chars. if the compatibility mode is off, there should be no problem. at least there is none on my clie nx73 (european version).
ole, i don't know which keyboard you're reffering to, but have you tried graffiti input?
still, i have other problems on that palm and i would like to know if there are other nx73 users out there who can confirm them: trying to enter the card settings screen will almost invariably give me a fatal exception crash. is it just my machine or is this a common problem on nx-series clies?
thanks for any answers!
jo.
mike,
i think your idea about a 'delete menu' for custom entries is good.
with regard to the ranking system, i think it works great as it is now. i use 9 ranks; if i import a list with some older vocabulary that i might be already familiar with, i set the whole list to rank 5 and configure the rank settings in a way that makes cards i got wrong decend by 2 ranks and those i got right ascend by 1. that way i won't be buggered too much by the stuff i already know and the words i don't know will come up more often.
concerning the german chars, the primary problem is definitely the input field compability mode. that is just a logical consequence of ChOS and CJKOS using GB and BiG5 encoding and not UTF-8. those encodings will interfere with german chars. if the compatibility mode is off, there should be no problem. at least there is none on my clie nx73 (european version).
ole, i don't know which keyboard you're reffering to, but have you tried graffiti input?
still, i have other problems on that palm and i would like to know if there are other nx73 users out there who can confirm them: trying to enter the card settings screen will almost invariably give me a fatal exception crash. is it just my machine or is this a common problem on nx-series clies?
thanks for any answers!
jo.
Niels-Ole Sass
Member
Re: ranks and german chars
I was referring to the PALM screen keyboard on my Tungsten E.
With the graffiti input it works. I had to consult the help-menu how to input the umlauts...:? Thank you for this clarification.
But it is still unsatisfying to watch the umlauts getting lost, when you try to re-edit your vocabulary in a second step.....
Ole
gandq said:
I was referring to the PALM screen keyboard on my Tungsten E.
With the graffiti input it works. I had to consult the help-menu how to input the umlauts...:? Thank you for this clarification.
But it is still unsatisfying to watch the umlauts getting lost, when you try to re-edit your vocabulary in a second step.....
Ole
Ole - yes, it should work with Graffiti input. We're also planning to support keyboard input in the finished version, we just haven't gotten around to adding it in yet. (at present, even with the main Input Field it's kind of buggy) But there will likely never be a way to get it working with Input Field Compatibility, since (as jo mentioned) the GB and Big5 character encoding standards overlap with the character codes for umlauts. You say that the umlauts are disappearing when you re-edit an entry, does this always happen or does it only happen with Input Field Compatibility enabled?
beirne - PlecoDict actually displays both of these, at least in the ABC. Wenlin's character reference states that these are etymologically the same but seems to have slightly different definitions for them. I'm not quite sure what the final answer on this is.
gandq - glad to hear you're finding the ranking system works, though we're certainly still willing to make some minor tweaks.
beirne - PlecoDict actually displays both of these, at least in the ABC. Wenlin's character reference states that these are etymologically the same but seems to have slightly different definitions for them. I'm not quite sure what the final answer on this is.
gandq - glad to hear you're finding the ranking system works, though we're certainly still willing to make some minor tweaks.
If I enter lu4jing4 in PlecoDict under the ABC I only get 路径. I also see in Wenlin that 圣 is considered to be the root for the right side.
I also tried looking up tu2jing in PlecoDict and see a first-tone jing written with the signific of 经 and a fourth-tone one with 径. Wenlin has them both written using the signific in 经.
I'm finding even more general confusion on the issue. I wrote my first posting using the Microsoft IME, where I noticed that the choice list displays the other form then enters 径. I'm finding that Linux does the same thing. In the end I can't tell which one is correct. My paper Oxford shows the non-径 form. I can't tell if 径 is a true alternate form or a bug that crept into some of the computer font sets.
Niels-Ole Sass
Member
mikelove said:
Mike, it happens in both cases.
Ole