[Unofficial] Feature Request / Suggestion List

[Weyland]

Flashcards:
- Allow alphabetical card selection.
- Search Cards: "NOT" command. E.g. I have a collection of 20,000 cards and a collection of 100 cards. I'd like to know which of those 100 cards aren't part / shared with the 20k collection.
- "Smart Selection" test homophones (冤枉 vs. 愿望) , words that share one or more characters, and or synonyms close together.
- More pre-made flashcard collections.

Dictionary
- Provide pre-installed tags. Make it always show the HSK/TOCFL level as well as the level the word is taught in Chinese schools (e.g. Year 6). Dictionary.com also does a similar thing:

- It would be nice to have a dictionary with grammar points. The new HSK grading standard documents provided a list of grammar points. (Again) it would be kind of neat if I could search for these, or have them be displayed in the app somewhere. If I want to look up the common saying 七 ... 八 ... I first have to know about it. It won't show up if I search for "七" or "八", it only shows up if I search for "七..." or "qi...". The entries are there but not readily available, which is kind of a waste. Also, a ton of the HSK entries haven't been done either. “既 ... 也 ... " is a grammar point covered in the current HSK, yet only Tuttle C-E has a very basic entry on it without any example sentences.


Settings:
- Provide an example sentence for the TTS voices people can listen to (so they know which one they prefer and disable the other ones).

Search:
- "Choose a dictionary" toggle. For some reason, my specific dictionary always defaults to Hanyu Da Cidian (HDC) as it's likely the latest dictionary purchase I made. I'd like to be able to make a certain dictionary a default.
- Organize search results first by flashcards -> then by preferred dictionary -> then by the rest.
. E.g. if I search for "cai?" on my Pleco it doesn't sort by relevancy. Most of my results are from HDC, some of which don't even have a definition, and I have to scroll quite a bit down before I get my first flashcard result (财产 in this case). It's searching alphabetically.

Tbh, I kind of regret purchasing HDC, because it messed up my Pleco experience. It still has many bugs, if you search for "qi?", for example, the first result is "<span class="PUC06-e9"> ... ".

 

[mikelove]

- Allow alphabetical card selection.

Already added for 4.0. Also added the extremely heavily-requested option to review cards in category order.

- Search Cards: "NOT" command. E.g. I have a collection of 20,000 cards and a collection of 100 cards. I'd like to know which of those 100 cards aren't part / shared with the 20k collection.

Very definitely added for 4.0 - can chain arbitrary numbers of conditions according to any standard boolean operation. (with multiple levels of grouping)

- "Smart Selection" test homophones (冤枉 vs. 愿望) , words that share one or more characters, and or synonyms close together.

I think you could do these with the right set of Expert Mode options - definitely the first one anyway; shared characters if they aren't supported should be pretty easy to support, synonyms would require you to supply your own thesaurus but we do have a "table search" option that you could probably tie that into.

- More pre-made flashcard collections.

Yeah, definitely on to the do-list once we've got everybody on 4.0 and don't have to convert the same data twice. (but we also support Anki imports in 4.0 so you can tap into that collection)

- Provide pre-installed tags. Make it always show the HSK/TOCFL level as well as the level the word is taught in Chinese schools (e.g. Year 6). Dictionary.com also does a similar thing:

4.0 Import files - even in text - can define category tags, so we'll probably attach these to the premade HSK flashcards. I'd be reluctant to actually build in HSK or TOCFL tags without users explicitly installing them because there's a certain small but noisy contingent that thinks the HSK shouldn't exist and a certain small but noisy contingent that thinks the TOCFL shouldn't exist and at any rate there are lots of people who legitimately have no use for one system or the other.

- It would be nice to have a dictionary with grammar points. The new HSK grading standard documents provided a list of grammar points. (Again) it would be kind of neat if I could search for these, or have them be displayed in the app somewhere. If I want to look up the common saying 七 ... 八 ... I first have to know about it. It won't show up if I search for "七" or "八", it only shows up if I search for "七..." or "qi...". The entries are there but not readily available, which is kind of a waste. Also, a ton of the HSK entries haven't been done either. “既 ... 也 ... " is a grammar point covered in the current HSK, yet only Tuttle C-E has a very basic entry on it without any example sentences.

We've been thinking about either offering web links to or selling-as-a-paid-addon the Chinese Grammar Wiki. Or licensing some other Chinese grammar title and selling that. But somebody may also produce a dictionary keyed specifically to those HSK points, in which case that would probably be a better fit for people studying for HSK 3.0 (since it would neatly cover each point they defined in a single article).

- Provide an example sentence for the TTS voices people can listen to (so they know which one they prefer and disable the other ones).

Makes sense, already available in "Add-ons" but it would be nice to offer it in the settings screen directly + for free voices.

- "Choose a dictionary" toggle. For some reason, my specific dictionary always defaults to Hanyu Da Cidian (HDC) as it's likely the latest dictionary purchase I made. I'd like to be able to make a certain dictionary a default.

Drag your preferred dictionary to the top of Settings / Manage Dictionaries and that should fix that. You can temporarily delete it in "Add-ons" if it's really bothering you + re-download it once we get rid of those stupid errors.

- Organize search results first by flashcards -> then by preferred dictionary -> then by the rest.

Yep, that's doable in 4.0.

 

[Weyland]

Drag your preferred dictionary to the top of Settings / Manage Dictionaries and that should fix that. You can temporarily delete it in "Add-ons" if it's really bothering you + re-download it once we get rid of those stupid errors.

Doesn't work, sadly. All it did was remove the "HDC" tag in the top right.

I'd be reluctant to actually build in HSK or TOCFL tags without users explicitly installing them because there's a certain small but noisy contingent that thinks the HSK shouldn't exist and a certain small but noisy contingent that thinks the TOCFL shouldn't exist

Imagine taking the cross-strait issue to flashcards...

... selling-as-a-paid-addon the Chinese Grammar Wiki

I'm all for collaboration. The only issue is that the guys behind the Grammar Wiki, AllSet Learning, only provide content for the beginner/pre-intermediate stages and just forego the advanced grammar altogether. Whereas educators like Chinese Zero to Hero will put in the effort to create an animated 10 min video for every grammar point. But, seeing as you guys are already in collaboration with Mandarin Companion I could see how you'd go for the Grammar Wiki. I'd just be a bit peeved if the grammar points cut off at HSK5. I'm aware 90% of the demand is in those HSK1-3 ranges, so business-wise it wouldn't make sense to even bother doing any of the advanced grammar points.

But somebody may also produce a dictionary keyed specifically to those HSK points ...

This document lines out all the grammar for the new HSK, of which there are 572 grammar points in total. It provides a (few) sentence(s) as an example per grammar point, but that's about it.

... synonyms would require you to supply your own thesaurus ...

You've explained why, but I still don't quite get why Pleco doesn't have a synonym/antonym feature. Especialy, when a new one-month app like XXX provides / has it at launch. If monetary incentive plays a part, and I'm probably repeating myself: what about crowdfunding?

 

[mikelove]

Doesn't work, sadly. All it did was remove the "HDC" tag in the top right.

Is the problem just that HDC is getting sorted to the top in those searches? (that'd be trickier to fix without a database update)

I'm all for collaboration. The only issue is that the guys behind the Grammar Wiki, AllSet Learning, only provide content for the beginner/pre-intermediate stages and just forego the advanced grammar altogether.

Well we can always start there and license some other more advanced title.

You've explained why, but I still don't quite get why Pleco doesn't have a synonym/antonym feature.

There isn't one available to license that I'd feel good enough about to be able to charge for, and if we're going to offer it for free I'd rather have my own, both for cost-saving and quality control reasons.

It's on my to-do list for editorial projects after 4.0, but I don't have the spare cycles to supervise its creation in the meantime - if some incredibly qualified person just randomly showed up and wanted to make the thing for us and I could just pay them to do it all that would probably be workable, but absent that, crowdfunding or whatever wouldn't make a difference since the money itself just sits in a bank account until you use it to hire somebody and I don't have the time to do a good job of that.

 

[Weyland]

Is the problem just that HDC is getting sorted to the top in those searches? (that'd be trickier to fix without a database update)

In my case; the latest purchased dictionary is always put on top. On an older phone of mine, the OCC dictionary keeps being the default (which I can't change) because that was the last dictionary I bought on that phone.

- - - - -

Not sure if a bug or feature, but; I have excluded most of my dictionaries in the flashcard session, but these dictionaries remain excluded in the dictionary when clicking the flashcard's "view in dictionary". I'd like to be able to re-include those dictionaries.

Having a "fall-back option" would be nice for flashcard entries. Having another second line, apart from the "Drag dictionaries below this line to exclude them", that shows options from other dictionaries above that line. Scenario: I have only enabled the OCC, GF and CY dictionaries so I can have both the English and Chinese definitions at my fingertips. But sometimes my flashcard definition is only available in CC-CEDICT. Having a failsafe for flashcards would be nice.

 

[mikelove]

In my case; the latest purchased dictionary is always put on top. On an older phone of mine, the OCC dictionary keeps being the default (which I can't change) because that was the last dictionary I bought on that phone.

That's odd... I assume deleting and re-downloading some other dictionary to make it more recent doesn't help?

(have to double check on that HDC glitchy headword fix, I'm not sure why it wasn't done like a year ago since it's a pretty minor / straightforward thing)

Not sure if a bug or feature, but; I have excluded most of my dictionaries in the flashcard session, but these dictionaries remain excluded in the dictionary when clicking the flashcard's "view in dictionary". I'd like to be able to re-include those dictionaries.

Currently deliberate; you could fix it in Expert Mode in 4.0 but I don't know if we'll make those separately customizable without delving into that.

Having a "fall-back option" would be nice for flashcard entries. Having another second line, apart from the "Drag dictionaries below this line to exclude them", that shows options from other dictionaries above that line. Scenario: I have only enabled the OCC, GF and CY dictionaries so I can have both the English and Chinese definitions at my fingertips. But sometimes my flashcard definition is only available in CC-CEDICT. Having a failsafe for flashcards would be nice.

Maybe just an option to keep the original entry rather than skipping the card altogether in those cases?

 

[Weyland]

deleting and re-downloading some other dictionary to make it more recent doesn't help

It still defaults to HDC even though I deleted it. Which is really weird.

Currently deliberate ...

What's the point then of the "switch dictionary" option? Is it just a more awkward "view in dictionary" option? Like in my case it would be nice to only allow Chinese dictionaries in the flashcard section and if I'm in doubt I can always click the "view in dictionary" button and see the rest of the entries. At the moment the "switch dictionary" button doesn't add anything other than being a more clumsy "view in dictionary" option.

Maybe just an option to keep the original entry rather than skipping the card altogether in those cases?

Makes sense if you have already assigned an entry to it, but it doesn't make sense if you uploaded a .txt file with just the characters and pronunciation.

 

[mikelove]

What's the point then of the "switch dictionary" option? Is it just a more awkward "view in dictionary" option? Like in my case it would be nice to only allow Chinese dictionaries in the flashcard section and if I'm in doubt I can always click the "view in dictionary" button and see the rest of the entries. At the moment the "switch dictionary" button doesn't add anything other than being a more clumsy "view in dictionary" option.

That is in fact exactly what it is - some people prefer it inline and it's something we've supported for a long time so we're reluctant to remove it but we might do so in 4.0.

Makes sense if you have already assigned an entry to it, but it doesn't make sense if you uploaded a .txt file with just the characters and pronunciation.

Can't you fix that with a batch remap command (after searching for cards with no definition / no dictionary)?

 

[Weyland]

Can't you fix that with a batch remap command (after searching for cards with no definition / no dictionary)?

Huh? How does remapping all my cards to dictionary entries that I won't even use in the flashcards help me right now though? Plus I'd have to go to search the card without definition, add them to a separate category, remember where they came from, then remap, put back in the category, check which cards still have no definition, remap again to my next preference of dictionary, then check which words still have no definition, remap again, etc.

At that point it makes more sense to just go card by card and open them in your dictionary and assigning an entry to them. (That is if I'm getting the sequence of things I have to do right).

It isn't that big of an issue. As it's only like 2 in 100 cards that get omitted from the review.

EDIT: PLUS, I have been using the Pleco flashcard feature merely for its review function. Lost my phone and thought it'd be wiser to wait for 4.0 than spend weeks going through my collection of like 30k cards.

 

[mikelove]

Huh? How does remapping all my cards to dictionary entries that I won't even use in the flashcards help me right now though?

Because then there’s some sort of default definition in Organize / Card Info / etc.

Plus I'd have to go to search the card without definition, add them to a separate category, remember where they came from, then remap, put back in the category, check which cards still have no definition, remap again to my next preference of dictionary, then check which words still have no definition, remap again, etc.

You can perform a batch operation directly from search results; no need to fiddle around with categories.

 

[Weyland]

1. Different colours for the screenwriter: Currently the brush colour is blue, but so is a lot of the dictionary's layout. It would be better if it was something like orange to provide contrast.
2. EPUB links that work: I often read EPUB books in Pleco, but it's quite annoying when clicking on the links doesn't do anything. It would be nice if it pop-up footnotes just as the pop-up dictionary. Example from calibre-ebook viewer.

 

[mikelove]

Different colours for the screenwriter: Currently the brush colour is blue, but so is a lot of the dictionary's layout. It would be better if it was something like orange to provide contrast.

We're doing a whole slidey faded-background thing with that now.

EPUB links that work: I often read EPUB books in Pleco, but it's quite annoying when clicking on the links doesn't do anything. It would be nice if it pop-up footnotes just as the pop-up dictionary.

We've got a whole new EPUB parsing system now, displaying them with our own text fields instead of awkwardly in a web view, so if the links in your book are still broken in that let me know and it should be much easier to fix than it currently is.

 

[Shun]

Hello Mike,

As part of official sentence flashcard support in a future version of Pleco, are you also planning to add TTS support to the feature that reads back the headword/Chinese sentence to the user after the answer is revealed? Currently, the recorded voice reads back every syllable by itself because only the TTS voice supports word segmenting.

Thanks,

Shun

 

[mikelove]

As part of official sentence flashcard support in a future version of Pleco, are you also planning to add TTS support to the feature that reads back the headword/Chinese sentence to the user after the answer is revealed? Currently, the recorded voice reads back every syllable by itself because only the TTS voice supports word segmenting.

That sounds like a bug, it's not something we're doing intentionally unless you're on Android and don't have one of our paid TTS add-ons (in which case we're doing it to make sure the tones you hear match the ones you see).

 

[Shun]

That sounds like a bug, it's not something we're doing intentionally unless you're on Android and don't have one of our paid TTS add-ons (in which case we're doing it to make sure the tones you hear match the ones you see).

That's good to hear. I'm experiencing this on iOS with all paid TTS voices installed. Under Settings > Audio, I have "Use TTS if no recording" enabled, and the voices are Hui and Qiang.

 

[Shun]

Hello Mike,

I have three questions/feature requests:

• As of Pleco 3.2, with Fixed card selection active in Flashcards, there are two possible sort orders: Date created and Score. Here, it would be useful to have as a choice the order in which they appear in the Organize Flashcards listing, or, equivalently, the order in which they were added to the category being studied. If a user studies more than one category at once, this option could also go away/be inactive.
• I think it would be very useful to be able to add little scripts/context commands when a word is selected, such as: "Search for the selected word in this-and-this PDF" (or book). That would reduce the number of taps necessary from about 6 (with copying and pasting) to about 1 for this repetitive operation.
• It has been mentioned before, but I am wondering, is the "include 30 words of context with every added flashcard in a separate field (15 words before, 15 words after an expression <--- Could also be less or more)" feature slated to be included with the first version of Pleco 4?

Many thanks,

Shun

 

[mikelove]

As of Pleco 3.2, with Fixed card selection active in Flashcards, there are two possible sort orders: Date created and Score. Here, it would be useful to have as a choice the order in which they appear in the Organize Flashcards listing, or, equivalently, the order in which they were added to the category being studied. If a user studies more than one category at once, this option could also go away/be inactive.

We've added this for 4.0 (for a variety of reasons it was actually really annoying / complicated to implement).

I think it would be very useful to be able to add little scripts/context commands when a word is selected, such as: "Search for the selected word in this-and-this PDF" (or book). That would reduce the number of taps necessary from about 6 (with copying and pasting) to about 1 for this repetitive operation.

Maybe post-4.0 we can look at scripting and Shortcuts integration and so on, I've been kind of dodging platform-specific stuff like that until we get the basic product out.

It has been mentioned before, but I am wondering, is the "include 30 words of context with every added flashcard in a separate field (15 words before, 15 words after an expression <--- Could also be less or more)" feature slated to be included with the first version of Pleco 4?

The way we ended up doing that was adding an optional second button to the reader to add the current sentence as its own flashcard and then link to it from the current word flashcard (creating a word flashcard if it doesn't already exist). Felt like a better / more natural way to support context bookmarking than just dumping a bunch of text into a field.

 

[Fernando]

What I think could go a long way in improving productivity is the ability to open two or more instances of Pleco on iPadOS, particularly the document reader. Don’t know if this could be implemented in Android as well, but I assume it could.

 

[lookslikerain]

Just dreaming here as I read about 莊周夢為胡蝶, but I would love the option to have a bigger popup dictionary window that is split to display two dictionaries at once (I'm just imagining the current window doubled, each pane independently scrollable--maybe when you tap the switch dictionary button it will skip the one open in the other pane). I love the speed of the popup dictionary viewer, but I don't see why it needs to be so small. It obscures enough of the screen that you can't browse other text while it's open anyway.

I also wonder if it would be possible to set different English and Chinese font sizes. To my eyes, the Chinese font appears smaller than the English font at the same size, and so when I use the popup dictionary I'm either squinting at the Chinese or the English is too big.

A final random thought: I've always thought it would be convenient if the arrows were locked to the bottom of the popup window rather than the bottom of the screen.

Thanks for all your hard work. I appreciate your app every time I use it (which is every day).

 

[mikelove]

I would love the option to have a bigger popup dictionary window that is split to display two dictionaries at once (I'm just imagining the current window doubled, each pane independently scrollable--maybe when you tap the switch dictionary button it will skip the one open in the other pane). I love the speed of the popup dictionary viewer, but I don't see why it needs to be so small. It obscures enough of the screen that you can't browse other text while it's open anyway.

We've experimented with that and we generally find it's too disorienting to have it to take up the whole screen - it's not so much about whether or not it's covering up the text as it is about remembering where you were on the page, which the current system carefully allows for.

But if you just tap on the 'go' arrow button in the top toolbar, that will pop up the full dictionary definition screen with easy access to all of your dictionaries.

I also wonder if it would be possible to set different English and Chinese font sizes. To my eyes, the Chinese font appears smaller than the English font at the same size, and so when I use the popup dictionary I'm either squinting at the Chinese or the English is too big.

We've added more customizations for that in our next big update 4.0 (despite the fact that in general 4.0 has about half as many settings as 3.0).

A final random thought: I've always thought it would be convenient if the arrows were locked to the bottom of the popup window rather than the bottom of the screen.

We do offer (and plan to continue offering) the option to lock the bubble itself to the bottom of the screen, but I'd be reluctant to have the buttons move with it because that would make repeated tapping impossible - you'd have to keep moving your finger around as the bubble moved.