[Unofficial] Feature Request / Suggestion List

[Fernando]

Another issue I encounter that might be related to the reasons why we don’t have multiple instance functionality in Pleco is that page/text position in the reader gets dumped from RAM very aggressively (I assume that’s the issue, please correct me if I’m wrong). Oftentimes I am with a long document open, leave Pleco to browse or email or do something else in other apps, and when I return the document reloads from the beginning and I need to find the place where I was again. Adding multiple app instances and fixing this would be absolutely stellar.

 

[mikelove]

Another issue I encounter that might be related to the reasons why we don’t have multiple instance functionality in Pleco is that page/text position in the reader gets dumped from RAM very aggressively (I assume that’s the issue, please correct me if I’m wrong). Oftentimes I am with a long document open, leave Pleco to browse or email or do something else in other apps, and when I return the document reloads from the beginning and I need to find the place where I was again. Adding multiple app instances and fixing this would be absolutely stellar.

What sort of document? If it's an EPUB, we're already moving towards a much more reliable and memory-efficient way of parsing those in 4.0.

 

[Fernando]

What sort of document? If it's an EPUB, we're already moving towards a much more reliable and memory-efficient way of parsing those in 4.0.

I read epubs in Pleco as well, but most of the time it’s docx.

 

[mikelove]

I read epubs in Pleco as well, but most of the time it’s docx.

Fixed the same way, actually, in both cases we were rendering in a web view before but are now extracting the text + rendering it in a standard Pleco rich text field.

 

[Fernando]

Fixed the same way, actually, in both cases we were rendering in a web view before but are now extracting the text + rendering it in a standard Pleco rich text field.

That’s awesome!

Any chance we’ll be able to have more than one document open at a time?

 

[mikelove]

Any chance we’ll be able to have more than one document open at a time?

We've done like half of the work for multi-instance support, but getting it working all the way is a gigantic pain in the butt, so probably not in the initial release - however, as far as I know there's no fundamental issue in the app's design that would prevent it, it's just a couple hundred annoying potential data synchronization bugs we need to check for and I'd rather save all that work for a later update.

 

[Cameroon]

Been browsing through the forums for feature suggestions of the past to organize them in one place. Have a suggestion? Post it here, I'll update the list.

IF you have alternatives for the suggestions made, whether it be dictionaries or third-party alternatives; please post your suggestions here.

Hi, I have a suggestion, to render double new lines in popups as a single newline (now empty lines steal precious space from small popups).
While it's ok in main window for better readability, in popups the viewing priorities differ so it's better to have a more compact, condensed layout.

 

[mikelove]

Hi, I have a suggestion, to render double new lines in popups as a single newline (now empty lines steal precious space from small popups).
While it's ok in main window for better readability, in popups the viewing priorities differ so it's better to have a more compact, condensed layout.

Yeah, we're working on a more comprehensive/thoughtful "compact mode" rendering for entries in general.

 

[jurgen85]

The Unihan Vietnamese field, where it contains "valid" pinyin, has what looks like numeric pinyin transformations applied. See for example 益、鎬、榜、束

 

[mikelove]

The Unihan Vietnamese field, where it contains "valid" pinyin, has what looks like numeric pinyin transformations applied. See for example 益、鎬、榜、束

That's odd, I don't believe we perform any transformation on that data at all, we just output the raw text - must be getting garbled somewhere else.

 

[gnalck]

It would be nice to have a feature to auto-play audio when selecting or "drilling down" into a dictionary entry in the dictionary search interface. I currently have this enabled for the [Popup Dictionary](https://android.pleco.com/manual/310/settings.html#popupdefinition), and find it useful.

Additionally, right now if I search a word and that word has no exact match, there is a "Add to user dictionary" button at the top. It would be nice to additionally have a "Create a flashcard" button beneath this. Right now if I want to add a sentence, for example, I just add it to a user dictionary from the dictionary search interface, then create a flashcard from that, since it is easier than going through the "new card" interface, as it pre-fills the pronunciation and headwords for me . But I don't actually ever use these "user dictionary" entries.

Thanks for the great app

 

[mikelove]

It would be nice to have a feature to auto-play audio when selecting or "drilling down" into a dictionary entry in the dictionary search interface.

In the works, at least somewhat.

Additionally, right now if I search a word and that word has no exact match, there is a "Add to user dictionary" button at the top. It would be nice to additionally have a "Create a flashcard" button beneath this.

You can fix that with the "unknown search" option in settings / search interface - if you set it to "card + entry" it'll make a card along with a user dictionary entry, or just 'card' will create just a card.

 

[eibar04]

(Android) What is the possibility of a "Historical Dictionaries Bundle" with Grand Ricci and Hanyu da Cidian? 60-70$ and I buy it immediately. You know that separately they make people hesitate to buy them because of their price. Happy new year.

 

[mikelove]

(Android) What is the possibility of a "Historical Dictionaries Bundle" with Grand Ricci and Hanyu da Cidian? 60-70$ and I buy it immediately. You know that separately they make people hesitate to buy them because of their price. Happy new year.

That one's kind of awkward licensing-wise, sadly - there are limits on what we can charge for either.

 

[Cameroon]

Features suggested:
1) When in Pleco Reader, be able to add not only words, but also sentences they are included in, to the flashcard lists.
2) Ability for Pleco Reader to render English texts as well (given that there are English-Chinese dictionaries already included).

 

[mikelove]

1) When in Pleco Reader, be able to add not only words, but also sentences they are included in, to the flashcard lists.

Actually already implemented for 4.0, though we're not sure if we're going to get around to giving it an easy-to-access setting in the first release or if we'll initially confine it to "expert mode."

2) Ability for Pleco Reader to render English texts as well (given that there are English-Chinese dictionaries already included).

Also supported, but that one will almost certainly start out as expert-only.

 

[Fernando]

or if we'll initially confine it to "expert mode."

“Ooh, check out the big brain on Brett! He uses ‘expert mode’!”

What other goodies are we going to find hidden in expert mode? As far as I know there’s no such thing in the current version.

 

[Cameroon]

Hi, new suggestions have just arrived:
1) please make customizable backgrounds for right and wrong answers in handwriting flashcards tests (now green/red respectively). Reason: not to be confused with tone colors (red and green are highly used almost in any tone-color scheme), I'd set it to blue/grey, not so informative maybe but no misleading for the color memory in return;
2) given that soon there'll be no clipboard monitoring popup dictionary available in Pleco, perhaps some other mechanism can be added to show translation in popup without having to switch to Pleco's main window (not to be distracted from what you are currently reading). Maybe some floating button? I.e. selected word, tapped the floating button and there you have the popup definition.
+ please make a setting in Pleco, when a word comes from an external application, not to open search window or dictionary entry window (as now) but make additional setting - to show translation in a popup window.
Many apps like e.g. PocketBook reader have option to send selected words to Pleco. It'll be good if Pleco catches this received word and shows it in the good old popup ))

 

[mikelove]

1) please make customizable backgrounds for right and wrong answers in handwriting flashcards tests (now green/red respectively). Reason: not to be confused with tone colors (red and green are highly used almost in any tone-color scheme), I'd set it to blue/grey, not so informative maybe but no misleading for the color memory in return;

That's implemented for Expert Mode.

2) given that soon there'll be no clipboard monitoring popup dictionary available in Pleco, perhaps some other mechanism can be added to show translation in popup without having to switch to Pleco's main window (not to be distracted from what you are currently reading). Maybe some floating button? I.e. selected word, tapped the floating button and there you have the popup definition.

I dunno, I'm a little wary of building other stuff that relies on screen overlays at this point since it seems like Google really, really wants to ban them and is just waiting for an opportunity.

+ please make a setting in Pleco, when a word comes from an external application, not to open search window or dictionary entry window (as now) but make additional setting - to show translation in a popup window.

This is actually the new default behavior for the definition screen at least. (search still takes you to the regular search screen)

 

[Cameroon]

That's implemented for Expert Mode.

the Expert mode in the upcoming version 4?

This is actually the new default behavior for the definition screen at least. (search still takes you to the regular search screen)

will this behavior show regular definition screen (thus hiding what you have been reading) or the part-screen popup window (in the top, like the current clipboard popup does, not distracting from your current reading)?