[Unofficial] Feature Request / Suggestion List

[jurgen85]

Abbreviate list contents

Verbose dictionaries are not very useful in lists (for beginners anyway). E.g. the first line of Oxford's 欄 becomes:

NOUN 1 欄杆 railing ▶ 柵欄 2 圍欄

With some cleaning up, we could instead fit almost all of the (English) info on the same line:

N. railing; pen; column; notice bo...

which in my eyes is much more useful when scrolling through a list looking for keywords.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks - will try to make sure that's on the list of hide-able subfields for 4.0.

 

[jurgen85]

Merge flashcards with “identical” definitions

Some entries that have the exact same pinyin/trad/simp but different definitions are split up anyway (e.g. Oxford's 秀xiù, 挑tiāo, 会huì). Keeping flashcards for these can get confusing.

Less confusing would be to include all of those otherwise identical definitions on the same flashcard.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks - this has already been fixed for 4.0 (cards can now link to multiple entries together).

 

[jurgen85]

Granular fallback

The current situation:
I have CC set as fallback. When I search "sanpao", I get 三跑田 from KEY. But CC's 三炮 gets hidden entirely, which I am also interested in (but I nevertheless want to have CC as fallback).

My suggestion:
If the search matches a word that only exists in fallback dictionaries, include it anyway. Probably best implemented as a per-dictionary option (to avoid unihan mess). Might also be enhanced by sorting fallback matches below non-fallback matches.

 

[mikelove]

Why is CC configured as a fallback, instead of simply being sorted below KEY?

 

[jurgen85]

I have only a few favorite dictionaries in the default group, to make it easier to not get lost while scrolling the definitions with examples and all.

Also it limits the number of character variants (that CC likes, but that I am not very interested in at this stage of my learning, they mostly make headwords harder to read).

But even in a non-heretical configuration, I still think this change could be useful (e.g. C–E with C–C fallbacks sorted below).

 

[mikelove]

Understood. In that case, maybe a temporary fix would be to create two different search groups, one with the dictionaries you use most and another one with dictionaries that you use less which you can switch to to make sure you didn't miss anything?

 

[jurgen85]

Come to think of it, I might actually just have been interested in:

1. An indicator on the "dict slider" for which dict is currently on the screen. Larger slider as well.

2. Only show OCC's character variants (or whichever you prefer) in the search list, and prioritize those ones in other dictionaries. E.g. ABC's entry would be 雜誌/志, not 雜志/誌. (Basically I would like ABC at the top but with OCC's characters)

 

[mikelove]

1) Makes sense.

2) Should be doable in 4.0 with expert settings.

 

[jurgen85]

Dark mode accent color

Probably old news, but I find the (only available) blue shade too dark and hard to read at all (which makes reading examples increasingly annoying).

I obviously don't know the ins and outs, and only infer by deduction, so am happy with any response.

I gather from some old threads that Android limits colors in popup dialogs etc., but my only concern is text color. I don't mind the UI itself as long as the background is black and Chinese text is as readable as possible.

Seeing as examples with pinyin already have customizable color, it seems to me that adding a color wheel for the pinyin-less examples, would be a trivial enough addition to potentially come before 4.0.

 

[mikelove]

Definitely customizable in 4.0, but to be honest if we tried to accommodate every little easy feature request pre-4.0 it would quickly turn into a large and no-longer-easy list of new features

 

[Weyland]

Please add the "?" to the handwriting input (recognition) list of characters.

Recently I have been reading some old-time manhua from Hong Kong and, sadly, the scans are often too blurry to clearly distinguish every single characters. I have been using the split-screen functionality on the iPad to read these manhua, but it's quite awkward to switch between the two input methods.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks.

 

[tomasilheu]

Hey Mike. Regarding widgets for iOS 14, a cool feature that could be implemented could be a word of the day widget, where we could choose the word based on a category. Let's suppose I'm practicing for HSK6, it would be nice to have a widget that could show me a random word from that category, that could refresh every hour/ every 2 hours etc. Maybe something like the LookUp app or Merriam Webster Dictionary. Let me know your thoughts on this.

 

[mikelove]

Honestly, Android's had widgets forever and once the newness wore off people seem to have kind of lost interest in them (it's been several years since anybody asked for a word of the day widget on Android, I believe). If they prove to be more enduring on iOS and Apple maybe adds some additional capabilities next summer I might revisit that, but I don't foresee us making the time to do it before then - too much other stuff to work on.

 

[Weyland]

a word of the day widget

Would be great if those words of the day (or even morning/afternoon/evening) could be taken from a person's own specific flashcards.

 

[jurgen85]

Case-insensitive pinyin

If I am interested in looking up names, I usually do either a fulltext search, or search for the hanzi directly. It's not uncommon to see 2 or 3 of the top list items wasted on surnames or country abbreviations, out of 8 visible on my 5 inch phone (with the keyboard open). On top of this some dictionaries use all lowercase for names anyway which adds to the mess.

 

[jiyan]

Search feature in example sentences browser

Hello,

Sometimes the sentence examples for some words are quite numerous, especially when you have many dictionaries installed. This of course is not a bad thing, but when you are trying to find the usage of this word in a specific context it's a bit tedious to scroll until you find what you are looking for.

So unless there is already a way and it's me that hadn't noticed yet, it would be nice to have a search function on while browsing example sentences. Ideally it should work on a basis where you type some words (eg. 虽然 但是）and it presents you with sentences that include them irrespective of their each word's individual position in the entry, however even a basic Ctrl + F functionality where you can just look for a particular word is better that nothing.

 

[jurgen85]

Search feature in example sentences browser

If I may add to this:

1. In normal dictionary search, it would also make sense to be able to search for multiple full-text strings like #虽然#但是, and also filter matches you don't want, perhaps an exclamation mark like #可!#可是 in analogy with !=

2. Being able to search specifically in either examples or defintions-excluding-examples, i.e. not both at the same time. Searching for examples would have a different list layout (like the one in the Sents tab) focused on the examples themselves rather than where they are found.