User Dictionary

[9Life42]

I just began using Pleco's flashcard system for real this past month and finally decided to import about 2,000 cards that I previously created in Anki while I was studying a different textbook. I imported the flashcards into a user dictionary because I like to have the textbook's definitions as a reference when I look up words in the dictionary that I may have forgotten. This all worked wonderfully and I was really happy with the whole process until I realized that there were a lot of duplicate cards (between my old and new textbook, etc) that Pleco couldn't find because I didn't import any traditional characters. For all the cards with traditional variants that I didn't import, Pleco will match that definition up with other dictionaries when I search in the dictionary, but Pleco doesn't consider the flashcards to be duplicates. So I'm wondering:

1. Is there a setting or something that I missed that will make Pleco ignore the fact that a card's headword is missing traditional characters and find these duplicates anyway?
2. Or, even better, is there any way I can add the traditional characters to all the user dictionary entries that don't have them?
3. Or, if there is no way to fix this problem with my current user dictionary, is there a way I can reimport the words from the text files with traditional characters? The reason that I didn't import traditional along with simplified in the first place is that the text files I'm using are in the format: Traditional <tab> Simplified (if it exists) <tab> Pinyin <tab> Definition and I couldn't figure out any easy way to use Excel, etc to put the traditional in brackets directly after the simplified as Pleco requires (I just moved things around and deleted the traditional). I'll attach an example of one of the text files.

Hopefully someone can shed some light on how to fix this. Thank you!!

 

[HW60]

1. Is there a setting or something that I missed that will make Pleco ignore the fact that a card's headword is missing traditional characters and find these duplicates anyway?

I suppose you have custom cards, as you imported your cards from Anki.

If you have 2 dictionary entries, one with traditional characters, the other without, you should delete the entry with the traditional character, if it would be a duplicate without the traditional character. You could export the dictionary, copy it to Excel (that would look like your file), mark duplicate entries in the column with simplified characters using Excel. Then you sort the table using the column with the traditional entries (then the entries with the missing traditional values come one after the other), and delete all entries (= lines in Excel) that are marked as duplicates and have no traditional value. If you still have entries with traditional characters, they are no duplicates, and you either delete the traditional column or keep it. Afterwards you import the file in a new user dictionary.

I hope that was your problem - your text file has no duplicates ...

 

[mikelove]

Yes, unfortunately there's no easy setting for this at the moment - a "duplicate-checking character set" option is in the works for a future release, but we're rewriting a lot of the duplicate checking code at the moment to make it faster (turns out that duplicate checking is one of the biggest reasons why imports take so long) so it may be a little while.

 

[9Life42]

Thanks for the replies. My problem was just that I had already edited that text file so it only had simplified characters (I deleted all the traditional variants and then combined the two columns of characters so there was just: simplified <tab> pinyin <tab> definition). This worked fine except that without the traditional characters as part of a card's headword, Pleco wouldn't find duplicates for cards that have traditional variants.

Anyway, I ended up playing around with Excel until I found a way to reformat my entire list of words and then I deleted my user dictionary and reimported all my words again with traditional variants included. This way all the flashcards were left in the correct categories (just the linked definition was deleted) and I could remap all those cards to my new user dictionary without too much trouble. It took me a long time, but I guess my dictionary is more complete now and it seems to have fixed the problem!

I'm wondering if there is a good way to hide duplicate cards from Pleco that I actually want to keep though. For example, some words have multiple definitions that I want to keep as separate cards. Would adding spaces to the end of the headword (in my user dictionary) be a good way of doing this or will that mess things up in other ways?

Thanks for all the help!

 

[HW60]

I'm wondering if there is a good way to hide duplicate cards from Pleco that I actually want to keep though. For example, some words have multiple definitions that I want to keep as separate cards. Would adding spaces to the end of the headword (in my user dictionary) be a good way of doing this or will that mess things up in other ways

Should not be a problem, the manual says: By default, Pleco only allows you to create one flashcard with a given headword and pronunciation, so that you won't end up wasting time studying the same word twice. It does allow duplicated cards with the same characters but different pronunciations, or with the same simplified characters but different traditional characters; a card is only considered a duplicate if the simplified headword, traditional headword and pronunciation all match.

 

[9Life42]

Thanks! I'll try it and see how it goes.

 

[gabor]

Didn't want to open a new topic for my questions regarding user dictionaries on android:

I am just about to buy an iPad mini or an Android tablet. My main purpose is to continue editing my user dictionaries in Pleco. The latest iOS update introduced a nice feature for creating new entries for words found in dictionaries, the fields characters and pinyin are already prepopulated upon creating a new user entry. Before deciding on a tablet, I wanted to test this feature on android, so:

I grabbed my wife's android phone and installed Pleco, but I could not even find a way to create a new user dictionary entry. I have restored all my purchases and also have some user dictionaries installed, but I simply cant find the button to create a new entry.

Please tell me how to create new entry and if the prepopulated new entry feature is already implemented on android or if you plan to do so. Thanks a lot in advance!

 

[alex_hk90]

Didn't want to open a new topic for my questions regarding user dictionaries on android:

I am just about to buy an iPad mini or an Android tablet. My main purpose is to continue editing my user dictionaries in Pleco. The latest iOS update introduced a nice feature for creating new entries for words found in dictionaries, the fields characters and pinyin are already prepopulated upon creating a new user entry. Before deciding on a tablet, I wanted to test this feature on android, so:

I grabbed my wife's android phone and installed Pleco, but I could not even find a way to create a new user dictionary entry. I have restored all my purchases and also have some user dictionaries installed, but I simply cant find the button to create a new entry.

Please tell me how to create new entry and if the prepopulated new entry feature is already implemented on android or if you plan to do so. Thanks a lot in advance!

I don't know if there is a way you can create new entries from the definition screen, but you can do it via "Settings - Dictionary - Manage Dictionaries - (User Dictionary Name) - Browse all dictionary entries - New Entry".

 

[mikelove]

No easy way to do that on Android yet - at the moment the best suggestion I can offer would be to create a new flashcard, tap on the + button again, tap on "Card Info" in the popup that comes up, tap on the button to convert it to a custom card, edit the card, save it, then tap on the button to convert that custom card to a user dictionary entry.

 

[gabor]

Thanks for the answers. Not so easy indeed, but possible. And after all, a good android tablet still costs much less than an iPad

What about the following situation: in the text reader I find a new word, I select it, but its not in any dictionary. Can I still follow this method (flashcard to custom to user dict) to create an entry?

 

[mikelove]

Not even necessary, if you set the right option in Settings / Popup Definition it'll pop up a custom flashcard creation screen when you tap on +.