User Interface Feedback Thread
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
radioman said:
It'll use it for audio in a flashcard with a custom headword, yes.
radioman said:
Through the popup reader, yes - tap-hold on the |-> button to expand the selection (first to the whole sentence, then to the whole paragraph), then tap on the audio button and it'll play that whole sentence or paragraph.
radioman
状元
I have also been interested in seeing variable presentation of font size (e.g., if there was information that was coming in from the clipboard, Hanzi would presented at 36 point font, whereas English and Pinyin would be presented as 24 or 28 point font). I find 36 point font very convenient as it is easy to see, but is also a good size for easily selecting a character with your finger. But with that size set, any mixed English or Pinyin is then awkwardly large.
If not exactly defining the size of each, maybe there is a way that there could be a default variation (e.g., add 10 points to any Chinese font presented into the reader).
If not exactly defining the size of each, maybe there is a way that there could be a default variation (e.g., add 10 points to any Chinese font presented into the reader).
ckatt said:
radioman said:
No, for various reasons a public beta of it costs us a good bit of money so we're waiting until we're happy with it on Android before we launch it on iOS.
radioman said:
We think we have a better balance on that front with our new fonts - the English one in general runs a bit smaller at the same point size as our old one did - but if we still get complaints on this front after that we can consider adding an option.
ckatt
状元
The current set up i use has the pop up dictionary read a whole word when tapped rather then just a single character. this is useful in the reader but less so in the flash cards when i only ever need to check the meaning of a single character since the whole definition is right there on the card. one option for the popup in the reader and another in the Flashcards would work ok but might be a bit of a pain. what i was thinking is that a short tap on a character could bring up the whole word and a long tap could have the pop up dictionary show the info for just the one character I'm tapping. what do you think?
You can collapse to a single character now with the |<- button; I'm hesitant to add another gesture into the mix, particularly one like a long-press that's conventionally used for something else (regular, handle-dragging text selection).
ckatt
状元
Ah yes good point. part of the reason have it set to read the whole word is because i cant display the add flash card button and the play audio button on the dictionary screen so as a work around i am just able to tap the head word. what if rather than a button to play the audio in the tool bar we had an icon next to the head word that could play the audio. like in the example sentences? just a thought.
Already part of our new type design, actually - see this Facebook post; coming to iOS first but thanks to some recent announcements by Google concerning font anti-aliasing we're optimistic that we'll be able to bring our new type design to Android soon as well.
Hi,
I would appreciate more flexibility in font size configuration. Right now in the definition screen interface I can set headword font size and body font size. Within the entry text, the example sentences are displayed with the same font size for hanzi, pinyin/zhuyin and English. I would like to use different font sizes. Am I missing something in the configuration? If not, could this be made configurable in a future version? Thanks.
I would appreciate more flexibility in font size configuration. Right now in the definition screen interface I can set headword font size and body font size. Within the entry text, the example sentences are displayed with the same font size for hanzi, pinyin/zhuyin and English. I would like to use different font sizes. Am I missing something in the configuration? If not, could this be made configurable in a future version? Thanks.
To be honest we're wary of making too much about the typography configurable because a) we're in the process of transitioning to a new type design that would make maintaining that configurability more difficult and b) it tends to be a significant vector for bugs. We are planning to add an option to hide / collapse the example sentences in a future update, though.
Dear Michael,
I agree. I've been lobbying for different font sizes for hanzi vs pinyin and English for years. Most Roman characters can be drawn with at most 5 or 6 strokes, whereas many Chinese characters require 10-20 strokes and some require more than 20 strokes. With the same font size for Chinese characters and Roman characters, my eyes have to distinguish many, many more strokes for Chinese characters in the same size area. It is a simple fact that for smallish font sizes it's easier to distinguish a Roman character than it is a Chinese character. We should be able to choose a larger font size for Chinese characters than for Roman characters.
If I recall correctly, Mike Love has two objections. One, it will look ugly with different font sizes in the same line; and two, he's got a new Chinese font that is going to be easier to read. My response to the ugly factor is that I don't care. From a practical standpoint I want to put as much text on the screen as possible which means the smallest easily readable font size for English and the smallest easily readable font size for Chinese, and these will always be different font sizes for. My response to his second point is that I simply don't believe that their exists any font style that can pack 20+ strokes into a small area and have it as readable as a Roman character. Just not possible. So I continue to argue in vain for different font sizes for Chinese and English. I say in vain because it's Mike Love's program and he can do with it as he wishes. And the number of complaints I have is miniscule compared to the value of this program so I will continue to happily use it even though I have to use a larger font size than I would like (not to mention, lots more white space than I like). It's a small price to pay for such a well-designed and useful program.
John
Mike, thank you for your reply, John, thank you for your comment too.
I understand that adding this sort of configurability before a type design overhaul might be asking for trouble. As for the bug argument, I would hope that having different font sizes in different lines in the example sentences should not bring the software to its knees. But since I am not involved in testing and bug fixing (I am just a customer and a fan
, I will have to take Mike's word for it.
In fact Pleco allows me right now to configure it to use two different font sizes in the same line at the top of the definition screen: either using mixed-size traditional/simplified headword characters or by using a different headword and body font size and not putting the headword, pronunciation and definition on separate lines. Instinctively I would expect allowing different font sizes on separate lines to cause less trouble than this.
So I am adding my voice in favor of allowing different font sizes for the example sentences, hoping that at some point the feature might find its way into a future release. The decision is obviously Mike's and he for sure understands the costs and drawbacks of adding this feature better than I do.
Mike, I suppose you understand why some users would wand this kind of feature? If not, I will be happy to elaborate on this. (There are in fact more arguments than stroke number, they include the number of letters in the alphabet, and whether we are reading a language we know well.)
In the meantime I have configured my font size so that the Latin letters look only slightly ridiculously large and I can read the Hanzi if they are simple or well known to me. When not, I copy the example sentence to the clipboard and view it using the document reader.
I understand that adding this sort of configurability before a type design overhaul might be asking for trouble. As for the bug argument, I would hope that having different font sizes in different lines in the example sentences should not bring the software to its knees. But since I am not involved in testing and bug fixing (I am just a customer and a fan
, I will have to take Mike's word for it.In fact Pleco allows me right now to configure it to use two different font sizes in the same line at the top of the definition screen: either using mixed-size traditional/simplified headword characters or by using a different headword and body font size and not putting the headword, pronunciation and definition on separate lines. Instinctively I would expect allowing different font sizes on separate lines to cause less trouble than this.
So I am adding my voice in favor of allowing different font sizes for the example sentences, hoping that at some point the feature might find its way into a future release. The decision is obviously Mike's and he for sure understands the costs and drawbacks of adding this feature better than I do.
Mike, I suppose you understand why some users would wand this kind of feature? If not, I will be happy to elaborate on this. (There are in fact more arguments than stroke number, they include the number of letters in the alphabet, and whether we are reading a language we know well.)
In the meantime I have configured my font size so that the Latin letters look only slightly ridiculously large and I can read the Hanzi if they are simple or well known to me. When not, I copy the example sentence to the clipboard and view it using the document reader.
It's not just that it creates bugs for us, it's that it creates bugs for Android devices with troublesome font renderers - just this week a bug showed up in the new Huawei P6 that causes lines of Chinese text to be randomly truncated, so that headwords in the search result list appear "clipped." We've confirmed that it's a Huawei bug and not a Pleco bug, but nonetheless if they don't fix it soon we're probably going to have to come up with a workaround, because people see issues like this and automatically blame the app developer rather than the hardware maker.
But it does also potentially create a lot of work for us to support, and it's very hard to justify doing that for an option that would be off by default and hence unlikely to be discovered (let alone used) by more than 1-2% of our users.
To be honest I think we may need to consider designating a page or two of options as "totally unsupported" (and burying them / surrounding them with various warning messages to that effect) for the sake of features like this. Simply adding the ability to tell our font system to make Chinese text a little bigger and to heck with the consequences would actually be very easy - 5 minutes to add the setting checkbox and 10 minutes to make it apply to our font system, and very little risk of causing problems for people who leave it disabled - but once we do add that option we're inviting people to complain that it doesn't quite work right (certain entries not rendering correctly, e.g.) / send us emails demanding a refund because they bought Pleco because of this precise feature and it's not compatible with the horrible $60 tablet they just bought / etc, not to mention the fact that if we're ever compelled to (temporarily or permanently) remove it in order to support some other new thing that it's incompatible with, we get a whole new wave of outrage thanks to that.
Have you thought about simply installing a Chinese font with larger characters, or an English font with smaller ones? FZLanTingHei for example has unusually large characters relative to their bounding boxes (it was under consideration as our new Chinese font but was dropped due to that very problem), and there are all sorts of compressed / compact English fonts floating around. It's very easy to customize our Chinese and English fonts even if you can't adjust their sizes.
But it does also potentially create a lot of work for us to support, and it's very hard to justify doing that for an option that would be off by default and hence unlikely to be discovered (let alone used) by more than 1-2% of our users.
To be honest I think we may need to consider designating a page or two of options as "totally unsupported" (and burying them / surrounding them with various warning messages to that effect) for the sake of features like this. Simply adding the ability to tell our font system to make Chinese text a little bigger and to heck with the consequences would actually be very easy - 5 minutes to add the setting checkbox and 10 minutes to make it apply to our font system, and very little risk of causing problems for people who leave it disabled - but once we do add that option we're inviting people to complain that it doesn't quite work right (certain entries not rendering correctly, e.g.) / send us emails demanding a refund because they bought Pleco because of this precise feature and it's not compatible with the horrible $60 tablet they just bought / etc, not to mention the fact that if we're ever compelled to (temporarily or permanently) remove it in order to support some other new thing that it's incompatible with, we get a whole new wave of outrage thanks to that.
Have you thought about simply installing a Chinese font with larger characters, or an English font with smaller ones? FZLanTingHei for example has unusually large characters relative to their bounding boxes (it was under consideration as our new Chinese font but was dropped due to that very problem), and there are all sorts of compressed / compact English fonts floating around. It's very easy to customize our Chinese and English fonts even if you can't adjust their sizes.
Mike, thank you for your explanation of what an Android application developer has to live with. At least I can hope that if totally unsupported experimental features ever make their way into Pleco's options, variable font size will be one of them.
Now that you mention it, I am starting to experiment with different fonts. So far mixed results, but worth trying.
Now that you mention it, I am starting to experiment with different fonts. So far mixed results, but worth trying.
phz
秀才
Hey. I do learn mandarin since feb 2013 by tutor, two textbooks and - you won't believe it - Pleco
It took me a while to find out about most of the functions and now it extremely helps me with learning the language.
Genius software. It was a good choice to implement different services (dictionaries, OCR, ..) instead of coding the elements on your own!
Now there are only two things I really wish to be changed:
- simplifying the menu (making options like "fonz size" in dictionary settings selectable by horizontal elements instead of drop down menus).
this would dramatically increase reading flow in my opinion. the current system has too many option categories
- make characters in flashcard categories searchable in dictionaries just by clicking on them (at the moment you need to use "change dictionary / entry" button)
after learning my first 30 characters with the plain dictionary I now feel this little workflow improvement is missing in the flashcard menu for sorting your cards
Keep up the good work. Marc
It took me a while to find out about most of the functions and now it extremely helps me with learning the language.
Genius software. It was a good choice to implement different services (dictionaries, OCR, ..) instead of coding the elements on your own!
Now there are only two things I really wish to be changed:
- simplifying the menu (making options like "fonz size" in dictionary settings selectable by horizontal elements instead of drop down menus).
this would dramatically increase reading flow in my opinion. the current system has too many option categories
- make characters in flashcard categories searchable in dictionaries just by clicking on them (at the moment you need to use "change dictionary / entry" button)
after learning my first 30 characters with the plain dictionary I now feel this little workflow improvement is missing in the flashcard menu for sorting your cards
Keep up the good work. Marc
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Thanks for your feedback.
Simplified options are something we're working on - already got rid of about 2/3 of them for our new iOS app.
For flashcard categories, if you tap-hold on an item in Organize Cards there's an option to view it as a dictionary entry (with the usual tap-lookup options) instead of on the flashcard info screen.
Simplified options are something we're working on - already got rid of about 2/3 of them for our new iOS app.
For flashcard categories, if you tap-hold on an item in Organize Cards there's an option to view it as a dictionary entry (with the usual tap-lookup options) instead of on the flashcard info screen.