What's the big surprise?
- Thread starter Rustic
- Start date
Well I don't get to make surprise announcements very often, so I don't want to give away too much... suffice it to say it's something PlecoDict-related which we have never discussed publicly before. And we think it will make PlecoDict substantially more useful for a lot of people.
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Anonymous
Guest
...a native speaker included with every SD card? 8)mikelove said:
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Anonymous
Guest
Strip Flashcards?
I think this would be a great idea, every time you get over 90% right in a session the background image of Zhang Ziyi or And Lau removes one more item of clothing . . .
Perhaps in Pleco 2.0 . . .
I think this would be a great idea, every time you get over 90% right in a session the background image of Zhang Ziyi or And Lau removes one more item of clothing . . .
Perhaps in Pleco 2.0 . . .
All interesting guesses (though I shudder to think about the e-mails we'd get if we added a strip flashcards feature), all of them, sadly, incorrect.
Stroke order won't be ready until PlecoDict 2.0, mainly because we're not going to invest the time/money in creating a character stroke database until we've got some other uses for it, like a stroke order tester, character component search feature, etc. But it's at the top of the list of 2.0 features.
Voice support is coming in 1.1, I think - we already have one set of voice samples and probably could have gotten some sort of voice feature into 1.0, but it wouldn't have been very good or useful. The one we're planning for 1.1 should work in a lot of different areas, like flashcards and possibly even character magnification.
And we're still trying to license a Chinese-Chinese dictionary, but we haven't managed to do so yet - does anybody have any thoughts on the "Xiandai Zhongwen Cidian" by Commercial Press? It's a little more approachable than the "Xiandai Hanyu Cidian" (which we'd also like to license), in fact it seems to have been designed for middle school students, which might make it a very good first Chinese-Chinese dictionary for a lot of people.
Stroke order won't be ready until PlecoDict 2.0, mainly because we're not going to invest the time/money in creating a character stroke database until we've got some other uses for it, like a stroke order tester, character component search feature, etc. But it's at the top of the list of 2.0 features.
Voice support is coming in 1.1, I think - we already have one set of voice samples and probably could have gotten some sort of voice feature into 1.0, but it wouldn't have been very good or useful. The one we're planning for 1.1 should work in a lot of different areas, like flashcards and possibly even character magnification.
And we're still trying to license a Chinese-Chinese dictionary, but we haven't managed to do so yet - does anybody have any thoughts on the "Xiandai Zhongwen Cidian" by Commercial Press? It's a little more approachable than the "Xiandai Hanyu Cidian" (which we'd also like to license), in fact it seems to have been designed for middle school students, which might make it a very good first Chinese-Chinese dictionary for a lot of people.
There is one feature I talked about a long time ago.....
It is a "english-word-to-chinese-word translator".
The idea is that first the user already has a good knowledge of grammar: he knows how to construct chinese sentences (order of words, ...).
He also has some vocabulary.
With the program, he would type, for instance, "tomorrow I want go to theater". That is not a correct english sentence, but the major words are there.
The program would give the corresponding chinese words, in same order, choosing the more frequent one if several are found.
The basic idea of that : give a vocabulary help to english-speaking people to build chinese sentences (always good not to have to search words when talking!).
I think that implementing this is not a great deal, as the objective is NOT to build a proper translator.
I not "the surprise", please think about it for a 1.x release !
It is a "english-word-to-chinese-word translator".
The idea is that first the user already has a good knowledge of grammar: he knows how to construct chinese sentences (order of words, ...).
He also has some vocabulary.
With the program, he would type, for instance, "tomorrow I want go to theater". That is not a correct english sentence, but the major words are there.
The program would give the corresponding chinese words, in same order, choosing the more frequent one if several are found.
The basic idea of that : give a vocabulary help to english-speaking people to build chinese sentences (always good not to have to search words when talking!).
I think that implementing this is not a great deal, as the objective is NOT to build a proper translator.
I not "the surprise", please think about it for a 1.x release !
This isn't the surprise, but it's certainly a very useful feature. It's not as easy to implement as you suggest, though - none of our current dictionaries offers these sorts of one-word explanations, so we'd have to manually edit one to get them, which could be rather time-consuming. And going by frequency is insufficient for some words, like "go" or "take".
We might consider doing some variation on this in a future version, though - maybe you could type in an English sentence, and the dictionary would bring up the definition for each individual word when you tapped on it. (in a box in the lower half of the screen) Or we could list the first line of each English word's entry below the text input, and then expand it when you tapped on the line. Something like that would provide the same quick vocabulary lookup while avoiding the problem of impossible-to-translate words.
We might consider doing some variation on this in a future version, though - maybe you could type in an English sentence, and the dictionary would bring up the definition for each individual word when you tapped on it. (in a box in the lower half of the screen) Or we could list the first line of each English word's entry below the text input, and then expand it when you tapped on the line. Something like that would provide the same quick vocabulary lookup while avoiding the problem of impossible-to-translate words.
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Anonymous
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Mike,
I agree that there are many ways this word-by-word translation could be implemented. I think about somethink very simple (for the first version....!):
I write the words I want to use in my sentence, and the software gives me translations (pinyin included), that's it!
If I get a word that I know is wrong (but I don't know the correct one), then may be a '+' button to have the next guess (the next word in frequency order may be).
I have an other dictionnary, with much less words as yours, which offer this kind of function. I could give you a reference if you don't already have it.
I agree that there are many ways this word-by-word translation could be implemented. I think about somethink very simple (for the first version....!):
I write the words I want to use in my sentence, and the software gives me translations (pinyin included), that's it!
If I get a word that I know is wrong (but I don't know the correct one), then may be a '+' button to have the next guess (the next word in frequency order may be).
I have an other dictionnary, with much less words as yours, which offer this kind of function. I could give you a reference if you don't already have it.
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Anonymous
Guest
And a good surprise it was!
I'm very pleased with the new recognition module. It works much better than the previous one for my fumbling, foreign scrawl (usually in the wrong stroke order).
Thanks!
I'm very pleased with the new recognition module. It works much better than the previous one for my fumbling, foreign scrawl (usually in the wrong stroke order).
Thanks!