Here are a few items of feedback, but I still need to really check out flashcards and the reader. And before you start reading a long list of negatives below I must say that Beta 4 is looking really good. I'm finally starting to feel ok going to it instead of Pleco 1 for definitions. It was really nice the other day to use the 21st century dictionary to look up a word for Chinese colleague that they could read in their language.
Some of these items may be nits - but some of these nits are the types of things that could turn a potential buyer off on purchasing.
- There is still no white space in the text box left margins of pocketpc - in the text input field you can't see the cursor until you've typed one character, and in the definition field characters run straight into the edge of the screen. I notice that the palm edition has very nice margins in the 2.0 preview page..
- I was hoping for the smart paste we discussed - i.e. look at how many bytes are in the clipboard and if it's a bunch just go straight into the reader. Right now if it's some large number of bytes nothing at all happens when you paste, which I don't consider a good thing.
- I don't see any quick way to dump entries from the new chinese only dictionaries straight into the reader. I'm a beginner, but I definitely find these dictionaries valuable as there are som many entries and lengthy definitions. However without a simple way to dump them into the reader they're not particularly convenient for a beginner.
- The english search doesn't seem to support whitespace characters or punctuation - hence it's impossible to look up many proper names and many other entries which include multiple english words. The 2.0 preview page mentions that most of the simpson's cast of characters are in there - So far this doesn't appear to be true, but this may be because there simply isn't enough flexibility in the search system to find them. This is exacerbated by the next issue, below.
- The dictionary autoswitches from english to chinese ABC automatically all the time. As soon as you type in something that doesn't match any english entry in the current dictionary - whitespace issue above included, the dictionary autoswitches to ABC, and you can't switch back to english until you've deleted whatever characters offended it. I really don't like autoswitching dictionaries, and auto-switching languages is even worse. In 1.0 there were preferences to control this, 2.0 seems to have fewer options in this department, and the ones which seem applicable are already turned off. Try searching for Bart or Homer Simpson by any way you might order those names, and you'll see the issue pretty quickly.
- On the subject of preferences - the current dropdown to change panels is really unintuitive to a first time user. The first time I saw this in Beta 1 I thought this was just alpha layout, but I see it hasn't changed. At a minum the drop down needs text next to it that tells you that the purpose of the drop down is panel selection. I'd also recommend doing something else that isolates it more and shows that it's a separate function from the rest of the panel - either move it to the very bottom or very top of the screen, and then perhaps put a line or something which separates it even further from the actual preferences options.
- The reader does seem really cool now that I've actually been able to use the clipboard with it, also very good idea to include the sample file in the installer. However it still has too many bugs to be easily usable for many text sources - the issue that's blocking me now is that it doesn't seem to support any non-chinese text - I started trying to translate some SMS, which is the biggest reason I want the reader, and it immediately choked on the first comma in the message, and wouldn't allow any further testing.
- The numbers in the stroke order section really need an alpha channel if you're planning to stick with circles around the numbers - not sure if this is an option, but most fonts have circled numbers in the font, I believe zysong does as well
- Still don't see a separate way to search Unihan that doesn't require finding the character in another dictionary. I can imagine the unihan definition will also be required for the reader as a definition of last resort for rare characters - not sure if that's supported, though I guess the character info screen can be pulled up from the reader.
- Going to chime in with the others asking for alternate font support. I've gotten used to using sun-extA in V1 as it's far more complete than ZYSong. It doesn't need to be in the initial 2.0 release, but hope it's not put off forever.
- Flashcard bug - I tweaked the preferences somehow and the flashcards became completely unusable. I can change preferences and manage cards, but I can't start a session. I deleted everything in the registry except registration, and they still don't work - what do I need to do to make them work? I didn't see a specific registry entry for flashcards stored in the registry, are they stored somewhere else?
Some of these items may be nits - but some of these nits are the types of things that could turn a potential buyer off on purchasing.