Beta 4 Feedback Thread
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
ldolse - thanks for another detailed feedback post. The importer definitely needs to handle format variations better, though I'm a bit concerned about those randomly-failed entries - do you see any pattern at all to the sorts of entries that randomly fail or is it completely random? Good idea about stats though not sure if that'll make it into 2.0. Copy-and-paste needs to be added to quite a few places, actually - the edit card / edit new dictionary entry screens in particular. The folder button at the bottom of the screen in Manage is supposed to let you assign categories, we just haven't enabled it yet. With the search terms, built-in IMEs and keyboards should still work fine with that field - are you sure you had tapped in it to select it before you tried entering text?
Interesting idea on a stroke order / writing panel, actually fits in nicely with a couple of other potential 2.1 additions. Good catch on the un-closeable Info windows, hadn't seen that yet. With the Character Info interface, we do need to lefty-enable it but putting the buttons on the bottom makes the character too small on a square Pocket PC screen - however, once we get it expanding correctly on large displays, the buttons in portrait orientation at least should appear below the character. The filtering you mention works in the ABC because it's a very well-tagged data file and makes it clear which parts of entries are definitions and which are example sentences; we're slowly adding this tagging to our other dictionaries but in the initial 2.0 release at least it may only be able to hide examples on ABC-based cards.
If you un-check the "Immediately score free-answer cards" box in Preferences, that will get it to wait before processing your answer. We might want to make this separately configurable for characters and Pinyin, though (since it's easier to miss with Pinyin), and like several other items on the flashcard Preferences screen this should probably be moved into profile settings. The multi-choice confirm box actually only pops up when the text is too long to fit onto one line, but thinking about it just now I realize that's a terrible design idea since people don't know whether or not their one tap will commit the answer or just bring up that confirm box, so in the future it should put up that confirmation request anytime there's *any* choice in the box that won't fit on one line. Or just anytime it's displaying definitions.
Two main reasons for adding a soft keyboard: Zhuyin and easy integration with other input methods. (so you can tap on the keyboard button to switch the input palette from radical to keyboard rather than having to hide the input palette and then bring up your built-in soft keyboard) Another bonus is that on Windows Mobile we can put our keyboard on the side of the screen on a landscape display, whereas Microsoft's keyboard already has to go on the bottom. We're also eventually going to add a Pinyin-to-characters mode, though that sadly had to get punted from 2.0. But where in Pleco are you currently unable to enter text with an IME? I tested Manage Flashcards search just now with CE-Star and it seemed to work fine.
sfrrr - yes, the option is there, though sadly like so many other preferences it doesn't actually work yet.
Interesting idea on a stroke order / writing panel, actually fits in nicely with a couple of other potential 2.1 additions. Good catch on the un-closeable Info windows, hadn't seen that yet. With the Character Info interface, we do need to lefty-enable it but putting the buttons on the bottom makes the character too small on a square Pocket PC screen - however, once we get it expanding correctly on large displays, the buttons in portrait orientation at least should appear below the character. The filtering you mention works in the ABC because it's a very well-tagged data file and makes it clear which parts of entries are definitions and which are example sentences; we're slowly adding this tagging to our other dictionaries but in the initial 2.0 release at least it may only be able to hide examples on ABC-based cards.
If you un-check the "Immediately score free-answer cards" box in Preferences, that will get it to wait before processing your answer. We might want to make this separately configurable for characters and Pinyin, though (since it's easier to miss with Pinyin), and like several other items on the flashcard Preferences screen this should probably be moved into profile settings. The multi-choice confirm box actually only pops up when the text is too long to fit onto one line, but thinking about it just now I realize that's a terrible design idea since people don't know whether or not their one tap will commit the answer or just bring up that confirm box, so in the future it should put up that confirmation request anytime there's *any* choice in the box that won't fit on one line. Or just anytime it's displaying definitions.
Two main reasons for adding a soft keyboard: Zhuyin and easy integration with other input methods. (so you can tap on the keyboard button to switch the input palette from radical to keyboard rather than having to hide the input palette and then bring up your built-in soft keyboard) Another bonus is that on Windows Mobile we can put our keyboard on the side of the screen on a landscape display, whereas Microsoft's keyboard already has to go on the bottom. We're also eventually going to add a Pinyin-to-characters mode, though that sadly had to get punted from 2.0. But where in Pleco are you currently unable to enter text with an IME? I tested Manage Flashcards search just now with CE-Star and it seemed to work fine.
sfrrr - yes, the option is there, though sadly like so many other preferences it doesn't actually work yet.
The entries that failed both had custom text entries, and if I recall correctly they had long headwords, maybe 5-8 characters. The first one failed and all I did was delete and re-enter one of the tabs, also edited some other entries. The next run it went in no problem, but a different one failed - at that point I left the entry alone, but fixed some of the other entries which had a space. It went in the next time I imported the file.
I see now that most of the places do support IMEs. The only one that doesn't is free answer pinyin flashcards, since it doesn't allow the IME icon to be clicked. The reason I thought that they didn't was because none of these fields has a cursor in them until after you've entered text (not even then if you enter chinese). That's such a basic attribute of an editable text box that I just assumed that they weren't editable. Note this is a problem throughout every text box in 2.0. I did some basic testing here - input is flaky with some IME's. The Touch Dual hardware keyboard isn't supported in any text box except the main Pleco search box. ZTA4 will either crash or crash pleco when you attempt to use it to enter chinese - the screen won't properly resize a second time to allow ZTA4 to display its pinyin choices.
Regarding the built in input options, I understood the logic to add zhuyin, it was the A-Z keyboard I was wondering about. I'll check out the other preferences regarding the flashcards, Thanks!
I see now that most of the places do support IMEs. The only one that doesn't is free answer pinyin flashcards, since it doesn't allow the IME icon to be clicked. The reason I thought that they didn't was because none of these fields has a cursor in them until after you've entered text (not even then if you enter chinese). That's such a basic attribute of an editable text box that I just assumed that they weren't editable. Note this is a problem throughout every text box in 2.0. I did some basic testing here - input is flaky with some IME's. The Touch Dual hardware keyboard isn't supported in any text box except the main Pleco search box. ZTA4 will either crash or crash pleco when you attempt to use it to enter chinese - the screen won't properly resize a second time to allow ZTA4 to display its pinyin choices.
Regarding the built in input options, I understood the logic to add zhuyin, it was the A-Z keyboard I was wondering about. I'll check out the other preferences regarding the flashcards, Thanks!
OK - at some point we'll do some tests with a deliberately-evil import file containing nothing but long headwords with lots of extra spaces/punctuation/etc and see if we can work out some of these bugs that way.
I just put ZTA4 on my Touch and it seemed to get along fine with Pleco - the screen resized correctly when the character bar came up and characters were smoothly entered in the input field when selected. Any chance you might be using an old / buggy version of ZTA4? Or that some other screen resizing utility might be interfering with things? With the Touch Dual hardware keyboard, are you sure you've actually selected the box you want to insert text in (tapped in it) before trying to enter text? On the main screen, all keyboard input automatically gets redirected to the input field, but that doesn't happen anywhere else. Confusing without the insertion point which should be (mostly) fixed in the next beta.
I just put ZTA4 on my Touch and it seemed to get along fine with Pleco - the screen resized correctly when the character bar came up and characters were smoothly entered in the input field when selected. Any chance you might be using an old / buggy version of ZTA4? Or that some other screen resizing utility might be interfering with things? With the Touch Dual hardware keyboard, are you sure you've actually selected the box you want to insert text in (tapped in it) before trying to enter text? On the main screen, all keyboard input automatically gets redirected to the input field, but that doesn't happen anywhere else. Confusing without the insertion point which should be (mostly) fixed in the next beta.
I'll check ZTA4 again - the build I have looks like it might be old, if I'm on the right page on their website. Looks like 2.0.45 is the latest, I'm using 2.0.14.
Regarding the touch hardware keyboard, It didn't fail completely, I could enter text using it, but in a limited (i.e. useless) fashion. I have the 20 key hardware keyboard - every key can enter a single character, but that character is acts like it's hardcoded and the mode can't be changed. Numpad enters numbers, the other keys enter q,a,z,o, and l. And I just discovered I was wrong about the hardware keyboard with 2.0's main search box, it's not supported there either. The hardware keyboard does support QWERTY in 1.0, but 2.0 seems completely broken.
Regarding the touch hardware keyboard, It didn't fail completely, I could enter text using it, but in a limited (i.e. useless) fashion. I have the 20 key hardware keyboard - every key can enter a single character, but that character is acts like it's hardcoded and the mode can't be changed. Numpad enters numbers, the other keys enter q,a,z,o, and l. And I just discovered I was wrong about the hardware keyboard with 2.0's main search box, it's not supported there either. The hardware keyboard does support QWERTY in 1.0, but 2.0 seems completely broken.
Today I tried the beta4 on my Palm E2. There it is nearly impossible to use it because it works so slow. Scrolling is a pain as a well as pinyin letter input because every input of a new letter leads to changes of the dictionary lookup grafics that slows the system so much that the next characters that were typed are getting lost.
Most of the typing is typing blind because it it so slow. Always reinitialize the screen feels like jittering and hurts my eyes.
I have to change back to good old PlecoDict 1.3.
I am a little disappointed that I cannot use version 2 with my E2. What PalmDevice have to be used for Pleco 2.0 for getting an acceptable speed?
Daniel
Most of the typing is typing blind because it it so slow. Always reinitialize the screen feels like jittering and hurts my eyes.
I have to change back to good old PlecoDict 1.3.
I am a little disappointed that I cannot use version 2 with my E2. What PalmDevice have to be used for Pleco 2.0 for getting an acceptable speed?
Daniel
ldolse - ah, yes, I forgot that the Touch Dual has a numeric keyboard. Not entirely sure if we'll be able to support that or not, it depends a lot on how they've implemented it.
daniel123 - it's getting a lot faster; there's a bug that in some cases causes the screen to redraw twice on Palm, obviously a big slowdown factor, and we're still moving some more code (like the font renderer) over to ARM. Also the delay-before-search preference seems to be buggy right now so that's why it's stopping after every letter instead of waiting for you to stop typing. But we're certainly planning to make it usable on the E2 in the finished version if at all possible.
daniel123 - it's getting a lot faster; there's a bug that in some cases causes the screen to redraw twice on Palm, obviously a big slowdown factor, and we're still moving some more code (like the font renderer) over to ARM. Also the delay-before-search preference seems to be buggy right now so that's why it's stopping after every letter instead of waiting for you to stop typing. But we're certainly planning to make it usable on the E2 in the finished version if at all possible.
I just tried the latest ZTA4 - works like a dream. The new pinyin input is awesome - predictive text input based on a pinyin library. This is a must for anyone using a keyboardless device, it's almost like it was designed to be used with Pleco - I think with this I won't ever need the hardware keyboard. Anyway enough gushing.
Regarding the numeric hardware keyboard, I did a bit of searching on this - there are a number of windows mobile professional phones with a numeric keyboard, not just the touch, and they all seem to have the same issue with a significant number of applications. Seems like anyone who develops a proprietary dialog box doesn't seem to support input via the numeric keyboard - Opera was one of the other pieces of software a lot of users complained about. Note this does work with 1.0, I'm guessing that uses a standard Microsoft approved dialog though. If you can't figure it out probably best workaround for people with those types of phones is to suggest ZTA.
Regarding the numeric hardware keyboard, I did a bit of searching on this - there are a number of windows mobile professional phones with a numeric keyboard, not just the touch, and they all seem to have the same issue with a significant number of applications. Seems like anyone who develops a proprietary dialog box doesn't seem to support input via the numeric keyboard - Opera was one of the other pieces of software a lot of users complained about. Note this does work with 1.0, I'm guessing that uses a standard Microsoft approved dialog though. If you can't figure it out probably best workaround for people with those types of phones is to suggest ZTA.
I played a little bit with the flashcards and used the new tone feature.
I imported one big and two small files into database. Works fine. But using them for example for listening leads to a crash with reboot during the first entries.
When I start the flascards after reboot again and go directly to "New Flashcard Session" and directly to "Start Session" button it leads every time to a reproducible crash. If I first click to some flashcard preferences and go afterwords to "Start Session" button it works for a short time.
If it may help I can send you my flashcard database.
I have one feature suggestion or wish that is very very important for me. Would it made possible to use the sound capabilities also for reading or writing mode? For example an option that every entry will be spoken together with showing the result. And a button to speak the entry again.
This would be a great help for every learner for learning new words because it makes it possible to learn by using different input channels (listening to the sound and watching to the new word or character). I think this can help very much learning faster and better. I don't know any other flashcard software that have this feature with free choosable entries using such a great sound database.
I imported one big and two small files into database. Works fine. But using them for example for listening leads to a crash with reboot during the first entries.
When I start the flascards after reboot again and go directly to "New Flashcard Session" and directly to "Start Session" button it leads every time to a reproducible crash. If I first click to some flashcard preferences and go afterwords to "Start Session" button it works for a short time.
If it may help I can send you my flashcard database.
I have one feature suggestion or wish that is very very important for me. Would it made possible to use the sound capabilities also for reading or writing mode? For example an option that every entry will be spoken together with showing the result. And a button to speak the entry again.
This would be a great help for every learner for learning new words because it makes it possible to learn by using different input channels (listening to the sound and watching to the new word or character). I think this can help very much learning faster and better. I don't know any other flashcard software that have this feature with free choosable entries using such a great sound database.
hleperlier
举人
Daniel123
I'm using Beta4 on a Palm TX and I find the speed quite comfortable or at least similar to Pleco 1, apart from the usual to be fixed bugs
I'm using Beta4 on a Palm TX and I find the speed quite comfortable or at least similar to Pleco 1, apart from the usual to be fixed bugs
ldolse - we'll see what we can figure out from the APIs but it does sound like it might be best to just direct people to ZTA or another numpad-friendly Chinese utility if they really want to use the numeric keypad to enter text. Glad the new version seems to be working more smoothly.
daniel123 - yes, if you'd send that database along that would be great. And as luck would have it we've already added the option for audio on every card, along with a few other late additions to the flashcard profile settings - we had to overhaul preferences again anyway to accommodate Instant Access so we added a few more tweaks along with that.
daniel123 - yes, if you'd send that database along that would be great. And as luck would have it we've already added the option for audio on every card, along with a few other late additions to the flashcard profile settings - we had to overhaul preferences again anyway to accommodate Instant Access so we added a few more tweaks along with that.
A quick look at the specs suggest that the T|X is indeed faster than the E2. I'm honestly not sure how this will affect the actual use of Pleco 2.0. The problem the previous owner had was more with the fact that the auto-search feature of Pleco 2.0 isn't working properly yet, and thus it made it seem a lot slower than it was, as it was searching after each letter was entered. My advice would be to download the trial version of Pleco 2.0 and see how that works for you.
It *will* take longer to load the first time as it creates the various user DBs and whatnot, but it should be better the second time around.
It *will* take longer to load the first time as it creates the various user DBs and whatnot, but it should be better the second time around.
bagz007 - I wouldn't worry, it really should be plenty fast on the E2; it would be downright stupid of us to release a program that wasn't usable on a model of Palm which people are still buying new even now. If the delay-before-search feature were working correctly on daniel123's system I suspect he'd be satisfied even with the current performance level.
llammamama
探花
I've looked around a bit to see if my question had been answered, but I didn't manage to find anything so I guess I'll tag it on here.
Will it be possible to study both both reading and writing for each card while using spaced repetition mode? I get the impression that if I open a session to study reading then there I will end up finishing the days cards without having the chance to practice any writing either.
Would I be able to accomplish this by adding a specific word twice, once to each of to two categories (a reading category and a writing category), and then just study those categories one after another? I guess I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the flash card system :?
Will it be possible to study both both reading and writing for each card while using spaced repetition mode? I get the impression that if I open a session to study reading then there I will end up finishing the days cards without having the chance to practice any writing either.
Would I be able to accomplish this by adding a specific word twice, once to each of to two categories (a reading category and a writing category), and then just study those categories one after another? I guess I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the flash card system :?
It's not possible to have it just show you both of them for each card in a given session; that wouldn't really make sense, since the whole theory behind repetition spacing is that you're seeing the card the minimum number of times possible.
However, you could achieve the same effect using multiple profiles and scorefiles; that way, the spacing for each card would be tracked independently in reading and writing modes, so you could do one session where it would give you a reading test on the cards that needed reading practice today and then do another session where it would give you a writing test on the cards that needed writing practice.
However, you could achieve the same effect using multiple profiles and scorefiles; that way, the spacing for each card would be tracked independently in reading and writing modes, so you could do one session where it would give you a reading test on the cards that needed reading practice today and then do another session where it would give you a writing test on the cards that needed writing practice.
llammamama
探花
Thanks for the quick reply - it sounds like multiple profiles (with independent card-tracking) will fit my needs well. Hopefully it won`t take a deep dive into the menus in order to switch profiles :wink:
Also, I have one more quick question that I wasn't able to find a clear answer for: Will it be possible to heavily edit flashcards from dictionary entries during a review session? Or even possible at all? I would expect to be able to delete parts of the dictionary definition that I don't need and/or add to the "question/kanji" part of the flashcard, hopefully during a review session, but it doesn't seem to be possible in Plecodic v1. I tend to convert difficult to remember words into "phrase" flashcards on the fly while using Supermemo on my PPC, and I find it extremely useful in upping retention.
Also, I have one more quick question that I wasn't able to find a clear answer for: Will it be possible to heavily edit flashcards from dictionary entries during a review session? Or even possible at all? I would expect to be able to delete parts of the dictionary definition that I don't need and/or add to the "question/kanji" part of the flashcard, hopefully during a review session, but it doesn't seem to be possible in Plecodic v1. I tend to convert difficult to remember words into "phrase" flashcards on the fly while using Supermemo on my PPC, and I find it extremely useful in upping retention.