scykei said:
Oh, I never noticed they were listed in the compounds. But even when they are listed, it doesn't actually show anything in ABC so I guess they expect us to just adjectify words ourself by adding ~的 behind the word. There are a lot of definitions in ABC that only list down one single translation. I thought that the word delicious was better in NWP because it had 美味的 (which is what first came to my mind) and other definitions as well. ABC only listed 好吃的 and that's about it.
Hmm... well I'm not sure what they're going for there, I do think they were targeting the Chinese market too but there may also have been a "tragedy of choice" consideration - show someone a bunch of words without explaining in detail what each one connotes and they might pick the wrong one, give them just one "safe" translation like 好吃的 and they have less to worry about.
scykei said:
Of course, I never said that ABC was bad. If I were learning English, knowing only Chinese, having one definition to it would suffice, but I think it's quite easy to see how NWP performs better. I wonder if anyone else share the same opinion as me. I don't know what new dictionaries you're introducing in the big update but perhaps you should reconsider what to include into the new Professional bundle.
Certainly some users do, and while ABC has been lovely for Pleco over the years I wouldn't necessarily say we're committed to making it quite such a central part of our app forever, particularly since they seem to be licensing it to so many of our competitors.
The future contents of the Professional bundle are definitely under consideration, as is the idea of maybe getting rid of it altogether and just having a single bundle containing all of our non-dictionary add-ons plus various "dictionary packs. In fact we're looking at possibly splitting dictionaries and other add-ons into two different "classes" of add-on altogether, in large part because Apple seems to be OK with our selling the former outside of the App Store too and it would be great to deliver them through a more streamlined system (a la Kindle) - your purchased dictionaries (regardless of where you purchased them) would be part of your "Pleco account" and usable on any device that links to it, while your non-dictionary add-ons would continue to be governed by Apple's "no purchase mechanisms other than the App Store" rule and would require the current slightly-more-involved process to move between platforms.
scykei said:
I really don't want to sound like I'm complaining but I never actually used ABC as much as I thought I would. If I wanted word coverage may as well just get the free Astro dictionary or CC-dictionary. It's not to say I'm unsatisfied with the product right now. I got the Complete Bundle but I don't usually bother to use everything it came with. So after using it for almost a year I feel that the perfect combo for what we currently have on sale is Basic Bundle + 21st Century + Guifan. I'm actually also looking forward to Tuttle's expansion but I really don't know what to expect.
Perfectly reasonable, and indeed most of our dictionary licenses lately have focused on depth or specialization rather than simply defining a lot of words.
