Palm T/X & Plecodict - problem

A

Anonymous

Guest
I just bought the Palm T/X. Had a palm Tungsten T before so could only use Oxford C/E. I just upgraded to Plecodict and its definitely MUCH better so thanks to you Michael.

Unfortunately there seems to be a bug crashing and reseting my T/X each time I tap on Plecodict and its super annoying!! To try to correct this error I installed Plecodict and the keyfile to my SD card and now it works. But its just a temporary quick-fix to me...

I would prefer to run Plecodict on the handheld so I can re-define one button to access immediately Plecodict as I used to do with my Tungsten T. Since I use the dictionnary many times everyday its much more convenient to press one button and have immediate access. Now I have to tap 3-5 times to access memory card and tap again to access plecodict, so its not convenient.

Any chance you guys can fix this bug on the T/X?

Thanks!

Ben
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We're still trying to figure out what the situation is with the TX - Palm isn't being clear on exactly what they've changed, and we're getting conflicting reports as to which file is causing the problem. And honestly we're probably not even going to look at this seriously until we've released the finished Pocket PC version - there are several orders of magnitude more people using Pocket PCs than there are using Palm TXs, and at least some of the bugs on Pocket PC are actually our fault (whereas almost every possible explanation for these TX bugs involves a screw-up on Palm's end).

But there are several utility programs that will let you use a hardware button to launch a program on an SD card; for example ButtonSwitcherPro, AardQuick , and 1 Button Launcher (hate to use PalmGear links here but unfortunately these developers don't seem to have their own sites). I'm not sure if these will work with the TX, but if not there are probably a number of other programs like them out there.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Just to clarify: this does not mean that we're making Palm OS a lower priority than Pocket PC in general, it just means that we're going to try to fix all of the major bugs in the current Pocket PC version before we do another round of bug fixes on Palm. So those of you with Palms needn't worry that this is going to impact future development, it just means that TX owners may have to wait a little while before PlecoDict works smoothly on their handhelds.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Mike,

thanks for your reply.

Too bad that you guys don't have time to fix this at this point. I tried again today, but even from the card it crashes each time i tap on the icon of plecodict...

Any other users have this problem and can help me out?

Thanks!

Ben
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We've gotten a few other bug reports now, and one thing that they all seem to have in common is that they're all using the old handwriting recognizer from Oxford E&C (i.e., that they're free upgraders who haven't purchased any other add-ons yet). willy (altpc) got the software working smoothly on his TX for several days by not installing the recognizer, and after he did install it PlecoDict almost immediately started crashing and acting up, so it seems like the recognizer is the most likely culprit here.

However, it's still not certain that upgrading to the newer recognizer will fix this: we're trying to find that out now and hopefully we'll have a definite answer in a day or two. There's not really any way that we can fix bugs in the old recognizer (since it was licensed from another company), so if upgrading to the new recognizer fixes this then we'll probably just advise people with TXs to purchase that upgrade; it's only $10 and I can't imagine too many people will object to that after paying $250+ for a new Palm.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Can you tell me how not to install the recognizer, so I can keep using the dictionnary while you are trying to find out if it is the reason of the crashing of the device? That would be very helpful!
Thanks,
Ben
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Go to http://www.pleco.com/orders.html, log in, and under "I want to unlock the demo version of PlecoDict" look for the "Alternate Method" section. Click on the first link in that paragraph to download a special keyfile which doesn't include the handwriting recognizer.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
My TX problem...

Until just now I'v had no problems running PD on my TX.

That is until i started messing around with my CJKOS. I got my unit in China and it has a new version of CJKOS on it (4.63). For some reason only the small font was highres so I decided to install some of the fonts and cMannager from my old version of CJKOS. This actually went pretty fine so i could read documents in big highres characters. But when i tried to start PD again it went black screen and did a soft reset.

Now if i turn CJKOS off PD works fine.

I have no idea why only PD has this problem, other programs still runs fine with CJKOS on.

By the way, before this happend i had chosen to put instant access on, and I can still use this without any problems. Actually it runs faster now!!!

So does character input in general after I installed the fonts and the cManager program.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
... continued...

I just fixed the problem by removing all the fonts that i dont really need like all the Big5 and GBK. I dont really care that i dont have those in highres anyways.

But the TX is running smoothly now, and chinese text input is faster than to start with!!!

I dont know what to make of it. But im happy I got it to work. :wink:

Still have one problem though that i forgot to mention before. It seems that all the dictionaries are put in twice. I have to tap the switch dictinary button twice as many times! :?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
...

oh and my PD file is 36142K

If that helpes.

Sorry for messing up the threat :oops:
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Well to be honest this sounds like it was more of a CJKOS problem than a PlecoDict problem. It might relate to the character set auto-detect feature, since deleting those extra fonts fixed it. Anyway if we do eventually get a TX in here we'll take a look at this, but since you've already supplied us with a workaround it doesn't seem like it needs to be a high-priority fix.

The multiple dictionary problem is odd, though - there's no way you could fit two copies of everything into 36 MB. Is there any chance that you might have also installed the dictionaries somewhere else, maybe on an SD card or in your TX's internal flash drive?
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Haha.. yup that was it. I had the files on SD card from when i was using my TE.

Thanks, everything is running smooth now. 8)

One thing though about the TX which is a problem with T5 as well:

when using penpower its not quite as fast as on my TE! its like when you draw the character on the screen fast it can not keep up and it misses some of the strokes i make. This is a bit frustrating.

Does anybody have a clue to how i might fix this?

The Tx should be a lot faster than my TE so i dont really get this.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I don't know exactly how the internals of PenPower work, but there are any number of reasons why a revised OS could cause software to slow down. In the TX/T5's case I think the most likely culprit is the flash memory storage system, which makes it significantly slower to retrieve and write data from your Palm's memory than on earlier models like the TE. If PenPower is performing some sort of dynamic processing as you draw strokes then that could easily slow it down to a point where it can no longer follow your stroke input. Still, you might want to write PenPower about this - they seem to put out frequent updates, and if this is a problem for a large number of people I imagine they have a fix in the works (if it's not out already).
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Another minor thing...

It seems that PD will only magnify using font48 when it is on the sd card. When I dont have an sd card inserted it choses a smaller font (24 i think it is).

It works fine with font48 in flashcards though.

TX and PD are running very well together besides this.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We now have a TX in hand and we're not seeing this - are you sure you're not thinking of font96? (the special one available at http://www.pleco.com/dictaddons.html) Thus far we have yet to reproduce a single bug on our TX, but we've only had it for a few hours so I suppose that doesn't mean too much.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Yes it was the 96font that was missing on the onboard memory. So not a problem with TX, just me again 8)

I did get major problems after trying Docs To Go version 8.01. It seems that PD is not happy about the upgrade, probably noot PD's fault though. I remember having to delete DTG from a friends T5 to make PD work. It seems to have something to do with DTG reading the files or something, because usually theres no problems until after you start DTG the first time after installing it.

If others can make DTG 8 and PD work together on a TX, I would like to hear about it.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Hmm... well the only place I can think of where DTG and PlecoDict would even interact is the flashcard import/export files (since both programs can read/write PalmDoc and text files). But PlecoDict doesn't even look for those files until you actually open up the Import panel, so it would be difficult for anything DTG would do to affect PlecoDict's functioning outside of the Import screen. Anyway, now that we've got a TX we'll do some testing and see if we can come up with an explanation for this.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Ok, I think I pretty much know what the problem is...

It seems that the flascards files i dowloaded from this site, HSKflashcards and ABC flashcards, were the ones making trouble. I'm not exactly sure why though.

I tried to uninstall DTG and install Quickoffice instead. It was working file for a while, but when I tried to open up the files (HSK,ABC docs) in QO , the TX soft reseted and PD started acting up again.

Actually it is possible to open PD after DTG and QO are causing trouble with these files, but as soon as I touch any of the buttons related to flash cards (manage, new session, add) the TX will soft reset.

I'm not sure exactly why, is it related to CJKOS or are the files corrupt (they seem to be working fine otherwise) or is it PD there has a problem?

Again, with the flash cards i create myself there seem to be no problems. It is only the ones from your site that are causing this problem.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It could be that QO/DTG don't like the way our PalmDoc files are formatted - the 10,000+ linebreaks and the Chinese character codes could be flummoxing them somehow. Though I still don't see how that could affect the Manage Lists / New Session / etc screens unless DTG/QO were doing something very unusual with the system's memory - as I said, PlecoDict doesn't even know those files exist until you actually bring up the Import screen.

But why did you try opening the HSK/ABC files in QO at all? Perhaps a better bet would be to install the files, import them, then promptly delete them before HotSyncing or using QO - the data will still be there (it gets copied into your main "PlecoDict Flashcard Database" file) but perhaps without those Doc files QO/DTG will behave normally.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
I actually already did that and everything is working fine now.

With DTG the problem would occur just by starting up the program without actually opening the files. With QO I just tried to see what would happen if I did open the file, if it would lead to the same problem as with DTG and it did.

I have a sneaking suspicion that CJKOS might also be involved here.

Anyways everything is working fine, so no problem really.
 
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