The first test release (out of hopefully only two) for Pleco 2.0.1 is available here:
http://www.pleco.com/beta/pd201b1.zip
Please back up your flashcards and user dictionaries before trying out this beta - it seems pretty stable but we don't want anyone losing their data. See backup instructions here for Windows Mobile or here for Palm OS.
To update on Palm, just install the updated application file to your handheld and it'll replace the regular 2.0.0 one. On Windows Mobile, exit Pleco completely with the Quit command in the Dict menu, then connect your handheld to your desktop, go into its memory through My Computer and copy the updated Pleco application file into your \\Program Files\Pleco folder (My Computer, Mobile Device, My Windows Mobile-Based Device, Program Files, Pleco on XP, or on Vista, My Computer, (your handheld's name), /, Program Files, Pleco), replacing the version that's already there.
This is pretty much it in terms of features added for 2.0.1 (unless you can make a really really compelling argument why your particular idea can't wait a few months), but we're certainly still hoping to fix a few more bugs, and we've probably also introduced a couple of new ones with all of the new features in this release.
FEATURES ADDED
(particularly big / interesting ones are **ed instead of --ed)
USER DICTIONARIES
** you can now import / export user dictionary entries to/from text files; the format is the same as in MakePlecoDict or a flashcard import, headword<tab>pinyin<tab>definition for Chinese or headword<tab>definition for English.
-- two new buttons added to Manage Dicts, Add New to create a new user dictionary and Configure to change its settings - from the Configure screen, you can edit the dictionary's name and import / export entries from it using the new user dictionary import/export screens
-- added a Lock function for user dictionaries (accessible through that Configure screen) - this not only prevents the dictionary from being edited, it also generates an extra sort index that allows you to scroll through entries significantly faster (particularly noticeable on Windows Mobile) in large dictionaries
-- altered the dictionary search result system so that it will no longer switch to a different C-E dictionary if all of the results in the current dictionary are longer than the search query - this means you can now search for multi-character entries in a user dictionary by their first character
-- added a popup list to the Edit Entry screen which allows you to select which user dictionary a new entry will be saved to
INPUT
** "Instant" handwriting recognition option added - select "Instant" from "HWR auto-rec after" in the Input panel of Preferences and the handwriting recognizer will run after every stroke, as on iPhone and in some desktop-based Chinese handwriting systems. (this works much better on WM than on Palm for performance reasons, but we're offering it as an option on both)
-- added French and German keyboard layout options (though only in the main Input screen so far)
-- reintroduced the option to disable handwriting recognizer smoothing on Palm OS (in the Input panel of Preferences)
-- handwriting auto-recognize options (including instant) now apply in flashcard free-answer sessions too
CHARACTER INFO / POPUP DEFINITIONS
** added an option in the External panel of Preferences to include an editable Input Field in the popup entry window (applies to both Instant Access and regular in-software popup entry searches), restoring that functionality from 1.0; Copy to Input and the separate Input screen are supported, except that you can't access the Input screen when in Instant Access mode on Palm due to technical limitations
-- "Popup word" button added in the Components tab of Character Info - use this to bring up the standard popup definition screen on the selected word. You can use the up / down arrow buttons in that screen to scroll through all of the words in the selected list without having to exit and pick a different one.
-- added a field displaying the current character info character's Unicode character code at the bottom of the Char Info dialog (in details mode)
FLASHCARD SESSIONS
** added an "Allow edits" checkbox to the Flashcards panel of Preferences - this allows you to use the "Edit Card" command in Card Info during sessions, and allows you to access other parts of the flashcard system (Manage Cards, Manage Categories, etc) even while a saved session is present
-- heavily reorganized the flashcard Advanced Settings screen, putting Dicts in a separate screen (accessible by enabling dict remapping and clicking on a button in Display) instead of in its own tab and splitting the former Display and Modes options into Display, Controls, and Modes
-- moved the repeat-incorrect options to the main Test Setup screen, and the test subject selection option to the Display tab
-- added an "allow missing sections" option for self-scored tests (Tests tab of Advanced Settings) - with this enabled, even if a card is incomplete / invalid / missing it will still come up during a self-scored (or review-only) test, so you won't see any cards be skipped over or sessions end prematurely
-- moved the flashcard example sentence display preference to the Display section of Advanced Settings (so it can be set separately for each profile), and added the option to display references to other entries along with example sentences (though these will only be shown if the card is fully revealed)
-- reordered the recognize/undo/clear handwriting recognizer buttons in flash free-answer to put the recognize button nearest to the draw box
-- hyperlinks now work correctly (with a popup window) in flashcard sessions, though only if the entry is fully revealed
-- the current profile name is now shown in the title of new flashcard session dialog on Palm, though we're not able to put it there on Windows Mobile at the moment due to some bizarre technical limitations
-- made the "taller" flash self-scored sketch box just a few pixels shorter by default, to squeeze in an extra line of text - go into the Display tab of Advanced Settings and then exit the screen in order to apply the new height
-- added a check in free-answer pinyin tests to make sure that you've actually entered valid Pinyin in every box before the answer is automatically processed
FLASHCARD SCORING / CARD SELECTION
** added an option in Random / Self-scored / Rep-spaced sessions to limit the number of "unlearned" cards to study at any given time. The idea behind this is that you set a threshold at which a card is considered "learned" (also reflected in Statistics), then Pleco will try to keep the number of un-"learned" cards that you're studying at any given time below a certain number; this is handy if you want to add a lot of new flashcards to your study pool but not start working on them all at once. Once you've reviewed a card, even once, it'll be part of your pool of cards to study, so if you're already working on more than the specified number of "unlearned" cards it won't take any away, but it won't introduce any new ones until you've learned enough of them to drop the un-"learned" count below the level you set.
The "prioritize by" option lets you decide how you'd like Pleco to select new cards for you to study - "random" will choose them randomly from all eligible cards, "created" will choose them by the exact order in which they were created, and "approx created" does almost the same thing but will randomly choose between created within a day of each other; this is useful if you've imported a long vocabulary list that happens to be alphabetically ordered (so that cards later in the alphabet would have been "created" a few seconds after earlier cards) and don't want to actually study cards in that exact order (so you don't have to get through all the 'a's before you can start with the 'b's, and so on)
** added two new Automated scoring options, "scale initial increase by difficulty" and "scale decreases by difficulty". The first option will scale the initial interval (the jump from the default score of 100 to the first score after that) depending on the card's difficulty; if the normal initial interval for your current aggressiveness setting is 400, a card with a difficulty of 100 (the default) would jump to 400 after the first correct answer, but a card with a difficulty of 60 would only jump to 240 (60/100 * 400). The second option will cause scores to only decrease by the same amount they would normally increase when a card is answered incorrectly; normally, when you answer a card incorrectly its score drops all the way back to 100, but with this option enabled, a card that would normally have its score double when answered correctly would instead have its score cut in half
** added an option for Random sessions to set a specific "Unlearned card ratio" - with this option enabled, Pleco will configure the pool of cards to come up in each session so that that percentage of the available cards are unlearned and the remaining cards are learned. If there aren't enough cards of a particular type available to maintain the desired ratio, cards will be mixed at the beginning of the session in the correct ratio, then once it runs out of cards of one type it'll continue displaying only cards of the other type.
-- added an option in card selection "Fixed" sessions to sort by score in addition to creation date, and to sort in ascending or descending order
-- put score-based field selection options on a separate screen, allowing you to choose up to 8 of them instead of the previous 4
-- added a "show all" option to the "prompt for answer quality" option in the Scoring tab of Advanced Settings - with this selected, you'll see all 6 score choices regardless of whether you remembered a card correctly or incorrectly, and won't be prompted to choose correct or incorrect in Self-scored tests. There are also now separate Score 1 - 6 hardware button assignment options
FLASHCARD MANAGEMENT
-- made the Edit Card screen's dictionary search function behave more like a normal dictionary search interface, adding a clear button and updating it as soon as characters are entered / deleted rather than requiring you to tap on the search button
-- added a "modified" option to the card filter screen and the manage cards screen, and cards are now marked as modified when their category assignment *or* their text changes, so this will let you search for cards by how recently they've been added to / removed from a new category (though without letting you choose a specific one)
-- added a "duplicate" search option to the manage cards advanced search screen, though note that it's extremely slow at the moment (and won't work correctly if OR'ed together with another search, only if AND'ed)
-- manage cards will now only perform a search on open if it's very simple / fast (all cards, or a category other than uncategorized) - otherwise you have to tap the search button
-- search results in manage cards will now be cleared as soon as you change the search parameters, and a * will appear in the Search button to indicate that it needs to be tapped to search again; on Windows Mobile the button also blinks
-- added an option ("w/ cat" or "w/ cat name") in the Flashcards panel of Preferences to display the name of the category to which a newly-created card is added; this comes up *instead of* the "Card Added" message. If the card is a duplicate of an existing card, but it was nonetheless added to a new category (the "Keep Cats" option), an asterisk * will appear before the category name
-- added a cancel confirmation prompt in exports on WM
-- in flashcard imports that are configured to store imported definitions in the user dictionary, the software will choose which dictionary to store them in from the dictionary priority order for the import, or if it can't find any user dictionaries in there it'll use whichever dictionary is newest
DOCUMENT READER
-- moved the document reader hardware page scroll option to the "Reader Setup" screen, and added an option to hide the scroll arrow buttons
WINDOWS MOBILE
** experimental "Fullscreen" toolbar button option added on Windows Mobile; this hides the taskbar / menu bar in the main dictionary interface. This is currently only accessible through a toolbar button, since we don't yet want to deal with the possibility of people turning fullscreen mode on and not being able to turn it off again, but if you add it to your toolbar in Preferences it'll give you a lot more room on the main screen
-- dramatically improved the speed at which the main screen is rearranged / redrawn on some Windows Mobile devices - keyboard open/close should be almost instantaneous when before it could take a second or longer
-- add a check on Windows Mobile to reduce the number of unnecessary screen redraws (speeding up return from most dialogs)
-- preliminary support added for the number pad / Compact QWERTY input methods on newer HTC smartphones; you should now be able to use these to enter characters
-- improved SQLite support for reading files off of SD cards on Windows Mobile; we still STRONGLY discourage you from putting your flashcards or a user dictionary database you're actually editing on an SD card, since it's very very easy to lose data that way, but dictionaries created by other users (or dictionaries of your own that you're not editing very often) should now be OK to access from a card
-- improved Windows Mobile file access reliability in general; you should generally no longer find that all your dictionaries suddenly become inaccessible
-- updated to the latest version of SQLite on Windows Mobile, for possibly slightly better performance
-- improved the situation with TouchFlo (on newer HTC Touch series phones) getting in the way of fullscreen handwriting input when looking at a long entry with a scrollbar; now, after you enter that first stroke the scrollbar will be disabled, so subsequent strokes will be captured immediately (no tapping on the screen and waiting it for start drawing)
-- added a more user-friendly color picker (a simple window with a color grid) for dictionary icon and tone color selection on Windows Mobile
PALM OS
-- added an alert on startup on Palm handhelds running Palm OS versions earlier than 5.2 (which generally can't use Pleco's audio pronunciation feature without being hacked, and sometimes not even then)
-- recalibrated the audio volume scale on Palm so that the first few values are closer together and the later ones are more spread out - 1/2/3/4 are now lower than they were before while 10 is still as loud as ever
-- added a preferences option on Palm ("Hide insertion point in HWR screen" in the Input panel) to disable the insertion point in the text edit field on the handwriting input screen - this should trick PenPower (at least newer versions of it) into thinking that there's nowhere to input text and hence disabling itself when that screen's open, allowing you to use the built-in handwriting input instead
MISC
-- added alert explaining the "Choose Panel" control the first time you launch preferences; the "Choose Panel" label was also changed to "GO TO PANEL" to make it a bit more obvious, and a "GO TO" was added on the Palm version as well
-- updated the stroke order / audio demo messages so that they no longer claim the entire program is running in demo mode when only those particular features are
-- added an actual error message when the handwriting recognizer is not installed, so the software no longer simply ignores the "Recognize" command but actually tells you what's wrong.
-- added an "extended audio detected" note at the bottom of the Paid components list in Ordering if the extended audio files (for at least one speaker) are installed and unlocked
-- added a volume setting list to the audio play button (in all 3 screens where it appears) - tap-hold on it to select a playback volume
-- demo dictionaries can now be searched even if you've purchased / unlocked some paid dictionaries; if you select one of them specifically from the dictionary popup menu it should then allow you to search it.
BUGS FIXED
-- fixed crash on startup (which would sometimes look like the software wasn't starting at all) on Windows Mobile 2003 devices, particularly iPAQs - this was covered by the SD card patch version posted a few weeks ago
-- fixed the "No fonts found" startup error on Palm (couldn't detect any files if they were on an SD card) - also covered by the earlier SD card patch
-- fixed a crash on Palm in Manage Flashcards when dealing with extremely long (> 32,000 words) lists of flashcards
-- eliminated the erroneous "some components were missing" error messages on startup
-- hyperlinks to ABC entries now correctly factor in capitalization (so a capitalized link will go to the appropriate capitalized entry)
-- Windows Mobile fullscreen handwriting recognizer lines would sometimes turn gray along with the text
-- tildes will now copy-and-paste correctly out of definitions
-- the Copy command in the Edit menu now works correctly in the main dictionary screen on Windows Mobile
-- the reader bookmark "Replace" option now actually does what it's supposed to
-- fixed a memory leak affecting stroke order diagrams on Windows Mobile (potentially causing crashes in very long stroke order sessions)
-- definitions in the Entry List will now appear in traditional characters if you've chosen that option in the interface
-- self-scored sessions now show correct/incorrect buttons even with scoring set to "None" if you've enabled "repeat incorrect"
-- fixed a bug that caused the flashcard system on palm to exit to the flashcard central screen instead of the main dictionary screen if you save a session, reopen it, and then save it again
-- fixed a bug which prevented custom flashcard import/export dictionary selections / orders from being applied correctly on palm
-- fixed a bug which caused flashcard exports to be incorrectly encoded (appear as gibberish) on Palm, mainly when exporting free dictionary definitions
-- fixed scrollbar in manage cards not updating correctly when hardware scroll buttons used (on palm)
-- fixed a glitch which could cause portions of the screen to fail to update correctly on windows mobile (for example, when closing the start menu)
-- fixed a bug which prevented the entry scroll buttons in the document reader from updating correctly when the screen was resized (palm and wm)
-- fixed a bug which caused the character input screen to take longer to come up than necessary (both on Palm and on WM)
-- fixed a bug which caused cards specifically added to "uncategorized" (via a popup list) to still be added to the default category
-- fixed a bug which caused duplicated cards to be added to a category even if duplicate handling was set to "Skip" rather than "Keep Cats"
-- fixed the Clear button not working at all in the 1.0-style handwriting input screens on Windows Mobile
-- fixed a bug on Palm that caused bits of text to sometimes be left behind when clearing a text field if the insertion point was positioned in the middle of the text string
-- fixed a bug that could cause "AND" and "OR" boxes to come up in manage cards advanced searches even with only one field selected
-- fixed a bug which caused backspaces to not reset the delay-before-search timer if the "Don't auto-search on backspace" option was set; now, a backspace delays the search until you enter a new character
-- the handwriting auto-rec timer is now reset correctly if you undo a stroke on Palm (as it already was on WM)
-- Input Field Compatibility mode now works correctly in the Manage Flashcards screens on Palm
http://www.pleco.com/beta/pd201b1.zip
Please back up your flashcards and user dictionaries before trying out this beta - it seems pretty stable but we don't want anyone losing their data. See backup instructions here for Windows Mobile or here for Palm OS.
To update on Palm, just install the updated application file to your handheld and it'll replace the regular 2.0.0 one. On Windows Mobile, exit Pleco completely with the Quit command in the Dict menu, then connect your handheld to your desktop, go into its memory through My Computer and copy the updated Pleco application file into your \\Program Files\Pleco folder (My Computer, Mobile Device, My Windows Mobile-Based Device, Program Files, Pleco on XP, or on Vista, My Computer, (your handheld's name), /, Program Files, Pleco), replacing the version that's already there.
This is pretty much it in terms of features added for 2.0.1 (unless you can make a really really compelling argument why your particular idea can't wait a few months), but we're certainly still hoping to fix a few more bugs, and we've probably also introduced a couple of new ones with all of the new features in this release.
FEATURES ADDED
(particularly big / interesting ones are **ed instead of --ed)
USER DICTIONARIES
** you can now import / export user dictionary entries to/from text files; the format is the same as in MakePlecoDict or a flashcard import, headword<tab>pinyin<tab>definition for Chinese or headword<tab>definition for English.
-- two new buttons added to Manage Dicts, Add New to create a new user dictionary and Configure to change its settings - from the Configure screen, you can edit the dictionary's name and import / export entries from it using the new user dictionary import/export screens
-- added a Lock function for user dictionaries (accessible through that Configure screen) - this not only prevents the dictionary from being edited, it also generates an extra sort index that allows you to scroll through entries significantly faster (particularly noticeable on Windows Mobile) in large dictionaries
-- altered the dictionary search result system so that it will no longer switch to a different C-E dictionary if all of the results in the current dictionary are longer than the search query - this means you can now search for multi-character entries in a user dictionary by their first character
-- added a popup list to the Edit Entry screen which allows you to select which user dictionary a new entry will be saved to
INPUT
** "Instant" handwriting recognition option added - select "Instant" from "HWR auto-rec after" in the Input panel of Preferences and the handwriting recognizer will run after every stroke, as on iPhone and in some desktop-based Chinese handwriting systems. (this works much better on WM than on Palm for performance reasons, but we're offering it as an option on both)
-- added French and German keyboard layout options (though only in the main Input screen so far)
-- reintroduced the option to disable handwriting recognizer smoothing on Palm OS (in the Input panel of Preferences)
-- handwriting auto-recognize options (including instant) now apply in flashcard free-answer sessions too
CHARACTER INFO / POPUP DEFINITIONS
** added an option in the External panel of Preferences to include an editable Input Field in the popup entry window (applies to both Instant Access and regular in-software popup entry searches), restoring that functionality from 1.0; Copy to Input and the separate Input screen are supported, except that you can't access the Input screen when in Instant Access mode on Palm due to technical limitations
-- "Popup word" button added in the Components tab of Character Info - use this to bring up the standard popup definition screen on the selected word. You can use the up / down arrow buttons in that screen to scroll through all of the words in the selected list without having to exit and pick a different one.
-- added a field displaying the current character info character's Unicode character code at the bottom of the Char Info dialog (in details mode)
FLASHCARD SESSIONS
** added an "Allow edits" checkbox to the Flashcards panel of Preferences - this allows you to use the "Edit Card" command in Card Info during sessions, and allows you to access other parts of the flashcard system (Manage Cards, Manage Categories, etc) even while a saved session is present
-- heavily reorganized the flashcard Advanced Settings screen, putting Dicts in a separate screen (accessible by enabling dict remapping and clicking on a button in Display) instead of in its own tab and splitting the former Display and Modes options into Display, Controls, and Modes
-- moved the repeat-incorrect options to the main Test Setup screen, and the test subject selection option to the Display tab
-- added an "allow missing sections" option for self-scored tests (Tests tab of Advanced Settings) - with this enabled, even if a card is incomplete / invalid / missing it will still come up during a self-scored (or review-only) test, so you won't see any cards be skipped over or sessions end prematurely
-- moved the flashcard example sentence display preference to the Display section of Advanced Settings (so it can be set separately for each profile), and added the option to display references to other entries along with example sentences (though these will only be shown if the card is fully revealed)
-- reordered the recognize/undo/clear handwriting recognizer buttons in flash free-answer to put the recognize button nearest to the draw box
-- hyperlinks now work correctly (with a popup window) in flashcard sessions, though only if the entry is fully revealed
-- the current profile name is now shown in the title of new flashcard session dialog on Palm, though we're not able to put it there on Windows Mobile at the moment due to some bizarre technical limitations
-- made the "taller" flash self-scored sketch box just a few pixels shorter by default, to squeeze in an extra line of text - go into the Display tab of Advanced Settings and then exit the screen in order to apply the new height
-- added a check in free-answer pinyin tests to make sure that you've actually entered valid Pinyin in every box before the answer is automatically processed
FLASHCARD SCORING / CARD SELECTION
** added an option in Random / Self-scored / Rep-spaced sessions to limit the number of "unlearned" cards to study at any given time. The idea behind this is that you set a threshold at which a card is considered "learned" (also reflected in Statistics), then Pleco will try to keep the number of un-"learned" cards that you're studying at any given time below a certain number; this is handy if you want to add a lot of new flashcards to your study pool but not start working on them all at once. Once you've reviewed a card, even once, it'll be part of your pool of cards to study, so if you're already working on more than the specified number of "unlearned" cards it won't take any away, but it won't introduce any new ones until you've learned enough of them to drop the un-"learned" count below the level you set.
The "prioritize by" option lets you decide how you'd like Pleco to select new cards for you to study - "random" will choose them randomly from all eligible cards, "created" will choose them by the exact order in which they were created, and "approx created" does almost the same thing but will randomly choose between created within a day of each other; this is useful if you've imported a long vocabulary list that happens to be alphabetically ordered (so that cards later in the alphabet would have been "created" a few seconds after earlier cards) and don't want to actually study cards in that exact order (so you don't have to get through all the 'a's before you can start with the 'b's, and so on)
** added two new Automated scoring options, "scale initial increase by difficulty" and "scale decreases by difficulty". The first option will scale the initial interval (the jump from the default score of 100 to the first score after that) depending on the card's difficulty; if the normal initial interval for your current aggressiveness setting is 400, a card with a difficulty of 100 (the default) would jump to 400 after the first correct answer, but a card with a difficulty of 60 would only jump to 240 (60/100 * 400). The second option will cause scores to only decrease by the same amount they would normally increase when a card is answered incorrectly; normally, when you answer a card incorrectly its score drops all the way back to 100, but with this option enabled, a card that would normally have its score double when answered correctly would instead have its score cut in half
** added an option for Random sessions to set a specific "Unlearned card ratio" - with this option enabled, Pleco will configure the pool of cards to come up in each session so that that percentage of the available cards are unlearned and the remaining cards are learned. If there aren't enough cards of a particular type available to maintain the desired ratio, cards will be mixed at the beginning of the session in the correct ratio, then once it runs out of cards of one type it'll continue displaying only cards of the other type.
-- added an option in card selection "Fixed" sessions to sort by score in addition to creation date, and to sort in ascending or descending order
-- put score-based field selection options on a separate screen, allowing you to choose up to 8 of them instead of the previous 4
-- added a "show all" option to the "prompt for answer quality" option in the Scoring tab of Advanced Settings - with this selected, you'll see all 6 score choices regardless of whether you remembered a card correctly or incorrectly, and won't be prompted to choose correct or incorrect in Self-scored tests. There are also now separate Score 1 - 6 hardware button assignment options
FLASHCARD MANAGEMENT
-- made the Edit Card screen's dictionary search function behave more like a normal dictionary search interface, adding a clear button and updating it as soon as characters are entered / deleted rather than requiring you to tap on the search button
-- added a "modified" option to the card filter screen and the manage cards screen, and cards are now marked as modified when their category assignment *or* their text changes, so this will let you search for cards by how recently they've been added to / removed from a new category (though without letting you choose a specific one)
-- added a "duplicate" search option to the manage cards advanced search screen, though note that it's extremely slow at the moment (and won't work correctly if OR'ed together with another search, only if AND'ed)
-- manage cards will now only perform a search on open if it's very simple / fast (all cards, or a category other than uncategorized) - otherwise you have to tap the search button
-- search results in manage cards will now be cleared as soon as you change the search parameters, and a * will appear in the Search button to indicate that it needs to be tapped to search again; on Windows Mobile the button also blinks
-- added an option ("w/ cat" or "w/ cat name") in the Flashcards panel of Preferences to display the name of the category to which a newly-created card is added; this comes up *instead of* the "Card Added" message. If the card is a duplicate of an existing card, but it was nonetheless added to a new category (the "Keep Cats" option), an asterisk * will appear before the category name
-- added a cancel confirmation prompt in exports on WM
-- in flashcard imports that are configured to store imported definitions in the user dictionary, the software will choose which dictionary to store them in from the dictionary priority order for the import, or if it can't find any user dictionaries in there it'll use whichever dictionary is newest
DOCUMENT READER
-- moved the document reader hardware page scroll option to the "Reader Setup" screen, and added an option to hide the scroll arrow buttons
WINDOWS MOBILE
** experimental "Fullscreen" toolbar button option added on Windows Mobile; this hides the taskbar / menu bar in the main dictionary interface. This is currently only accessible through a toolbar button, since we don't yet want to deal with the possibility of people turning fullscreen mode on and not being able to turn it off again, but if you add it to your toolbar in Preferences it'll give you a lot more room on the main screen
-- dramatically improved the speed at which the main screen is rearranged / redrawn on some Windows Mobile devices - keyboard open/close should be almost instantaneous when before it could take a second or longer
-- add a check on Windows Mobile to reduce the number of unnecessary screen redraws (speeding up return from most dialogs)
-- preliminary support added for the number pad / Compact QWERTY input methods on newer HTC smartphones; you should now be able to use these to enter characters
-- improved SQLite support for reading files off of SD cards on Windows Mobile; we still STRONGLY discourage you from putting your flashcards or a user dictionary database you're actually editing on an SD card, since it's very very easy to lose data that way, but dictionaries created by other users (or dictionaries of your own that you're not editing very often) should now be OK to access from a card
-- improved Windows Mobile file access reliability in general; you should generally no longer find that all your dictionaries suddenly become inaccessible
-- updated to the latest version of SQLite on Windows Mobile, for possibly slightly better performance
-- improved the situation with TouchFlo (on newer HTC Touch series phones) getting in the way of fullscreen handwriting input when looking at a long entry with a scrollbar; now, after you enter that first stroke the scrollbar will be disabled, so subsequent strokes will be captured immediately (no tapping on the screen and waiting it for start drawing)
-- added a more user-friendly color picker (a simple window with a color grid) for dictionary icon and tone color selection on Windows Mobile
PALM OS
-- added an alert on startup on Palm handhelds running Palm OS versions earlier than 5.2 (which generally can't use Pleco's audio pronunciation feature without being hacked, and sometimes not even then)
-- recalibrated the audio volume scale on Palm so that the first few values are closer together and the later ones are more spread out - 1/2/3/4 are now lower than they were before while 10 is still as loud as ever
-- added a preferences option on Palm ("Hide insertion point in HWR screen" in the Input panel) to disable the insertion point in the text edit field on the handwriting input screen - this should trick PenPower (at least newer versions of it) into thinking that there's nowhere to input text and hence disabling itself when that screen's open, allowing you to use the built-in handwriting input instead
MISC
-- added alert explaining the "Choose Panel" control the first time you launch preferences; the "Choose Panel" label was also changed to "GO TO PANEL" to make it a bit more obvious, and a "GO TO" was added on the Palm version as well
-- updated the stroke order / audio demo messages so that they no longer claim the entire program is running in demo mode when only those particular features are
-- added an actual error message when the handwriting recognizer is not installed, so the software no longer simply ignores the "Recognize" command but actually tells you what's wrong.
-- added an "extended audio detected" note at the bottom of the Paid components list in Ordering if the extended audio files (for at least one speaker) are installed and unlocked
-- added a volume setting list to the audio play button (in all 3 screens where it appears) - tap-hold on it to select a playback volume
-- demo dictionaries can now be searched even if you've purchased / unlocked some paid dictionaries; if you select one of them specifically from the dictionary popup menu it should then allow you to search it.
BUGS FIXED
-- fixed crash on startup (which would sometimes look like the software wasn't starting at all) on Windows Mobile 2003 devices, particularly iPAQs - this was covered by the SD card patch version posted a few weeks ago
-- fixed the "No fonts found" startup error on Palm (couldn't detect any files if they were on an SD card) - also covered by the earlier SD card patch
-- fixed a crash on Palm in Manage Flashcards when dealing with extremely long (> 32,000 words) lists of flashcards
-- eliminated the erroneous "some components were missing" error messages on startup
-- hyperlinks to ABC entries now correctly factor in capitalization (so a capitalized link will go to the appropriate capitalized entry)
-- Windows Mobile fullscreen handwriting recognizer lines would sometimes turn gray along with the text
-- tildes will now copy-and-paste correctly out of definitions
-- the Copy command in the Edit menu now works correctly in the main dictionary screen on Windows Mobile
-- the reader bookmark "Replace" option now actually does what it's supposed to
-- fixed a memory leak affecting stroke order diagrams on Windows Mobile (potentially causing crashes in very long stroke order sessions)
-- definitions in the Entry List will now appear in traditional characters if you've chosen that option in the interface
-- self-scored sessions now show correct/incorrect buttons even with scoring set to "None" if you've enabled "repeat incorrect"
-- fixed a bug that caused the flashcard system on palm to exit to the flashcard central screen instead of the main dictionary screen if you save a session, reopen it, and then save it again
-- fixed a bug which prevented custom flashcard import/export dictionary selections / orders from being applied correctly on palm
-- fixed a bug which caused flashcard exports to be incorrectly encoded (appear as gibberish) on Palm, mainly when exporting free dictionary definitions
-- fixed scrollbar in manage cards not updating correctly when hardware scroll buttons used (on palm)
-- fixed a glitch which could cause portions of the screen to fail to update correctly on windows mobile (for example, when closing the start menu)
-- fixed a bug which prevented the entry scroll buttons in the document reader from updating correctly when the screen was resized (palm and wm)
-- fixed a bug which caused the character input screen to take longer to come up than necessary (both on Palm and on WM)
-- fixed a bug which caused cards specifically added to "uncategorized" (via a popup list) to still be added to the default category
-- fixed a bug which caused duplicated cards to be added to a category even if duplicate handling was set to "Skip" rather than "Keep Cats"
-- fixed the Clear button not working at all in the 1.0-style handwriting input screens on Windows Mobile
-- fixed a bug on Palm that caused bits of text to sometimes be left behind when clearing a text field if the insertion point was positioned in the middle of the text string
-- fixed a bug that could cause "AND" and "OR" boxes to come up in manage cards advanced searches even with only one field selected
-- fixed a bug which caused backspaces to not reset the delay-before-search timer if the "Don't auto-search on backspace" option was set; now, a backspace delays the search until you enter a new character
-- the handwriting auto-rec timer is now reset correctly if you undo a stroke on Palm (as it already was on WM)
-- Input Field Compatibility mode now works correctly in the Manage Flashcards screens on Palm