2.0.1 New Features
- Thread starter mikelove
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What is status on allowing flashcards with more than 4 characters to show up? Unlimited would be ideal but 8 characters would do (2 rows of 4 one on top of each other), especially since the dictionary input field will take a large number of characters and display 7 at a time. After a couple of weeks of using 2.0, I am starting to miss and expect soon to get rusty on my longer words.
Further in our discussion about managing categories...
How about changing the current "Default" selection and removing the drop down selection, and instead make it work exactly like the Group button? I know that's a change to the user interface, but it makes sense, and it makes the Manage Categories screen more consistent (works same way as Group). Also, it allows using the much better category tree to the right for the selection.
Additionally it frees up 1 row in the right side column of buttons.
The help screen for that page really could use some rewriting too, to focus on each of the button usage, for example, etc. Any chance I could get copies of all the help text screens to put on the wiki (as text, not scree shots)?
How about changing the current "Default" selection and removing the drop down selection, and instead make it work exactly like the Group button? I know that's a change to the user interface, but it makes sense, and it makes the Manage Categories screen more consistent (works same way as Group). Also, it allows using the much better category tree to the right for the selection.
Additionally it frees up 1 row in the right side column of buttons.
The help screen for that page really could use some rewriting too, to focus on each of the button usage, for example, etc. Any chance I could get copies of all the help text screens to put on the wiki (as text, not scree shots)?
The work with Pleco 2.0.0 is already great. There is just one small thing that is a little cumbersome. Maybe you can improve it easily. In New Flashcard Session under categories the selection menu always shows the top of the list. After some time the whole list of categories is very long. My normal use case is that I marked one category and want to change to another. Then it takes some time to find the seleced category and unselect it.
Maybe you can always show the first selected category (I mean scroll to its place) in this list so that is not needed to find it manually by scrolling. It would be a great improvement for me.
Even if I have more than one category selected they normally are close to each other in position. It goes much faster to find them from the first selected category than scroll from the top to normally near of the bottom.
Don't know if it is possible for you to manupulate the scrolling position but anyway showing the top is in most cases not what people want because mostly they want to learn the new categories and they are typically at the end of the list. At least it should be possible to show the categories the other way round (last categories at the top and oldest at the bottom).
THX
Daniel
Maybe you can always show the first selected category (I mean scroll to its place) in this list so that is not needed to find it manually by scrolling. It would be a great improvement for me.
Even if I have more than one category selected they normally are close to each other in position. It goes much faster to find them from the first selected category than scroll from the top to normally near of the bottom.
Don't know if it is possible for you to manupulate the scrolling position but anyway showing the top is in most cases not what people want because mostly they want to learn the new categories and they are typically at the end of the list. At least it should be possible to show the categories the other way round (last categories at the top and oldest at the bottom).
THX
Daniel
renovator - it's not just blogs, though, it's regular customers showing the new version to their friends - even when 2.0 was in beta-testing we often got e-mails from people asking how to get that cool software with the audio pronunciation feature they'd seen their classmates using.
I'd be wary of charging people a fee to add a feature to a new version - good way of collecting / validating votes, I guess, but then if we didn't deploy a particular feature we'd have to do a bunch of refunds / credits, and a lot of people would be confused by the whole system and think they were paying to enable access to that feature right away. Might be something a much bigger company could experiment with, but on the scale we deal with I don't think it would be very practical.
We might add an option to display words with more than 4 characters without magnification, haven't decided about that yet.
sinoreen - there wouldn't be anything if you had the software set to allow duplicates, at least not unless/until we add a separate Edit Card button (only a good idea once we get performance to the point where the icon for that can update without slowing down searches too much).
stephanhodges - I'd rather have the separate screen - we'd use the exact same dialog we do in, for example, the Card Info screen's category editor, so it would be very easy to code, it would fit more smoothly with that interface, it wouldn't require adding extra stars / boldface text / etc to the category tree (which I still don't like), and it would make it potentially very easy to edit default categories with a saved session in place.
The help page text is pretty much just copy-and-pasted from the instruction manual, so you can get a copy of it from there.
daniel123 - great idea; very easy (particularly on WM, where we just have to tell the tree view to make that first category visible and it will) and certainly a time-saver if you've got a lot of categories.
Sarevok - entry annotation is not a possibility for 2.0.1, actually, only flashcards (much easier to implement on the back end). And honestly even that I'm starting to think would be better saved for a later release; we're getting into the same darn feature-creep trap we were in with 2.0, we can't please everyone and the most important things to get working in 2.0.1 are things that make the existing functionality usable / erase some of the disadvantages compared with 1.0.
I'd be wary of charging people a fee to add a feature to a new version - good way of collecting / validating votes, I guess, but then if we didn't deploy a particular feature we'd have to do a bunch of refunds / credits, and a lot of people would be confused by the whole system and think they were paying to enable access to that feature right away. Might be something a much bigger company could experiment with, but on the scale we deal with I don't think it would be very practical.
We might add an option to display words with more than 4 characters without magnification, haven't decided about that yet.
sinoreen - there wouldn't be anything if you had the software set to allow duplicates, at least not unless/until we add a separate Edit Card button (only a good idea once we get performance to the point where the icon for that can update without slowing down searches too much).
stephanhodges - I'd rather have the separate screen - we'd use the exact same dialog we do in, for example, the Card Info screen's category editor, so it would be very easy to code, it would fit more smoothly with that interface, it wouldn't require adding extra stars / boldface text / etc to the category tree (which I still don't like), and it would make it potentially very easy to edit default categories with a saved session in place.
The help page text is pretty much just copy-and-pasted from the instruction manual, so you can get a copy of it from there.
daniel123 - great idea; very easy (particularly on WM, where we just have to tell the tree view to make that first category visible and it will) and certainly a time-saver if you've got a lot of categories.
Sarevok - entry annotation is not a possibility for 2.0.1, actually, only flashcards (much easier to implement on the back end). And honestly even that I'm starting to think would be better saved for a later release; we're getting into the same darn feature-creep trap we were in with 2.0, we can't please everyone and the most important things to get working in 2.0.1 are things that make the existing functionality usable / erase some of the disadvantages compared with 1.0.
sinoreen said:
hmmm, i'm really satisfied with the idea that the button would be in the "duplicate alert"... that would mean, that the dialog window has to stay, and if for some reason its gone, again i cant access the flashcard.
how about AFTER adding the duplicate (with the "+" button) changing that button to "EDIT" ? after the duplicate is detected already, there definitely is no need to add the card again, so an "EDIT" card button would be nice... also i could imagine to use the "+" button that when its pressed long time to check if there is a card and edit that card (for cards that should not be added)...
This is probably bigger than a 2.0.1 request, but I'd still love to see a better user experience for looking up SMS messages using the Document Reader. Not sure exactly what this might look like, but it would be great if pressing the IA button when I'm on the SMS screen in TochFLO 3D would screenscrape /copy that message and load it in the document reader.
Regards,
Brian
Regards,
Brian
@bgaslow,
Pleco already has that feature, but it's disabled by default. You need to go to prefs and do the following:
- Enable Clipboard lookup on non-IA activate
- Enable send-to-reader if greater than 'x' bytes, 8 is the default which is fine
Then all you need to do is copy the sms, unhighlight it, and click whatever hardware button you assigned to Pleco. It will load your sms straight into the document reader.
*edit* that won't work in the Touchflo 3D UI, as you can't copy/paste from there.
Pleco already has that feature, but it's disabled by default. You need to go to prefs and do the following:
- Enable Clipboard lookup on non-IA activate
- Enable send-to-reader if greater than 'x' bytes, 8 is the default which is fine
Then all you need to do is copy the sms, unhighlight it, and click whatever hardware button you assigned to Pleco. It will load your sms straight into the document reader.
*edit* that won't work in the Touchflo 3D UI, as you can't copy/paste from there.
Thanks Idolse, that is why I was hoping there might be something they could do for compatibility with the TouchFLO UI to grab that current displayed SMS message and load it into the reader. Or even just a quick startup option within the Reader itself to load the latest SMS message text would be great. That way I wouldn't have to load and go into the full messaging app which I rarely use, highlight and copy it, and then use the IA button from there.
bglasow said:
It is a bit of a pain not being able to go right from the TouchFlo UI to the clipboard but sooooooo nice to be able to open SMS and then copy to clipboard and launch Pleco reader, a feature that was not available in 1.0
The next step I guess would be to go directly from SMS into reader followed by SMS to instant translation followed by why should we learn Chinese at all. :lol:
I realize these are not all "simple" changes but I want to write them down before I forget.
1. Finer volume adjustment between 0 and1 ( still too loud with certain ear phones)
2. Play audio in the reader using a hard button. ( either it's not possible now or I can't figure it out, I know it can be done in other parts of pleco))
Also, I prefer to use the popup window in the reader, but I would like to be able to press the button to play a highlighted word, without poping up the definition. I often know the meaning of a word when reading but can't remember how it's pronounced, so only need to hear it.
3. When subject selection is set to alternating;
I want to alternate between different types of reading. for example; 1st card would show the hanzi, then the answer would be the definition, the second card might show the definition, then the answer would be the hanzi, and so on.
If this is possible please let me know how. Now I think it just alternates between any of, one type of reading/writing/listening.
4. Correct/edit flashcards during a flashcard session. ( now I have to remember the word for later or leave the session. Supermemo handles this well.)
5. When changing categories in the Flashcard manager (drop down list), I have to exit then reenter the manager for the change to take effect.
1. Finer volume adjustment between 0 and1 ( still too loud with certain ear phones)
2. Play audio in the reader using a hard button. ( either it's not possible now or I can't figure it out, I know it can be done in other parts of pleco))
Also, I prefer to use the popup window in the reader, but I would like to be able to press the button to play a highlighted word, without poping up the definition. I often know the meaning of a word when reading but can't remember how it's pronounced, so only need to hear it.
3. When subject selection is set to alternating;
I want to alternate between different types of reading. for example; 1st card would show the hanzi, then the answer would be the definition, the second card might show the definition, then the answer would be the hanzi, and so on.
If this is possible please let me know how. Now I think it just alternates between any of, one type of reading/writing/listening.
4. Correct/edit flashcards during a flashcard session. ( now I have to remember the word for later or leave the session. Supermemo handles this well.)
5. When changing categories in the Flashcard manager (drop down list), I have to exit then reenter the manager for the change to take effect.
bglasow / ldolse / renovator - it would actually be possible for us to add a built-in SMS reader feature at some point - there's a nice little interface (CE MAPI) built right into Windows Mobile to allow software to read out messages stored in Pocket Outlook, so as long as the SMSes are still showing up in there and aren't being intercepted / taken over exclusively by some other piece of software (not sure what the latest HTC devices do, but I imagine they'd want to keep supporting Outlook to some extent at least) we can search / retrieve / open up reader sessions on them. It'd be a lot of work, though, so not a possibility before 2.1 at least.
stoney - finer volume adjustment would certainly be possible, I think - really we should probably just adjust that whole scale, on Palm at least it's much too closely packed together at the moment. Good idea about a hardware button for reader audio, we'd probably also want one for adding to flashcards (which like audio could happen without opening up the popup window).
The Reading/Writing distinction is purely for convenience, if you tap on the Customize button in the Test Setup screen you can configure any set of fields you want for each type. Editing flashcards during sessions has been very heavily requested so we're trying to figure out what we can do with that. With Manage Flashcards not updating categories correctly, what happens if you just tap the Search button - does that cause the changes to be reflected?
stoney - finer volume adjustment would certainly be possible, I think - really we should probably just adjust that whole scale, on Palm at least it's much too closely packed together at the moment. Good idea about a hardware button for reader audio, we'd probably also want one for adding to flashcards (which like audio could happen without opening up the popup window).
The Reading/Writing distinction is purely for convenience, if you tap on the Customize button in the Test Setup screen you can configure any set of fields you want for each type. Editing flashcards during sessions has been very heavily requested so we're trying to figure out what we can do with that. With Manage Flashcards not updating categories correctly, what happens if you just tap the Search button - does that cause the changes to be reflected?
Possibly you could 'journal' any changes made to the flashcards, and then store them in the database at the end of the session? That is, write the changes to a temporary file then when the flashcard session finishes, read them back in and commit them to the database? Or, if the device crashed during a flashcard session, read them back in when Pleco starts (provided there's not an existing saved session file or something). Just a thought.
estudiando
探花
Didn't know the Beta thread was still alive. Here is a "minor" request: Can search results be in order of frequency? This would be similar to the Chinese keyboard input systems where the most common words show up first in the selection palette. My other "minor" feature request is already in the other thread. Thanks.
ipsi - which comment are you replying to? (if any) In general I think we're better off storing flashcard results as soon as the card is tested - people routinely run several-hundred-card (or "endless") sessions and could easily cancel / reset their handheld / run out of battery power in the middle of them, and in that case we'd still want to retain the results they'd already found.
estudiando - this was actually supposed to be somewhat different from the regular Feature Suggestions thread (smaller and one-feature-per-person, almost a poll type thing), though they seem to be kind of blending now
Frequency sorting would be a major feature, actually, because we'd need to license a set of word frequency data - there's plenty of data out there on individual characters, but it's a lot harder to come up with a good data set for words.
estudiando - this was actually supposed to be somewhat different from the regular Feature Suggestions thread (smaller and one-feature-per-person, almost a poll type thing), though they seem to be kind of blending now
Frequency sorting would be a major feature, actually, because we'd need to license a set of word frequency data - there's plenty of data out there on individual characters, but it's a lot harder to come up with a good data set for words.The Duelist
榜眼
Popup Definition For Stroke Order Screen
Hi Mike
I Would Like To Be Able To See A Popup Definition
Of The Character In The Stroke Order Flashcard Test.
I Think This Would Also Increase The Usefulness Of The Stroke Order Test,
As You Also Could Self-Test/Check The Defn While Stroke-Order Testing.
(Maybe This Popup Defn Could Just Be Incorporated Into Stroke-Order Interface.)
TIA
The Duelist
Hi Mike
I Would Like To Be Able To See A Popup Definition
Of The Character In The Stroke Order Flashcard Test.
I Think This Would Also Increase The Usefulness Of The Stroke Order Test,
As You Also Could Self-Test/Check The Defn While Stroke-Order Testing.
(Maybe This Popup Defn Could Just Be Incorporated Into Stroke-Order Interface.)
TIA
The Duelist
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