2.0.1 New Features

[mikelove]

ipsi - ah, that makes sense. However, since SQLite doesn't allow multiple / nested transactions this could get rather tricky - we'd have to store the pending flashcard edits in our own separate little file, and keeping everything synchronized could get really tricky once you factor in saved sessions / further edits of the same card in a given session / cards deleted during a session / etc.

stoney - great! In 2.0.1 we're clearing the list (and highlighting the search button) when you change the search settings, so that should make it a lot easier to remember to tap Search.

The Duelist - Probably the easiest way to do this would be to just add a button for it, actually - cramming it into the interface would be kind of tricky.

 

[FUmminger]

I would like to see support for non-Mandarin user dictionaries. I love the dictionary and flashcard interface in Pleco and would love to use it for German and French. It would be especially cool if the reader supported it as well. Ideally, I'd also like to be able to use Pleco for Cantonese and Japanese as well.

I actually have a German user dictionary working right now, but there are issues with performance (it is very large), and with the fact that I get German look-ups when I want Chinese or English.

-Frederick

 

[mikelove]

More of a 2.1 thing, though certainly something we'd like to add eventually - seems silly in some ways to develop all of this technology and use it only for Mandarin, though right now we don't really have the resources to expand to other languages in a more official way.

 

[radioman]

Great on new functions. I have been looking for the edit screen when in flashcard session so very pleased to have it. Might have broached this in the past, but, one question I have (or function request), as follows.

- In flashcard session, if I reveal a card, I then click the headword and bring up the popup definition of the headword, then I cycle the dictionaries and might find a better definition. I would like to be able to at this point hit the "add to flashcards" button and get the card saved with the new dictionary as the default. Right now if I hit the add button, it just says "duplicate card".

I believe I can make these changes in the edit card function, and maybe in the end I would just go to edit card every time I want to cycle a definition through the various dictionaries now that I have the new function. My concern with that is every time I would cycle dictionaries under "edit card", I guess I have some additional exposure of unintentionally editing other parts of the card.

 

[mikelove]

radioman - We were going to add a "Prompt" option for duplicate cards, actually, but programming-wise it proved surprisingly tricky (I wish we'd thought of / included it in the original 2.0 design, would have been much easier then) so it got punted to a later release. You don't need to worry about Edit Card screwing up other card data, though - the category assignments and statistics are kept in entirely different database tables than the main text / dictionary link of the card, so there's not really any possibility of an Edit Card operation disrupting that stuff absent some serious database corruption.

 

[renovator]

In the Manage flashcards section have the the list sortation specific to each list rather than to all lists. I have different types of lists. My Master list for example I want sorted ascending by pronounciation so that I can rapidly find certain words. Some large lists such as my Character list of several thousand characters I do not want sorted at all as I want to see the list in the order that the list was imported (by frequency of character usage). Other lists, I want to sort by character difficulty. At this time each time I go to one of these lists, I need to change the sortation order which applies the latest sortation to all lists.

 

[mikelove]

renovator - good idea, but way beyond what we can do in 2.0.1 - might be a good fit if we eventually add back a 1.0-style flashcard organization screen (where you can view cards in two different categories / uncategorized and easily move them between them and would benefit from having category-specific sort orders).

 

[mfcb]

guess its too late for 2.0.1 but i would like to have the input panel in landscape mode when its on left or right side, that i can select to have it 2 columns wide, or that it is using the whole height of the side, as the first 2 "lines" are just widened, but have no extra space for additional functionality... the way it is now, a lot of space is wasted in landscape, and the HWR result is (in my case) just one character, when there is room for at least 3, if the whole height of a side would be used...

edit: just had the idea, that the input panel could use the portion of the screen, that gets available in the "top 2 lines" when the device is in landscape... anyway, just an idea... ;-)

another thing in landscape: if i take the handle and try to move it to increase the width of the list, it stops well before the middle of the screen... this is not a big problem if i have no input panel or when the input panel is on the left side, but when the input panel is on the right side the list is rather slim, maybe even less wide than in portrait mode ? its just strange, because in landscape i would expect to have more room for customization....

 

[mikelove]

Using the new fullscreen display option might help a bit with that - gives you a whole lot more room on the top/bottom, should be enough for 2 or 3 more characters at least. To access that, simply add the "Fullscreen Mode" button to your toolbar in Preferences. (and let me know if it works well - we're considering giving it a more prominent location or even making it one of the default buttons if it doesn't cause too many problems)

And yeah, the panel width limit calculation code is a bit too conservative at the moment - better to have it that way than have weird behavior like lists taking up the fullscreen and refusing to hide (or disappearing altogether and refusing to come back), though.

 

[radioman]

General Flashcard Interaction - Some comments.

Item 1 - Delete Card Icon

Under the heat of battle (i.e., running a flashcard session), the "erase" card icon keeps creating a problem for me (I know this has been broached in the past). If I am just a bit tired, or go off and review some popup definition, I come back to the session and want to clear the write screen and hit the erase icon. Of course this is due to the icons being pretty much the same.

Maybe it is just me, but I probably do that about one time an hour in a given session. It would not be such a concern except that the result could ultimately be the deletion of a card. Its good there is a message that asks "are you sure you want to delete the card" but I would prefer to not even get to that point.

I believe that some other icon (e.g. skull and crossbones) would solve my problem, or having the delete card icon on the "edit card" screen.

Item 2 - Exiting Flashcard Sessions

I touched on this in the past, but with the new flashcard functionality, not sure if this might be easy. Specifically, Pleco asks me if I want to save a flashcard session on exit, and asks me if I want to resume on resume. For me, if I was only prompted on the way back in, it would be enough, and more convenient as I would be able to interrupt a flashcard session to work in the full dictionary module. If I ask to exit a session, the program would just exit immediately to the dictionary module. Upon re-entry into the flashcard module, I can decide if I want to resume then.

Not to make too big a deal out of this, but when I want the full dictionary module, I many times have something that I would like to be addressed within seconds - a word I want to remember that I just came upon, a look-up when on the street to show someone, etc. When coming back into a flashcard session, I likely am in a less rushed state and would more easily have the time to answer any prompt. Additionally, once in an active flashcard session, the chances of me wanting to stop before completely running the deck is about 1 in 20. This does not include potential interruptions, just my interest in ultimately running through all the flashcards before starting with some other flashcard configuration/session. Once I start, I rarely do not ultimately run the deck to completion. However, the chance of me getting interrupted during a long session to do other dictionary work on Pleco is about somewhere between 50% and 100%.

The function I think would be preferable for me would be either:

1) Have the "exit flashcard session icon" not prompt for save, and immediately exit to the dictionary module, with a prompt to resume the flashcard session again when again entering the flashcard module, or

2) Separate hot or soft key for exiting the flashcard session to the dictionary module.

 

[mikelove]

radioman - good idea about that icon, though I think I might prefer something a bit more neutral-looking, like a trash can. And a delete button in Card Info or Edit Card also makes sense, though Card Info especially is running low on screen real estate right now, and a lot of people would likely still want to be able to delete cards from within the main session interface too.

Quickly exiting sessions makes sense too, though getting the window priorities worked out on Windows Mobile would be kind of tricky. You could actually get pretty much the same functionality right now if you enable input fields in popup windows - do that, then within a session just highlight a word to bring up the popup definition window and type / write in the word you want to look up; faster than even very quickly exiting / resuming the session would be, I think.

 

[renovator]

1) More sub-category levels in the flashcards. I think at one point you said this is an issue with Palm but if we could get it for WM, would be a great addition for large lists. At least 4 subcategories would be ideal.

Even without additional subcategories a way to collapse the subcategories so that when we add cards, we can then go to the main category first and then it would show only the subcategories of that main category to add the card. Now must scroll through all the categories and subcategories to add a card. This takes quite a bit of time when theere are a lot of sub-categories.

2) A way to access the <words> in the ABC dictionary. One example would be to be able to do a full-text search on <Slang> in the ABC dictionary. That would be a great way to quickly develop a list of slang words in that dictionary. I tried all sorts of wildcards and could not do this.

3) A way to deal with words or short sentences in flashcard sessions with more than 4 characters.

 

[radioman]

I would be pleased to have a workaround, but it is not clear on how to "enable input fields in popup windows".

radioman - Quickly exiting sessions makes sense too, though getting the window priorities worked out on Windows Mobile would be kind of tricky. You could actually get pretty much the same functionality right now if you enable input fields in popup windows - do that, then within a session just highlight a word to bring up the popup definition window and type / write in the word you want to look up; faster than even very quickly exiting / resuming the session would be, I think.

 

[radioman]

Renovator,

You noted a need to deal with "words and short sentences in flashcard sessions". I have done a lot of work with full sentences loaded in flashcards. Many are more than 4 characters in length. Is the issue you have related to list management? Not clear to me but if I can help, happy to do so.

3) A way to deal with words or short sentences in flashcard sessions with more than 4 characters.

 

[renovator]

Renovator,

You noted a need to deal with "words and short sentences in flashcard sessions". I have done a lot of work with full sentences loaded in flashcards. Many are more than 4 characters in length. Is the issue you have related to list management? Not clear to me but if I can help, happy to do so.

3) A way to deal with words or short sentences in flashcard sessions with more than 4 characters.

In test type Free-answer, Show Headword or Headword + Defn, Ask For Pronunciation, Only Chinese words or short sentences with 4 characters or less come up to input pinyin for each card. The words with with 5,6,7 etc. characters show up in the Managed Flashcards lists but these cards are ignored for testing purposes as they contain more than 4 characters.

 

[sinoreen]

hi Mike!
I wrote this already in the Bug Report Thread, but it actually belongs to this thread.
It's concerning the crashes that happen when Edit Box in IA is enabled and one taps on a link in an already opened Pop Up.

I would most like to see the possibilty to open more than one pop up at the same time (so that when tapping on a link in an already opened pop up, that the link opens in another pop up), but I think this belongs to feature suggestions and furthermore I think I somewhere read that you don't want to implement this anyway.

Though the copy to Input is a nice option in a pop up when one selects either hanzi or an english word, it does not work well for links, which are in pinyin and so copying the link "jing" to input would result in an extremly long list of results in the popup.
So the best thing to do I think would be to by default set the tap link action WHEN ONE IS ALREADY IN A POP UP WINDOW and the Edit Box in IA is enabled to show the linked-entry in the currently opened up. So in other words, when tapping on a link in a normal dict entry I would still like it to open in a pop up, but when the pop up definition also contains another link than by tapping it, the corresponding entry should be displayed in the currently opened pop up (replacing the previous entry in the pop up in which the link was tapped).
I hope this is feasible and that in order to prevent the crashes I mentioned links in pop ups will not just be disabled altogether.

 

[radioman]

Oh I see. Yeah, with regard to sentences, I also know that you cannot read back the audio on a flashcard if there are more than 8 or 10 characters (any more is ignored). I believe that sentence studying was not the main thrust of the current design, but I do think it is very important. Any future feature support in that regard I personally would welcome.

In test type Free-answer, Show Headword or Headword + Defn, Ask For Pronunciation, Only Chinese words or short sentences with 4 characters or less come up to input pinyin for each card. The words with with 5,6,7 etc. characters show up in the Managed Flashcards lists but these cards are ignored for testing purposes as they contain more than 4 characters.

 

[mikelove]

I should probably close / merge this thread with the regular new features one, since we're past the point of adding any new features in 2.0.1

renovator - I'd rather not add more subcategory levels until we stop supporting Palm OS, since otherwise it would create an incompatibility between the WM- and Palm-version flashcard databases / XML export files. Good idea about collapsing some subcategories, but I'd really like to find a more elegant solution to that problem - maybe some sort of template system, you configure a list of a couple of different sets of card parameters (categories, initial score, etc) and then those show up on the list and you simply pick one to add the card to.

Searching by tags / parts-of-speech is definitely something we're looking at for future versions, particularly as more of our dictionaries get extra tags / entry part separators added like those in the ABC. Sentence testing in free-answer would be nice but requires a pretty big redesign before we can consider it.

radioman - Another well-buried preferences option - it's in the External panel, "Include edit box in IA window," and is new in 2.0.1.

sinoreen - multiple levels of popup windows are another one of those things we can probably only do after we stop supporting Palm OS, but in the meantime it should certainly be possible to get links working correctly in popup windows - you're right that Copy to Input is not ideal behavior in those cases.

 

[johnh113]

Dear Mike,

On my Treo 680 I turned on "Include edit box in IA window" and it's beautiful, except the moment I touch a link in the definition my Palm resets (and then instead of reentering my session, I have to start a new one).

John

 

[radioman]

I found it. This is along the lines of what I was trying to do to begin with, which was to just to bring up the IA window while in flashcards. I see that if the card is waiting for an answer you are locked out and that is fine. I also see that I can highlight a character and then get the window that I can then edit to look up a different word. This is all good.

However, it would be really good to be able to auto bring up the Instant access by programming a "Flashcard Session Hot Key" to bring up IA, but it is not one of choices for the flashcard hotkeys. I have an IA hotkey defined for use outside of the flashcard module, but I guess the hot key assignments while inside the flashcard module are dictated by the flashcard module settings. My guess is the functionality/hook needs to be added to the flashcard hotkeys selection menu since the IA function works inside flashcards per the paragraph above (but I am of course speculating).

I like the IA approach as I can look up a word and still categorize it, and not even leave the flashcard session, and not have to answer any prompts whatsoever to continue with the flashcards.

radioman - Another well-buried preferences option - it's in the External panel, "Include edit box in IA window," and is new in 2.0.1.