2.0.2 Beta 2 Bug Report / Feedback Thread

[mikelove]

stephanhodges - not sure about that, then; have to keep testing I guess.

radioman - is the Pleco application file on your SD card? Try moving it into internal memory, that might be what's affecting the recent programs list.

caesartg - most likely this is just a mistake; I'm not aware of any standard stroke order variation on that, the dot pretty much always seems to go at the end. I've said a couple of times that we're less-than-entirely-satisfied with how the traditional character diagrams came out, and we're working to replace them with another data set in a future update (which we plan to make available as cheaply as possible, if not for free, to people who already bought the old set).

 

[daniel123]

I bought a HTC Touch HD. There Instant Access does not work in some applications like Internet Explorer and sms. It just opens Pleco main program but not the IA window. I just can use copy&paste to open it inside Pleco.

I configured Instant Access from taskbar icon.

On some applications like calendar or contacts IA works. It is a pity because using IA on Internet and sms was one reason for me to buy a smartphone instead of using my old organizer. I really hope you can find the reason.

Don't know if this is a 2.0.2 Beta problem or if this also exists in 2.01. I directly tried beta2.

THX

Daniel

 

[goog1e]

Thanks for implementing the merge flashcard category and increasing the split limit, works great. Haven't tried the beta with the new "organize flashcards" screen yet.

About the audio in flashcards now being abruptly cut off when switching flashcards, I'm wondering if you could slightly modify what's been done. Right now, if I'm playing a flashcard and move to a new card, it cuts the audio short and goes to the next one. I'm not sure how I feel about the audio getting cut short but it does prevent me from missing the next card's audio and having to manually listen to it (I test by audio mainly and score on defn/writing) which was bugging me before. However, the new feature also cuts the audio short if I simply score the card so I still need to watch my button pushing timing. For example, when I hit "correct" on a card and I'm listening to the audio, it cuts the audio short. Would it be possible to modify the code so that the audio is only cut when you bring up a totally new flashcard instead of just when changing the view of the flashcard?

Another thought about the audio. How difficult would it be to add an audio queue that exists across flashcards and anytime you hit the play button the sound trigger just gets added to the queue and then there is some watchman function to pop these events off with a small delay in between? This might be pretty complicated to implement or slow, but could get rid of the cut audio assuming it bugs anyone else.

 

[mikelove]

daniel123 - the IA-from-taskbar option doesn't get along well with some versions of HTC's TouchFlo interface, so try assigning PlecoLaunch to a hardware launch button instead - you might have better luck using that. Also, you're sure this is IE and not another browser like Opera, right?

Oh, and has there been any improvement on the audio-dropping-out-bug front? (I guess the new phone might have helped with that even if the software didn't)

goog1e - glad to here the merge function is working well. Organize Flashcards is going to make a big difference for some people, I think, though I'm surprised about the lack of feedback on it so far - figured a few people would be eager to start using it ASAP.

That audio cutoff problem sounds like it has to do with the audio being set to play again when the card is revealed - we need to add some sort of an extra flag to audio playback commands telling the system to *not* interrupt the audio in cases like that, I guess. The audio system on iPhone is actually implemented with a queue like you describe, but I'm a bit worried about doing that on other platforms since it takes up a lot of memory. If the cutoffs are really annoying I suppose we could consider adding a preferences setting to restore the old pre-2.0.2 behavior, though.

 

[daniel123]

daniel123 - the IA-from-taskbar option doesn't get along well with some versions of HTC's TouchFlo interface, so try assigning PlecoLaunch to a hardware launch button instead - you might have better luck using that. Also, you're sure this is IE and not another browser like Opera, right?

Oh, and has there been any improvement on the audio-dropping-out-bug front? (I guess the new phone might have helped with that even if the software didn't)

The Touch HD has no hardware buttons that could be configured. There are 3 soft buttons: a phone button, a home button, a back button and a hang up button. There ist just one thing configurable for an action: to long hold the phone button. I tried it and it works. But is not usable for daily use. I often want to use IA. Using a long hold button slows down every working. Works like a pain.

I am wonderung that you said it has to do with TouchFlo because I disabled it. I don't use TouchFlo 3D.

In Opera I could not try IA because I did not find any way to select a word. Maybe there is a trick I don't know. In IE I can select like usual.

I can not say much about the audio-dropping-out-bug: first of all I installed nearly everthing of pleco into memory and second I have so many problems with the touch hd that I did not really learn Chinese for some days. This bug just happen after longer use without exiting. I can tell you in future (if I keep with the touch hd, every day I like it less).

Daniel

 

[Shadowdh]

The trick with the touchflo is that there is sometimes more than one thing you need to turn off or disable... in my old phone I disabled touchflo and had to exclude Pleco from the program and there was something else I did but cant remember sorry...

Re not being able to select text in opera... if you bring up the menu by touching and hold the screen then there will be a select menu option you can turn on (but will need to turn off again after, a pain I know) also another thought... I am not entirely sure that the touchflo is ever fully disengaged as when I disabled it on my x1 (HTC made) it still worked as if it was on most of the time re scrolling through pages and so forth...

 

[radioman]

I did not realize I could run Pleco off the SD card. I thought it had to be somewhere in the main memory on the Palm (i.e., not the SD card).

Specifically, the Pleco program and some of the associated files are in the "PalmCard", which is one of 3 possible storage locations according to Filez. The other being INTERNAL and EHCCARD (the name of my card).

I moved the Pleco application file to "INTERNAL" at the root directory, and the Palm could not find and execute the program, so I moved it back to the PalmCard and it is working again.

Normally when loading, I take Pleco files on the SD card and just move them to the device. I have flashcards on the device that I move via backup/Plecomover to the SD card. I try to stay away from syncing as I use the Mac and just find using the SD easier.

Anyway, without going into all the file details, I know you published general guidelines in the past for best use of storage locations, can you provide the latest recommendations?

radioman - is the Pleco application file on your SD card? Try moving it into internal memory, that might be what's affecting the recent programs list.

 

[radioman]

This seems to be repeatable.

I import a new set of flashcards, with a category identified in the file via: //LCC Words 250-300
After import I want to organize, placing this under LCC Master as a subcategory. LCC Master is collapsed and has about 8 other categories under it. I leave it collapsed, and then highlight LCC Words 250-300, select GROUP, get the "*" identifier, and then go to LCC Master and highlight. At that point, I get a "Table.c, Line:2643,Invalid parameter" Fatal Alert message.

 

[caesartg]

Just a quick note - the ABC entry for 框架 - example sentence characters don't display and instead we just see two sets of pinyin.

PS - If there's another place where I should be posting errata instead of here, let me know.

 

[sthubbar]

That pesky "v" just doesn't want to behave.

0) I have Input compatibility turned on if that makes a difference
1) Create a custom card and for pinyin put nve4
2) Leave the card
3) Go back into the edit card screen - The 'v' has disappeared

Also same with lve4.

 

[mikelove]

daniel123 - have you tried putting PlecoLaunch in your Start menu? That might be another way to get at it. You could also try a third-party application launcher (different program that lets you launch files from the toolbar). Not sure why this would be acting up with TouchFlo disabled but it may be something more fundamental about the phone's system software that's preventing taskbar launches from working correctly.

radioman - Pleco shouldn't be run off of the SD card - there's really no point, it just gets loaded back into internal memory every time you run it. Running it that way can also cause Palm OS to delete some of its internally-stored preferences or data files. If you wanted to run it off of the card anyway, though, you'd actually put it in the /Palm/Launcher directory on the card, not in the root directory or in INTERNAL.

So the basic recommendation is: put Pleco.prc and the handwriting recognizer in main memory, put everything else on the SD card.

This doesn't answer the original question of why Pleco wasn't showing up in the list of recent programs, though - that I'm really not sure about. This is a feature built into the OS on your T5, right? How do you invoke it again? (haven't got a T5 handy to test on at the moment)

The table issue sounds like the same bug stephanhodges was having - still no luck at reproducing it, but we'll keep trying I guess.

caesartg - lots of entries like that, actually; if we don't get an updated database from them soon we may go in and fix them ourselves, though official character versions of those example sentences would be best.

sthubbar - Input Compatibility is definitely the problem here - some encodings can't handle umlauts properly, at least not with our conversion tables.

 

[ben_gb]

I dont think anyone else mentioned this yet, but there are still problems with the screen refresh as seen in the previous betas, with the keyboard not being redrawn when you come back from suspend mode while in Pleco (Touch HD WM6.1).

This happens with Touchpal and the built in HTC keyboards.

Ben

 

[mikelove]

ben_gb - we actually traced your earlier problem with that back to PocketShield (you're still using that, right?) - it does all kinds of crazy stuff with screen redraws and we couldn't find a good workaround for it, or at least one that wouldn't massively slow the software down / cause far more annoyance than it fixes.

 

[ben_gb]

ben_gb - we actually traced your earlier problem with that back to PocketShield (you're still using that, right?) - it does all kinds of crazy stuff with screen redraws and we couldn't find a good workaround for it, or at least one that wouldn't massively slow the software down / cause far more annoyance than it fixes.

Ah...OK, thanks. I'll ask the Pocketshield guy if he can fix it.

Ben

 

[mikelove]

OK. If he shoots back with a specific suggestion (i.e., a particular Windows message that we should be responding to in a certain way) let me know, it's certainly possible we might have overlooked something.

 

[koreth]

Not sure if this is new to 2.0.2, but it doesn't seem like the answer quality feature is working.

At one point, if I recall correctly, answer quality "4" was supposed to *decrease* the card's score slightly (so you'd review it again sooner) but that doesn't seem to happen.

As a test, I added two new flashcards. I answered one with a quality of 5 and its score went from 100 to 400. I answered the other with a quality of 4 and its score also went from 100 to 400. Maybe that's a peculiarity of the cards being brand new, but I am definitely noticing that cards I answer "4" on are still getting their scores increased, and apparently at about the same rate as the "5" and "6" ones.

My scoring settings:

Scoring type: automatic
Aggressiveness: 3
Difficulty scaling: none
Show score buttons: (alternating)
Only change score once per day: checked

 

[mikelove]

It decreases the difficulty factor (marking the card as more difficult) but the score still increases - that's just how the algorithm is designed. To decrease the score slightly you'd probably want to go with answer quality 3, with "Difficulty scaling" set to "All Decreases" in the Scoring tab of Advanced Settings.

 

[koreth]

I see, so the effect will be to make the card appear sooner the time *after* the next time it's shown? That is, if I answer "4" at presentation #1 of a card, presentation #2 will happen on the same day it would have if I'd answered 5 or 6, but presentation #3 will happen sooner since presentation #2 will adjust the score based on the decreased difficulty factor? That is, the score increase is based on the quality of previous answers and not affected by the quality of the current answer?

 

[mikelove]

Yes, the score change on a correct / incorrect answer is based on the difficulty before that answer was recorded, so it won't be directly affected by the quality of the current answer.

 

[radioman]

Yes, I believe it is built into the OS.

To get to the list, using the stylus, press and hold the HOME hold button (in the lower left corner, looks like a little house. Then a list of recently run programs will show up. Pleco does not show up in that list with other programs that have been previously run?

Before, it for some reason was in the recents list briefly at one time, and if I selected Pleco there when in a flashcard session, it bailed out of the flashcard session immediately and threw me into full Pleco dictionary mode. I discovered this quite by accident. THis "flashcard bailout" feature is something I have been looking for a while. Whether planned or not, this Recent Applications list provided me the function.

This doesn't answer the original question of why Pleco wasn't showing up in the list of recent programs, though - that I'm really not sure about. This is a feature built into the OS on your T5, right? How do you invoke it again? (haven't got a T5 handy to test on at the moment)