2.2.10 Bug Report / Feedback Thread

[多伦多人]

I just noticed that in the male audio, the pronunciation of "多么" sounds like duo1mo, instead of duo1me.
Also, in the Guifan dictionary, some of the entries seem to have missing characters (which appear as question marks), e.g.:

-------------------------
凹
āo
㈡笔顺是????凹,5画。
-------------------------
敖
áo
1 古同“遨”。〇
2 古同“?”。
-------------------------
吆
yāo
[动] 大声呼喊 > ～五喝六 | ～喝。不要写作“?”。
-------------------------

 

[mikelove]

I just noticed a small bug with the pasteboard reader and document editor. If I type or paste text with Emoji characters, when I switch from 'edit' to 'read' those characters disappear. At this point, I can't click on the character after the one that just disappeared (although I can select it by selecting a character further away, and using the previous/next arrows). Not a big deal, might be a more general problem with a simple fix so I thought I'd mention it...

Might have something to do with the way Apple's encoding those characters - we'll check it out, thanks.

1) Cannot continue a flashcard session because of glitches with the testing interface - This usually happens when you are in a testing session when one goes to edit a card (set a new dictionary entry, create a custom card, etc). For example, the test may require you to write the character based on the pinyin and definition provided but there is suddenly now way for you to progress because the 'done' and 'reveal card' button are obscured/absent. There may be other manifestations that make the interface temporarily unusable in similar ways, but this is the most common. My solution so far has been to exit the session and see if the test incorrect cards session is still usable. If not then that session can be saved, exited out of and restarted which usually solves the problem.

Hmm... could be a timing issue with the user interface control updates on iOS 5 (are you on iOS 5?) I'm not quite following the process here, though - the "card info" button shouldn't even be available until you finish entering your answer on a fill-in-the-blanks test - could you give me a slightly more specific example of the actions you take to cause the interface to get screwed up?

2) Large space created between letter keyboard and tones entry numbers - This seems to happen randomly as far as I can tell and it makes viewing the flashcard headword and any information below really difficult because the white background viewing space has been cut in half with the testing session's green 繁体字 green background taking over that space.

Are you referring to the normal Pleco background texture (blue-green with characters on it)? Is it a bare patch of that or are there buttons / tabs on top of it?

3) Halt in score changes- When I first set up a profile to do SRS testing I set one of the testing parameters to deduct 10% of the cards score each time a card was answered incorrectly. This caused all card scores to receive no changes to them whether they were scored right or wrong. In other words, no matter how many times I tested them the scores always remained 100. After removing the deduct 10% function card review scoring returned to normal, which is fine by me because this function isn't important to me.

So you were doing a test with "manual" scoring and it wouldn't raise or lower the scores? The refusal to go below 100 might be because that's configured as a minimum score, but I don't know why it would also refuse to increase - what percentage had you configured the system to add on a correct answer?

4) Incorrect card selection on re-tests- I have my flashcard test session set to retest me on cards I scored incorrectly on the first time. They re-test me on loop until I get the card correct. Sometimes the cards it chooses to retest me on are cards I know I answered correctly. This seemed to be a bigger problem before but maybe less so now. I would 3-5% of the cards it chooses to retest me on are ones that I actually answered correctly. Not sure what's going on there.

That one has been widely reported; we'll fix it in the next update, but to work around it in the meantime, after you've gone "back" to look at a previous card, tap on the "lightbulb" tab to instantly jump back to your current card (rather than simply tapping "forward" until you get back to it).

One last one is more of an incorrect entry note. The card 伤 in the PLC dictionary this card is marked as having no tone while all other dictionaries (ABC, CC, etc.) mark the character correctly as having a first tone.

Yeah, that does look wrong - thanks.

I just noticed that in the male audio, the pronunciation of "多么" sounds like duo1mo, instead of duo1me.

Almost sounds like "duomwa" to me... very odd.

Also, in the Guifan dictionary, some of the entries seem to have missing characters (which appear as question marks), e.g.:

That's because they're characters that our fonts don't cover - rare renderings and components and other such things. Tricky to fix, though we're talking with them about updating to the latest edition of Guifan, which should have some more nicely-formatted data that will make adding in those characters a lot easier. (but we'd rather not fix it before then since we'd have to throw away all of that work when we updated)

 

[character]

I was showing some folks live OCR, and then I put my 4S away. When I took it out ~15 minutes later it was still unlocked and OCR had been running the whole time.

 

[insighter]

Hmm... could be a timing issue with the user interface control updates on iOS 5 (are you on iOS 5?) I'm not quite following the process here, though - the "card info" button shouldn't even be available until you finish entering your answer on a fill-in-the-blanks test - could you give me a slightly more specific example of the actions you take to cause the interface to get screwed up?

Well, I'm not that I'mmm doing something to mess it up but I'll tell you about the process. To simplify things say you are in a two card test session. You answer the first card correctly or incorrectly, it doesn't seem to matter, and then you move onto the second card. Once on the second card you move back to the first card by pressing the 'back' button. Now you are once again viewing the already scored first card. On this card you then select the card information tab between the arrow and the lightbulb. In this tab you go into the card info section and, say for example, edit the card's text or change it's categories. If you then go back to the test session interface it will now be unusable. I can send you a photo if you wish, if you did want it I wasn't sure if you'd have preferred me to email or post it.

Oh and yes, I'm using iOS 5 as far as I know.

Are you referring to the normal Pleco background texture (blue-green with characters on it)? Is it a bare patch of that or are there buttons / tabs on top of it?

Yes, there's mostly a bare patch the standard background. This one is harder to describe because I don't know how to recreate it instantly. Lemme know if you want a photo of the screen.

So you were doing a test with "manual" scoring and it wouldn't raise or lower the scores? The refusal to go below 100 might be because that's configured as a minimum score, but I don't know why it would also refuse to increase - what percentage had you configured the system to add on a correct answer?

I just had it set to whatever the default increase was I think. Don't think I changed anything besides that 10% minus. See if it does the same thing for you if you're curious.

That one has been widely reported; we'll fix it in the next update, but to work around it in the meantime, after you've gone "back" to look at a previous card, tap on the "lightbulb" tab to instantly jump back to your current card (rather than simply tapping "forward" until you get back to it).

Don't really follow this one because it doesn't seem to do have anything to do with the loop review session. It (mostly) selects only incorrect cards so I don't really do tap any 'forwards' or 'backwards' buttons.

 

[mikelove]

I was showing some folks live OCR, and then I put my 4S away. When I took it out ~15 minutes later it was still unlocked and OCR had been running the whole time.

Yeah, we probably should make disabling the auto-off optional rather than always doing it that way.

Well, I'm not that I'mmm doing something to mess it up but I'll tell you about the process. To simplify things say you are in a two card test session. You answer the first card correctly or incorrectly, it doesn't seem to matter, and then you move onto the second card. Once on the second card you move back to the first card by pressing the 'back' button. Now you are once again viewing the already scored first card. On this card you then select the card information tab between the arrow and the lightbulb. In this tab you go into the card info section and, say for example, edit the card's text or change it's categories. If you then go back to the test session interface it will now be unusable. I can send you a photo if you wish, if you did want it I wasn't sure if you'd have preferred me to email or post it.

Hmm, not seeing this problem here - if you'd email PM me the screenshot that would be great. (no problem with posting it either except that it means more for people to read through when trying to see if a bug has already been reported)

Yes, there's mostly a bare patch the standard background. This one is harder to describe because I don't know how to recreate it instantly. Lemme know if you want a photo of the screen.

That would help, yes, thanks.

I just had it set to whatever the default increase was I think. Don't think I changed anything besides that 10% minus. See if it does the same thing for you if you're curious.

Not seeing that here, no - scores increase and decrease fine. So you didn't change anything but that -10%? Very odd.

Don't really follow this one because it doesn't seem to do have anything to do with the loop review session. It (mostly) selects only incorrect cards so I don't really do tap any 'forwards' or 'backwards' buttons.

Sorry, I meant that that's what you should do when you go back during the original test - it's the back and then forward that triggers the bug. After you go back, when you want to return to your current card, tap on the "lightbulb" tab - it will immediately jump you to the current card (no need to tap on forward) and avoid the bit of forward-related code that causes issues with the incorrect answer history.

This one at least should be fixed soon - we'd have submitted the update already, but there's a not-particularly-interesting new Chinese dictionary app that's been spamming us with dozens of fake 1-star reviews, and if we released an update now (which resets our average rating), they'd probably fake-review us down to a 1.5-star average and cause a significant hit to our sales / downloads. But we've written Apple several emails about it, and they announced yesterday that in general they're going to be more aggressive about banning developers who post fake reviews, so hopefully soon this will be dealt with and we can submit 2.2.11.

 

[zeitverschwendung]

I've been using Pleco for a some weeks on iOS5 and think it's time to contribute by reporting some problems I had with it now.

1) sometimes, when showing a compound word in the dictionary, let's take 热轧 as an example, it can not be spoken even though the speaker symbol is available and even though the audio pronounciation for each single character seems to be available.

2) Going on with the same example, when selecting 轧 now, at first one of the other pronounciations (ya4 instead of zha2) is shown and subsequently pronounced if pressing the speaker button.

3) When now selecting 热 and going to the corresponding dictionary entry (in PLC) by pressing the arrow on the top left, on the top '47320 of 79379' is shown. After circling through the dictionaries and ending up at PLC again, on the top '1 of 1' is shown.

4) When importing some flashcard lists in the very beginning I did some mistakes during the setup and importing process which I regretted later on, like allowing all duplicate cards and not storing anything in the user dictionary in combination with prefering the file as dictionary source, which resulte in a large diversity of flashcards. Even though I found some mighty operations when searching cards and applying batch procedures, it was not enough to undo my mistakes. Even though I could assign all the cards to a certain dictionary, it seemed not to be possible to remove doubles in combination with directly applying the 'Merge Cats' option, which I'd have prefered.

5) After erasing the flashcard database I tried some more things before actually beginning with the import and ended up activating the option 'Prefer Dicts' in order to prevent creating doubles, which are not even 'linked' in some way as I would have prefered, even though doubles was set to 'Merge Cats'.

6) What I was missing in the flash-card setup was the possibility to alternate through different test types automatically during one test-session, a sub-selection of them would be perfect, e.g. Tone Practice and Fill-in-the-blanks. In addition to that, I was missing the possibility to combine Fill-in-the-blanks->Characters and the Stroke order. In this case it would be great if the HWR could be less fuzzy but a little bit more strict temporarily in order to force learners to write a character by applying the correct stroke order and/or even direction. While I usually cherish the error tolerance of that tool very much, which not every HWR application offers, in this case less would be more in my opinion, at least temporarily during the tests ;-)

 

[goldyn chyld]

1) works for me... it pronounces it as re4..zha2.

 

[mikelove]

1) sometimes, when showing a compound word in the dictionary, let's take 热轧 as an example, it can not be spoken even though the speaker symbol is available and even though the audio pronounciation for each single character seems to be available.

Have you turned on the option to "Skip if no recording" in Settings / General / Audio? That causes Pleco to do nothing when it doesn't have an exact multi-syllable recording for the word.

2) Going on with the same example, when selecting 轧 now, at first one of the other pronounciations (ya4 instead of zha2) is shown and subsequently pronounced if pressing the speaker button.

Yeah, fixing that is high up on our to-do list - trickier than you might think, actually.

3) When now selecting 热 and going to the corresponding dictionary entry (in PLC) by pressing the arrow on the top left, on the top '47320 of 79379' is shown. After circling through the dictionaries and ending up at PLC again, on the top '1 of 1' is shown.

That's already been fixed for 2.3 - we're adding a second set of arrows to scroll between multiple matches for a particular headword when you change dictionaries.

4) When importing some flashcard lists in the very beginning I did some mistakes during the setup and importing process which I regretted later on, like allowing all duplicate cards and not storing anything in the user dictionary in combination with prefering the file as dictionary source, which resulte in a large diversity of flashcards. Even though I found some mighty operations when searching cards and applying batch procedures, it was not enough to undo my mistakes. Even though I could assign all the cards to a certain dictionary, it seemed not to be possible to remove doubles in combination with directly applying the 'Merge Cats' option, which I'd have prefered.

What about going through and selecting the second card in each pair, doing a batch Export of just those cards, deleting them, then reimporting the exported cards with "Merge Cats"? Not quite as nice as a dedicated command, but to be honest I'm not sure if enough people run into issues with this to justify the time it would take to add one.

5) After erasing the flashcard database I tried some more things before actually beginning with the import and ended up activating the option 'Prefer Dicts' in order to prevent creating doubles, which are not even 'linked' in some way as I would have prefered, even though doubles was set to 'Merge Cats'.

Hmm... did the cards you were importing have their own definitions but no Pinyin? That's about the only scenario I can think of where this would be likely to happen... if not, did they perhaps have an unusual Pinyin rendering that Pleco might have been unable to parse?

6) What I was missing in the flash-card setup was the possibility to alternate through different test types automatically during one test-session, a sub-selection of them would be perfect, e.g. Tone Practice and Fill-in-the-blanks. In addition to that, I was missing the possibility to combine Fill-in-the-blanks->Characters and the Stroke order. In this case it would be great if the HWR could be less fuzzy but a little bit more strict temporarily in order to force learners to write a character by applying the correct stroke order and/or even direction. While I usually cherish the error tolerance of that tool very much, which not every HWR application offers, in this case less would be more in my opinion, at least temporarily during the tests ;-)

Alternating test modes are a big priority for flashcards, we're just trying to come up with a good way to configure them that doesn't result in an even more overwhelming array of settings options than we currently have. As for fill-in-the-blanks handwriting testing, we're looking into licensing a different handwriting engine that we can use for that - hopefully we'll have something worked out on it soon.

 

[zeitverschwendung]

1) you're right, that was the reason, thanks!

5) I think they always had Pinyin... I guess the problem arosed owed to the combination of 'Merge Cats', prefering file as dictionary source, and not storing them in the user dictionary. I read how the 'Merge Cats' works so I think the other two settings should not have any impact on the overall number of cards after several imports, but I had the strange feeling that there was one so I erased once more, changed the two latter settings and started once more... so I passed that problem by now ;-)
In addition to that, I did not like my user dictionary to be flooded with quite specific or even insufficient definitions from books or other sources, while the precious entries from the 'good' dictionaries were omitted in case an entry including an own definition was imported first.
That was around the time when I really started reading the manual, which in my eyes is one of the best pure software accompanying manuals I've seen, in order to take advantage of the full bandwidth of possibilities offered by the software from the very beginning.

6) Some call it an overwhelming array of settings options, others call it an extremely configurable software. To create an intuitive GUI for the main application is one thing, but trying to cover the real complexity of its base within the settings might easily result in restricting the above-mentioned configurability. In this case I'd prefer a double-track approach (e.g. adding an 'Expert Mode') over a compromise.

7) One more thing which was strange in my eyes. I noticed that there seems not to be a continuous pattern of treating simplified and traditional Chinese in the character view. Most times it seemed that a simplified radical, e.g. 马 still points to its traditional counterpart as radical, which I would not have expected if I am currently in 'simplified mode'. The same time, words like 蟲 refer to their simplified counterpart as radical... I'm kinda confused :?

 

[mikelove]

5) I think they always had Pinyin... I guess the problem arosed owed to the combination of 'Merge Cats', prefering file as dictionary source, and not storing them in the user dictionary. I read how the 'Merge Cats' works so I think the other two settings should not have any impact on the overall number of cards after several imports, but I had the strange feeling that there was one so I erased once more, changed the two latter settings and started once more... so I passed that problem by now
In addition to that, I did not like my user dictionary to be flooded with quite specific or even insufficient definitions from books or other sources, while the precious entries from the 'good' dictionaries were omitted in case an entry including an own definition was imported first.

Ah, that makes sense. We should probably come up with a better name for that than "Merge Cats," but since we're moving towards making "Update" the default anyway we may just rephrase it in terms of that - "Update Text," "Update Categories," "Update Text + Cats" - only problem is that then it's not clear if the card will lose its old categories in the course of adding new ones.

That was around the time when I really started reading the manual, which in my eyes is one of the best pure software accompanying manuals I've seen, in order to take advantage of the full bandwidth of possibilities offered by the software from the very beginning.

Thank you! Took quite a while to write, though we still need to do a better job of making it less intimidating to new users.

6) Some call it an overwhelming array of settings options, others call it an extremely configurable software. To create an intuitive GUI for the main application is one thing, but trying to cover the real complexity of its base within the settings might easily result in restricting the above-mentioned configurability. In this case I'd prefer a double-track approach (e.g. adding an 'Expert Mode') over a compromise.

That's what I generally favor too, but there are certain places where the complexity exists more for legacy than customizability reasons - we don't really need the "Old Automatic" scoring option anymore, e.g., and "Weighted" and "Spaced Repetition" could actually be merged into one thing too. So in those cases I think even the experts have more options than optimal.

7) One more thing which was strange in my eyes. I noticed that there seems not to be a continuous pattern of treating simplified and traditional Chinese in the character view. Most times it seemed that a simplified radical, e.g. 马 still points to its traditional counterpart as radical, which I would not have expected if I am currently in 'simplified mode'. The same time, words like 蟲 refer to their simplified counterpart as radical... I'm kinda confused

That actually looks like a bug - we'll try to fix it for 2.2.11, thanks.

 

[yoose]

Hi Mike,

Ran into a bug on my iPad. When I transfer flashcard files from my iPhone, both using 2.2.10 and iOS 5.0.1, and try to import in on my iPad I cant access it. So I transfer the file using the share files feature in Pleco. After the transfer I go to import cards->import cards->choose file I do not see the file and I am unable to go into the received files folder. I have to go to the file manager, where I am able to access the received files folder, and move the file from the received files folder to the root directory so I can see it in the choose file screen in the import flashcards section.

 

[mikelove]

Ran into a bug on my iPad. When I transfer flashcard files from my iPhone, both using 2.2.10 and iOS 5.0.1, and try to import in on my iPad I cant access it. So I transfer the file using the share files feature in Pleco. After the transfer I go to import cards->import cards->choose file I do not see the file and I am unable to go into the received files folder. I have to go to the file manager, where I am able to access the received files folder, and move the file from the received files folder to the root directory so I can see it in the choose file screen in the import flashcards section.

Hmm... looks like it's related to another Inbox bug; we'll make sure this is fixed in 2.2.11, thanks. (should be able to submit that soon, now that the aggressive 1-starring appears to have abated and we're no longer quite as worried about ending up with 50 fake 1-star reviews against our first few legitimate 5-star ones for the new version)

 

[insighter]

I saw you ask this question in another forum.

wrote:
Another question to raise here, though only partially scoring-related - are there any other batch functions or search fields you'd like to see?

First of all, I just have to say again that Pleco and SRS flasch cards together are amazing. Before I found self-study somewhat frustrating and ineffective, but as a system together they've really increased how much progress I can make. The only problem now is the scoring system is massively unstable for me. There's no reason why they should be and I'm not sure it's that common of a problem, but I think a simple way to fix these errors would be to make a batch command to make all the flash card scores be automatically recalculated based on the history of scores the card has received (2,4,5,2 etc.) This seems like it could be a decent broad general fix for many score related problems. I've already communicated some of the bugs I'm having but now that other additional ones have come up (any card that receives an incorrect answer has it's score revert back to 100, one profile refuses to have it's score increase, etc.) I'm at wits end.

If this isn't on the horizon, do you recommend any reset troubleshooting tips? For example making a backup of all the flash card and dictionary data, uninstalling, and then re-installing the app?

 

[mikelove]

I've already communicated some of the bugs I'm having but now that other additional ones have come up (any card that receives an incorrect answer has it's score revert back to 100, one profile refuses to have it's score increase, etc.) I'm at wits end.

This is with "manual" scoring, right? What about if you switch to one of the automated systems, does that improve matters? We still can't seem to reproduce your scoring bugs here, even with your flashcard database backup - we're happy to give it another try if you want to PM me another copy of your database file along with a list of what isn't working in it scoring-wise, though. (should hopefully be submitting 2.2.11 end of the week, so if we can reproduce your problems before then there's an excellent chance we can fix them in that update)

There's no reason why they should be and I'm not sure it's that common of a problem, but I think a simple way to fix these errors would be to make a batch command to make all the flash card scores be automatically recalculated based on the history of scores the card has received (2,4,5,2 etc.)

That's not possible without having the original dates too, sadly - the list of scores won't do it, people review cards early / late far too often. We are planning to start remembering past score dates soon (needed for sync support, actually) but until we do we have a limited number of ways to handle this.

 

[insighter]

I may have played around with some of my Pleco settings, like Commands and score-based card selection, on some of my profiles but my scoring has always been set to Automatic. I've even reset the settings a couple times on some of my profiles. I also don't think I ever sent you a database backup, so I'll figure out how to do that and send it over soon.

 

[friendlyuser]

Ever since the update, reviewing cards has been a huge problem. Some of the incorrectly marked cards do not appear in the post-review of incorrect cards, and correct ones appear instead. The number of cards to review also reduces by itself, until half of the cards I'm trying to review altogether disappear from the review session. I saw this issue was noted on v 2.2.6, but I've been using it for a year no problem until just the last couple weeks. Major problem because I really need to study these and love using Pleco!

 

[mikelove]

I may have played around with some of my Pleco settings, like Commands and score-based card selection, on some of my profiles but my scoring has always been set to Automatic. I've even reset the settings a couple times on some of my profiles. I also don't think I ever sent you a database backup, so I'll figure out how to do that and send it over soon.

OK, thanks!

Ever since the update, reviewing cards has been a huge problem. Some of the incorrectly marked cards do not appear in the post-review of incorrect cards, and correct ones appear instead. The number of cards to review also reduces by itself, until half of the cards I'm trying to review altogether disappear from the review session. I saw this issue was noted on v 2.2.6, but I've been using it for a year no problem until just the last couple weeks. Major problem because I really need to study these and love using Pleco!

The first issue can be worked around by not using the "forward" button after you've gone back to a previous card; instead, simply tap on the "lightbulb" tab icon to immediately jump back to the current card.

The other issue is actually by design - there are some verification checks that we don't perform on every card before we start the test because we don't want to slow things down too much, so instead we perform them when the card actually comes up, and we skip through any cards that fail. Mostly applies to cards that link to missing dictionary entries - have you deleted any dictionaries recently?

 

[friendlyuser]

The first issue can be worked around by not using the "forward" button after you've gone back to a previous card; instead, simply tap on the "lightbulb" tab icon to immediately jump back to the current card.

Ok, thank you!

The other issue is actually by design - there are some verification checks that we don't perform on every card before we start the test because we don't want to slow things down too much, so instead we perform them when the card actually comes up, and we skip through any cards that fail. Mostly applies to cards that link to missing dictionary entries - have you deleted any dictionaries recently?

I have not deleted any dictionaries. Hmm... I am not referring to the function where the number of cards reduce because they are correct. Is this what you mean? Even incorrect ones that should be there for review go missing, until the review session just ends (e.g. if I mark 10 cards incorrect, and continue marking them incorrect, it will reduce to 3, then 1, then it ends). There's no apparent pattern to the cards it singles out?

 

[Rovena]

I have about 400 cards divided into 12 folders, but when I select more than three folders to study, the most I can study at once in the simple mode seems to be limited to 123 cards.
When I choose the SRS mode, I can study about 180 cards, but that is still fewer than it should be given the folders I selected.
Is there any way to fix this?
Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

I have about 400 cards divided into 12 folders, but when I select more than three folders to study, the most I can study at once in the simple mode seems to be limited to 123 cards.
When I choose the SRS mode, I can study about 180 cards, but that is still fewer than it should be given the folders I selected.
Is there any way to fix this?
Thanks!

Go into the Card Selection screen and turn off "Limit # of unlearned" - this is actually a feature designed to keep from overwhelming you with too many new words at the same time.