3.0.0 Bug Report / Feedback Thread

[alanmd]

Yes I was looking at the iPhone, but the iPad works the same way if you switch off "embed definition" in Settings->Search Screen. The up/down buttons are then quite handy, and the 'back' button (labelled '<') takes you back from an entry to the results list.

Even with 'embed definition' on, you can navigate to other definitions by selecting them, clicking on them in chars/words, etc. when you do that, you have back/forward buttons that are extremely useful appear on the too right of the iPad screen. Having these buttons take you to the result of a previous search, perhaps that you made days or weeks ago, seems confusing to me.

 

[gato]

1. Ah, I didn't know what "embed definition" meant. I'll try it to see if it fits what I want.

2. Mike, is it possible to turn off the "Stroke" tab in the dictionary view? I don't really have a need for it. I originally bought the stroke order add-on because I liked the component information.

 

[yuvalcho]

Hey.

So first wanted to congratulate you...great job. all looks amazing.

Since i don't have any time at all (2 exams tomorrow), i apologize if there is some repetition, i read a bit, but it's too much time for me to spend...

1. Where is the "undo while drawing" option for handwriting tool. it's annoying to delete the whole char for one stroke mistake...i cant seem to find it anywhere...please don't tell me that it's obsolete.

2. Flashcards are a bit buggy, you probably know by now. ending a session doesn't end well when u want to start a new one, it just resumes from a random position in the last finished session.

3. weird search in dictionary: looked for: yuanliang. as soon as it sees yuanl, it finds some weird entry.it looks like it finds it in ADS dictionary. but no really either. cant take a pic, but it shows:
Ce量ON
and other garbage.

4. how about making an option in flashcards organize when u create a new catergory, to make it the default right there.

5. Filters: move history filter up in the filters list, as i'd bet most ppl use it quite often.

6. another extra option could b after finishing flashcard testing to turn off the filters and redo it without going to filters list again.

7. also ust before entering to filter list have a button to enable disable all of them, cause it's really annoying to go in every time and enable/disable the filter (history, for errors).

havent had enough time to play with it really, just a quick look as i'm concentrating on studying.

Thanks.

 

[gato]

When using Cantonese TTS in reader, it's not highlighting most of the words being read.

 

[weingin]

Hi,

I came across this bug two or three days ago:

I looked something up, probably 其相非明, thought I was done with it, cleared the search field, but didn't enter something else. So I was still able to view the entries
and clicked on one of them. But then, it didn't give me the entry, instead the whole thing was blank:

As soon as I went back to the search screen and clicked on one of the entries again, the entry showed up as usual.

Tried a few times, but I wasn't able to reconstruct the behavior until now.

 

[mikelove]

Bendy-Ren - ah, quite right, it doesn't update the flashcard color scheme yet - very odd one then.

Yoose - OK; probably not an iCloud problem then.

gato/alanmd - honestly I don't think going "back" entry-wise is especially useful on an iPhone at least; the act of going into / out of a dictionary entry is simply too "big," it's not something where you're likely to remember what you just looked at and rapidly go back. Going back to a previous search makes a bit more sense but then I'd rather do that in the context of search input specifically, for example by showing a list of previous searches when you open up the search bar so that you can pick one of them instead of typing something new. I can see a little more value to a "back" button on an iPad but it's still not really the sort of navigation you'd have on a web page where you're immediately aware of / it's immediately obvious what you were just viewing.

So a faster-to-access history button might be possible if we get a lot of other requests for it, but unless there's some aspect to a back button that I'm not appreciating I don't really quite see what the value would be.

On the stroke tab: just delete the stroke order add-on; we removed its other functions - rare characters are now rendered by our free extended font and character components by our free character breakdown database - so there's really not much need to keep it around unless you want stroke order.

yuvalcho - 1) actually it's more prominent now; "undo" in the top bar above the drawing area.

2) Yeah, few reports of that - sorry we missed it.

3) Might be related to some other random search result bugs we've seen, thanks.

4) Reasonable, thanks.

5-7) That whole screen's getting redesigned anyway, but good idea, yes.

gato - that one's an Apple bug, actually - have to document it for them at some point.

weingin - that's a funny one - do you remember which result you tapped on? And which dictionary it was from? Might relate to the user dictionary in some way.

 

[Manou]

OK, I managed to reproduce the toolbar problem; that seems to be a bug with the selection toolbar failing to dismiss when you exit that screen if the popup bubble isn't visible. To fix this, tap anywhere on the screen outside of that toolbar to hide the toolbar before you switch into Organize. If you forget to do that, just go back into your previous screen and tap somewhere to get rid of the toolbar; you can then switch back into Organize and it should stay gone.

No, it doesn't solve the problem - I've tried it, the toolbar doesn't disappear. I am making flashcards now and I still have to close the app completely in order to have the toolbar that lets me create flashcards. I now have this problem since I updated (I was the one approaching you on facebook about it).
All I want to know is how to get the functionality back so that I don't have to close the app each time I need to add a flashcard!! I am really furious now, I need to create flashcards for a new textbook and at this rate it'll take forever. Is downgrading to the previous version really the only option to make them work again?? How is this progress?? I've been messaging you here and on facebook for more than a week now, the issue is still not solved! I even deleted the app and reloaded it from itunes, then used the backup on my iPhone to get everything back - still no joy!
Some of my classmates using Pleco on their iPads have the same issue, it's not people who are biased against progress giving you one star reviews, it's people that have spent a long time creating flashcards and are having problems now that are not getting addressed!

 

[mikelove]

So you're saying that after you copy a piece of text to the clipboard, there's nowhere on that screen that you can tap to make the toolbar disappear? Even if you do this in the dictionary screen you're copying from (NOT in Organize)? Because that's definitely not what we're seeing here, and we've tried to reproduce this in every way we can think of on a device with your exact configuration - if you tap outside of the toolbar / selection, then the toolbar goes away and it stays gone when you switch into Organize. Highlight a piece of text, tap copy, then tap somewhere else in the definition - does the toolbar disappear? Does the highlight disappear?

We'd happily address this problem if we'd had any other reports of it, or if we could reproduce it here, but we haven't, and we can't - we need more information from you in order to figure out what's going on.

 

[Manou]

Wherever I tap on the screen, it does not disappear, here some screenshots again:
No 1 - in search, copied the high-lit section to the clipboard

No 2 - tapped the screen, highlights gone, toolbar still there, tapped a number of time about everywhere, no change

No 3 - still in the search section, tapped a few times about everywhere, toolbar still there

No 4 - in the flashcard section after all the tapping, the blasted tool bar is still there and I can neither add nor organise flashcards

No 5 - in a flashcard folder now, tool bar still there, still no possibility to add or edit flashcards

And yes I tapped and tapped and tapped some more, does it work?? No, not at all. And yes I switched off iCloud sync, does it work?? No, not at all. And yes I restarted the app, does it work, only once, then the problem is back. So each time I copy and paste something over to the flashcards I need to restart the up. This is an update? This is progress? Where I stand it most certainly isn't. It's making creating flashcards for exam preparations a nightmare!

 

[mikelove]

Thank you.

One question before we even address the bug - why are you copying the entire text of a dictionary entry in such an awkward way? You can simply tap-hold on the "PLC" and get an option to copy the whole thing from there - much faster than mucking around with drag selection handles. Also, if you want to create a flashcard with modified text from a PLC entry (as it seems like you do), why not create the flashcard from that entry (tap on the + button), then simply edit it (Convert to Custom Card) to get the text you want?

(not trying to insinuate that you're doing anything wrong - obviously the app should work OK regardless of how you choose to use it - but I'm just curious; if there's some particular need those two methods aren't addressing, then we'd like to know about it so that we can offer a more streamlined way to do it than all of this tedious copy-and-pasting; we certainly didn't design Pleco with the intention of putting our customers through anything as annoying as constantly flipping back and forth to Organize like this)

Anyway, I tried these exact steps on this exact entry on an iPad 2 with iOS 6 here and I'm afraid I'm not seeing the problem - tried it about a dozen times doing every combination of drag directions / tap-hold versus tap for the initial selection / scrolling in the middle / etc that I could think of and it went away correctly every time.

The toolbar was definitely hidden before you began highlighting, right? Does it flicker at all when you dismiss the highlight (which might suggest that there's more than one copy of it visible)? If you tap on the -> arrow button (which should get a selection bubble to show up pointing to the first Chinese word in the selection - bamen) before you tap outside of the definition, does that finally get the toolbar to disappear? What happens if you tap on the arrow buttons in the toolbar after the highlight has disappeared?

Also, could you please try resetting all of your settings to defaults (top of the Settings screen)? It's possible that you might have enabled a setting that's conflicting with this in some way - resetting to defaults will ensure that your configuration exactly matches ours.

 

[Manou]

I am not copying the entire text, here I only showed it like that to demonstrate the problems.
Sometimes I copy sample sentences over, but at all the times I edit my flashcards heavily because I also include grammar pattern we learn in each lesson. If I use the + button to add a flashcard, I still need to re-format it as it doesn't copy it over with formatting. Then I need to edit it anyway, to make sure to classify whether the word is a verb, noun, etc. than I add sample sentences that show every use of the word. As I said before, I study Chinese at university - so the flashcards I vital for me. The toolbar is annoying as I can't get rid of it, I'd rather use the inbuilt copy anf paste function of my iPad. I never had a problem like ti with the previous version, and I have don lots of flashcards. I've been asking for more than a week now about hw to fix this - nothing has helped. I am not an idiot trolling around, I am a power user of this app and need it to work!

 

[Manou]

No tapping anywhere makes to tool bar disappear, I had my ands tap-dancing over the whole screen!
Yes the toolbar was hidden before, I ad to do the usual 'close the app by double tap' routine to get rid of it.
Yes I did reset all setting, as well as re-starting the iPad, re-downloading the app... I went through all hoops and jumped all hurdles. I just reset all settings again.
Is there any setting that gets rid of this toolbar completely? I now have had enough after more than a week trying and be happy to ditch is completely!

 

[mikelove]

Sorry, could you answer my last two questions about tapping on the -> button before and after you clear the selection?

 

[Manou]

When I tap at the -> buttons, the bubble you mentioned pops up, then nothing - the toolbar remains where is was just as the pictures show!
Two of my classmates have now downgraded to the previous version because of all that.
I seriously regret having upgraded, should have know better than upgrading before exams - we have final exams in early December and really don't need all that trouble making flashcards for exam revision.
I've been trying to get help from you for more than a week, now I just want to know how to permanently get rid of that blasted tool bar. I rather to copy and past as I did it before the upgrade that jumping more hurdles.

 

[mikelove]

There's no option to get rid of the toolbar, it's actually invoked by the same bit of code that used to show the "Copy" bubble (which was not actually iOS' built-in system but rather our imitation of it) and hidden by the same code as well. We combined the two selection systems because it didn't really make sense to highlight text in two different ways in the same app, but the code we based it on was the code from the old "Copy" bubble rather than the one from the old tap-lookup function.

I've been trying to reproduce your problem for the past week and I still don't know what it is that makes your system different from ours - I don't suppose your iPad is jailbroken, is it? Is it running iOS 6.1.3 or an earlier version of 6.1? What language / region is your iPad localized in?

And I know it's a stretch, but could you possibly post a video of this problem happening? This isn't meant to be patronizing, not at all - I certainly believe that you're experiencing this problem and that you've tried out all of these fixes - I just wonder whether you might perhaps be invoking the text selection in an unusual way that we haven't tried.

I really am sorry this has happened to you - we certainly don't want to make life worse for anybody in a new update, we just had no idea this bug existed, and since we can't seem to reproduce it / haven't had any other reports of it so far, it seems like there has to be some particular way in which your configuration is different from most other people's even after you reset your settings.

(BTW, if your iPad is jailbroken we're happy to provide a link to an IPA of an old version so that you can install that and get things working temporarily until we manage to figure this out)

 

[Manou]

My iPad is jailbroken and runs iOS 6.1, language is English, region is Hong Kong

What made me most angry was one of your comments that you though some of your old customers might not want updates, progress, etc. and that you are happy to ditch them. I have been your customer for two years, I am certainly not against progress, but I do not want to lose the functionality of an app that it vital for my studies. I went to great lengths to make complex flashcards for all my textbooks. I was about to offer them to the university I am with, so that beginner students have it a bit easier, but I don't want them to experience what I experience right now when making flashcards for exams! Those guys would have been your future customers!
I can't post a video, I have classes to attend and exams to prepare for. I gave you plenty of pictures, answered every single question and jumped over every single hurdle to provide you with feedback about my problem. As I said some classmates have similar problems, but they have since given up. If there is a possibility to go back to the old version without losing my flashcards I'd be happy to so!

 

[mikelove]

I'm sorry that made you upset. I probably shouldn't have been so blunt (though it's something I believe I'm somewhat notorious for), but in all honesty I don't know what else we could do for our dissatisfied old customers - we can't keep our app static and unchanging for the sake of people who liked it the old way. Doing that leaves a golden opportunity for a competitor to come along with a cleaner / better app, suck up all of the new customers (from whom we make most of our ongoing income) and drive us out of business; even a very enthusiastic recommendation from a happy long-time user isn't going to persuade somebody to pick Pleco over an app with an obviously much cleaner / nicer interface.

If that sounds like speculation I should say that this came dangerously close to happening both on iOS and on Android, when other dictionary apps arrived first with cleaner / nicer interfaces and we had to move pretty rapidly to avoid having our old app (designed to work the way customers were used to having it work before) feel stale and overly complicated compared to them. We've left a golden opportunity for someone to do that again for the last few years on iOS, with an interface that was iffy even back in 2009 and became downright embarrassing by 2011 or so; through some strange twist of luck, nobody did, but I daresay if we'd kept things the old way for very much longer they would have.

Anyway, if those classmates also had jailbroken iPads (as I'm guessing they did from the fact that they went back to the old version so easily) then I'm inclined to think that the problem relates to that - if not then I'd love it if one of them wrote in so we could try to figure out if there's anything else your devices have in common that might be to blame.

But thankfully, since your device is jailbroken and since we have not in fact changed flashcards to make them incompatible (we would never do that - when we do eventually change the database format we'll be automatically backing up your last pre-update database before we update it) it's very easy for us to supply you with an old version. I've sent you a private message with a download link to a 2.2.14 IPA; back up your flashcard database from the new app, transfer it to your computer, delete it and reinstall the old app, then restore your flashcards and you should get everything back to normal again.

 

[denmitch]

@Manou
Really hoping you do well on your exams. We are all in this together.

@mikelove
Flashcards have worked fine for me, well, I still look forward to that module update but I have created and organized with no trouble.

 

[Manou]

Thanks Mike, I'll do that on the weekend.
My classmates downgraded via iTunes on their computers, where they still had the old version of Pleco.
As I stated before, I am all for change when it means progress, when it comes at the cost of functionality as it did in my case (and there might be more people like me around who didn't bother to address it and just left an one star review and disappeared). Then change is counterproductive!

 

[mikelove]

Well thankfully in this case it seems like it's probably just a bug rather than something intentional - the consolidated Copy button is intentional (though perhaps we should consider bringing back "Copy" when you select a range of text that doesn't result in our definition bubble coming up) but a toolbar hanging around when it shouldn't be certainly isn't.