3.0.0 Bug Report / Feedback Thread

[mikelove]

blgasow - half of those are for English searches and half for Chinese, but yeah, they definitely shouldn't have the same names The thicker lines are actually a (widely reported among developers) iOS 7 bug.

杰超 - yep. (greetings!) Looks like a bug in our search indexer, thanks.

weingin - actually looks like the same index bug as 杰超's. Strange that that other issue only happens with the long press, must be some nuance to the transition there that we didn't consider.

AdrianLondon - iCloud stuff is stored elsewhere, actually; some sort of system database file outside of Pleco's sandbox, I believe. I'm not sure why flashcards would be in Databases since ordinarily we don't keep a copy of them in there unless iCloud sync is disabled (they go in a different location otherwise).

muyongshi - do you get an error message about flashcards not being accessible or do they just silently not work? Is there an "Uncategorized" showing in Organize or is it totally blank? Have you enabled iCloud sync?

 

[semola]

I feel pretty dumb asking this but I can't look up any word in any PDF file I uploaded on pleco, is it a bug or am I just missing something?

Thank you!

 

[mikelove]

Are these PDF files made from scanned images? If so then that's normal - the PDF reader just extracts text that's embedded in the PDF; however, our OCR function can also decode PDFs (as images) so if you load it up in there you might have more luck.

 

[muyongshi]

There is an error message (Error: 0) telling me that they are temporarily unavailable and to reboot to fix. There is no uncaregorized category and yes, iCloud sync is enabled.

 

[mikelove]

Honestly, the jailbreak makes me very wary about iCloud sync in general - anyway, between that and the 0 error code there isn't much we could do to diagnose or fix this, so I'm afraid all I can suggest is that you disable iCloud sync. If it won't let you do that, use the "Erase Database" command instead. After that, Restore Database from the backup which Pleco automatically made when it enabled iCloud sync.

 

[muyongshi]

Thanks Mike, that worked. I have iCloud sync disabled now (I did have to erase the database first) and so far have had no issues.

 

[yoose]

Hi Mike,

pleco crashed when I was compacting the database on my iPhone and now will not reopen. It worked find on my iPad, both on iOS 7.0.3. I tried restarting the app, restarting my phone without success. Any way to save it without deleting and redownloading it? I am trying to avoid that so I don’t have to redo all my settings and redownload everything.

 

[mikelove]

Could you send me your crash log from the startup? Might be able to break the cycle if we can find the cause. You could also use the emergency settings reset option in the system Settings app - if the crash relates to Pleco trying to restore some previous setting then that might help.

 

[yoose]

Could you send me your crash log from the startup? Might be able to break the cycle if we can find the cause. You could also use the emergency settings reset option in the system Settings app - if the crash relates to Pleco trying to restore some previous setting then that might help.

Sent to your email.

 

[mikelove]

Replied - probably not fixable, sadly.

But a PSA: it should not be possible to exit the Settings screen while your databases are compacting - the fact that it is is a bug - so if you run a Compact Databases then please wait for it to finish before you exit. We'll fix it and make the "Compacting" popup modal (so you can't exit it) in 3.0.1, and also fix the hang-on-startup bug that's preventing yoose's iPhone from relaunching Pleco after the crash, but you should be able to avoid this problem if you wait for the Compact operation to finish before exiting.

 

[goldyn chyld]

Suggestion: would it be possible to make the "delete" button on the keyboard work like the little gray "x" button in the search field if held for half a second or so?

It would be convenient when using one hand to type in Pleco, so that one wouldn't need to stretch his thumb all the way up to delete text quickly.

 

[mikelove]

Not possible, sadly - touch interactions within Apple's system keyboards are totally outside of our control. We could do it within the HWR box at least, but I suspect in most of those cases you wouldn't have more than one or two characters to delete anyway, and your finger is going to end up much closer to the search bar than it would with the keyboard.

 

[Alexis]

A couple issues
1) Can support for epub3 pop-up footnotes be added?
2) I've noticed that links to footnotes usually don't jump correctly. They're usually off by a page.

There's a good sample epub here for testing epub3 features:
http://digitalpublishingtoolkit.org/tag/epub3/

 

[小马]

The stroke order function, was one of the main reasons why I originally purchased Pleco, but it has lost its edge on this update...

1) If two characters are written and I want to check on the stroke order of one of them, I first need to click on the character (until here same as before)...but since the clipboard button on the upper right side replaced the stroke order button then it is necessary go to the magnifying glass or ">" button in order to be able to check the stroke order, which is quite annoying when many characters need to checked.

2) It is not even close full screen as it was before, it's quite small compare to the previous version
3) Radicals can be written on black and component character on grey....it is not clear enough. I prefer as it was before, where it clearly said which was the radical
4) There used to be a function to see the character 100% full screen, even without the other function names. It was very useful...but it has been removed.

Can the previous functions be restored in the next update? If not, how can I get the previous version of Pleco?

Many thanks

 

[etm001]

A few more bugs I've encountered:

• Import/Export/Import Cards/WiFi File Upload: I have a file called "迷你廣播劇.txt" that will not successfully upload. I can successfully connect to Pleco using the browser on my desktop, select the local file, click "Upload", and the Pleco web form reports the file as having been successfully uploaded. However, Pleco file manager does not list the file. It's worth noting that a previous version of the file, with the exact same name, is listed in Pleco's file manager, as I had uploaded an earlier version of the file to Pleco long before upgrading to v3.0. In the previous version of Pleco, I believe the existing file was either overwritten, or a sequence number was added to the newly uploaded file name (I can't remember which). Renaming the file name from "迷你廣播劇.txt" to "Mini Radio Plays.txt" allowed me to upload the file successfully.
• Import/Export/Import Cards/Import: the URL encoded name of the file is being displayed in the "File" name field. So "File Name.txt" is displayed as "File%20Name.txt". (I don't recall the old version displaying file names like this?) Additionally, the URL encoded file name will display/overlap onto the "Field" label if the URL encoded file name is very long.
• File Manager: the "Done" button is displayed on the top left of the window, whereas in most other windows it's displayed on the top right. This is a subtle inconsistency in the UI.
• Flashcards/Edit Card Text: simplified headword text is "慧劍斬情絲" (obviously not simplified text, but it ends up in this field during flashcard file import). I place the cursor after "慧", hit backspace to delete the character, then start to write the desired character "惠" in the Pleco handwriting recognizer. Immediately after I write the first stroke in the character (a horizontal stroke), Pleco recognizes it as the character "一", inserts that character, then immediately moves the cursor to the end of the field. For now I just paste the desired character from the clipboard into the field. It's worth noting that, at any other cursor position in the field, this bug does not occur.
• GF Dictionary: the old variant of 操 in the GF dictionary is not displaying correctly. I am using the STHeiTi TC font.

 

[jlnr]

I've attached the log of a crash, it happened while scrolling down my list of flashcards in "Organize", on an iPad with iOS 6.1.2 JB.

Usability: Jumping to the dictionary by long-pressing the hamburger does not always select the search field automatically. I haven't figured out the circumstances of it happening or not.

And I'm not sure if I've already mentioned this during the early betas, but the side menu looks odd when jumping in and out of the task switcher - white lines appear in-between them as if there were rounding errors during zooming.

 

[mikelove]

Alexis - working on that; very simple EPUB reader at the moment and our EPUB 3.0 support is especially rudimentary since it actually doesn't seem to be that widely used yet among most of the books we've tested at least.

小马 - 1) If it's a multi-character word, bring up the definition for the whole thing, then go to the CHARS tab, tap on the first character, and go into the STROKE tab. You can scroll through the stroke order for other characters in that word using the scroll buttons at the top right corner of the screen - no need to go back to the previous screen for each one.

2) This is on iPad, right? We didn't think a full-screen display would be all that useful for most people, but if it's something you need I'd suggest turning off the "embed definition" option in Settings / Search Screen - that will give you the same interface you'd have an on iPhone (big separate fullscreen search result / definition screens) and the stroke order diagram in the definition should then be (basically) fullscreen.

3) We actually thought this was superfluous, since it very often wasn't printing the radical as it's displayed anyway and since that information is already available in other screens - do you know the radicals well enough that you found it useful even though it often didn't match up with the way the radical looked in the character?

4) Not removed, just disabled by default - you can bring it back in Settings / Popup Definition.

etm001 - first two bugs both relate to URL encoding, I believe - a shift we did systemwide in order to more easily manage links to files from alternate sources (Dropbox, iCloud, etc); Apple in general has been pushing URLs over file paths recently in the interest of more seamlessly integrating iCloud into the rest of the iOS filesystem.

File Manager inconsistency has to do with the Edit button - we want that to be easy to reach and so would rather not put it next to the back button in a deeper level of the file manager. So it's tricky to sort out - I suppose the best option might be to do away with done buttons altogether and simply have people tap outside of these modal screens to dismiss them.

Editing bug we'll investigate - UITextView (the system UI control responsible for multi-line text editing) is one of the most difficult / buggy UI elements in all of iOS, we're hoping to have our own entirely custom replacement finished next year but until we do it's next-to-impossible to get multi-line text editing working perfectly.

操 variant: download the extended font file from Add-ons / Features and that should get it to appear correctly.

jlnr - is iCloud flashcard sync enabled? Turn it off if so - on a jailbroken device I'd steer clear of doing anything related to iCloud documents, frankly.

Does the long-press jump you back to the dictionary search screen at least (but just fail to open up the keyboard)?

Side menu bug you did indeed report before - thus far the only ways we've found to fix it have had the side effect of making scrolling of the list very stutter-y, which would obviously be a lot worse.

(also, if you could expand at all on your App Store review, we'd love to find a way to improve the menu organization in general - you know you can reorder the items in Settings / Miscellaneous, right?)

 

[小马]

2) This is on iPad, right? We didn't think a full-screen display would be all that useful for most people, but if it's something you need I'd suggest turning off the "embed definition" option in Settings / Search Screen - that will give you the same interface you'd have an on iPhone (big separate fullscreen search result / definition screens) and the stroke order diagram in the definition should then be (basically) fullscreen.

3) We actually thought this was superfluous, since it very often wasn't printing the radical as it's displayed anyway and since that information is already available in other screens - do you know the radicals well enough that you found it useful even though it often didn't match up with the way the radical looked in the character?

4) Not removed, just disabled by default - you can bring it back in Settings / Popup Definition.


2) It is not on Ipad, is on Iphone. It is currently around 60% of the screen, it used to be around 80%...significantly smaller than before. Can it be bigger in the next update?

3) Can we have the option to pick the color of the radical in order to differentiate it from the rest of the character?

4) It is only 50% of the full screen, even if it is only one character.

 

[alanmd]

2) It is not on Ipad, is on Iphone. It is currently around 60% of the screen, it used to be around 80%...significantly smaller than before. Can it be bigger in the next update?

4) It is only 50% of the full screen, even if it is only one character.

The size of the displayed square Hanzi character is limited by the phone screen width, and there is no way to physically make the stroke order diagram larger while keeping the whole thing on screen. Maybe it felt larger before because it was in the centre of the screen, and now it is closer to the bottom?

 

[mikelove]

小马 - 2) Sorry, you're on an iPhone 4/4S, right? It is indeed a bit smaller on that because of how little vertical space we have on that screen after fitting in the dictionary header / tab bar / toolbars; however, the reduction is only about 12% with the default settings, so we didn't think this would be a major problem for people, and frankly it seemed much better than the alternative of keeping the stroke order partially offscreen on those devices and requiring you to scroll down before you could view it.

If the difference is much larger than that, have you increased the headword font size, or turned on the option to display Cantonese along with Mandarin (or Zhuyin along with Pinyin)? If so, restore those options to their defaults and it should get a good bit larger again.

3) We don't have the necessary data in our current stroke order database to highlight the radical separately from the rest of the character. We could add it, but we're hoping to source / offer-as-a-free-update an alternate stroke order data set in Kai instead of Song style (much requested by our users) and if we do manage to do that we'd rather spend our time/money adding radical data to that set.

4) That one I'm definitely not seeing - single characters come up at fullscreen width both in portrait and landscape. Which Chinese font are you using?