Hello Mike,
Thanks for the update on your progress with acquiring new dictionaries.
As for a potential grammar guide, I wonder if you were able to license something if it wouldn't be possible just to look up grammar/sentence patterns based on the first character/word or two of the sentence pattern, (like looking up a character/word in PlecoDict) and then have PlecoDict show a list of sentence patterns that start with that character. This way, by omitting the character(s) at the end (the completing character(s) for the sentence pattern ) you would not have to work with the tricky and complex coding necessary to identify what parts of speech are most likely to fall in between the characters for a certain grammar/sentence pattern.
For example: Say I am looking for the 不管. . . 反正 . . . sentence pattern.
First I would go to the grammar guide dictionary in PlecoDict.
Then, if I knew the entire sentence pattern I could type in 不管. . . 反正 (the ellipses showing just at they would in the grammar guide itself , but not representing that PlecoDict is searching for those combinations of words that could fit in between the characters in this sentence pattern).
And PlecoDict pops up: the 不管. . . 反正 sentence pattern, usage notes and example sentences (what ever it finds under that listing in the grammar guide that you liscence).
However, say you don’t remember the entire sentence pattern. Then, you can start a search with 不,or bu4, or bu, and Pleco will then show a list of grammar/sentence patterns such as:
不知道 . . . 好
不是 A 就是 B
不管 . . . , 反正 . . .
A 不比 B + 形容词
不是 . . . 而是 . . .
不但 . . . 而且 . . .
and so on . . .
And then the user just chooses from the specific grammar pattern that he or she is interested in.
I realize to a certain extent this is already possible in PlecoDict with its current capabilities. However, it is limited because many of the sentence patterns in the current dictionaries are only partial. For example if I search for 不管 The dictionary pops up definitions that are similar to 不管 . . . 反正 , but the meaning is not always the same.
If this was implemented with a grammar guide, assuming you are able to license one, it would be a wonderful addition to Pleco’s capabilities, giving customers detailed information on grammar usage which they could both search for, or browse, just like in PlecoDict’s wonderful dictionaries.