A few odd issues with search

First of all, apologies if this has already been raised. I couldn't really figure out good keywords to search by so I didn't find anything. I've been using Pleco for some time (years?) and two odd issues keep popping up. The first is that when searching via handwriting input Pleco seems to pick up the first stroke as a character by itself so I end up with [random stroke][actual character I'm searching for] in the search bar. Ironically I wasn't able to reproduce this but it happens pretty regularly and seemingly regardless of what options I use for the handwriting search.

The other issue is that it regularly doesn't pick up the first letter I enter when using pinyin search. I get haptic feedback so I know my phone picked it up, but Pleco doesn't seem to for some reason. Anyway, if anyone knows a fix for either of these issues that would be swell!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
What phone model / version of Android do you have? And what keyboard IME are you using? Does it make any difference in either of these bugs if you switch your keyboard to the stock one from your manufacturer, or to the official Google keyboard? Does it help if you check "Alternate Method" under Settings / Input Methods / Keyboard?

If it was just the handwriting issue I'd be inclined to attribute it to a digitizer problem, but with both of these it probably has something to do with the relationship between Pleco and your keyboard.
 
I have a Nexus 5X running Android 8.1.0 and I only have Gboard. I'll see what happens with "alternate method" checked - this behaviour is somehow both frequent and hard to deliberately reproduce. Isn't the Pleco handwriting recognition separate from any system keyboard though?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Pleco handwriting is separate, but the problem is that some other keyboard will still be attached to that input box while we're putting text in it - we don't (and API-wise we can't) simply replace the system keyboard outright - and while we do our best to suppress them from doing anything while we're using the input box for handwriting input, occasionally a keyboard will interfere anyway.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Can you try another keyboard instead of Gboard and see if the problem goes away then? (I'm not suggesting that would be a full solution but at least it'll help us narrow down the problem)
 
I installed Swiftkey and had the same issue with handwriting input search. I couldn't reproduce the pinyin search issue but they're both weird intermittent issues that never show up when I'm trying to trigger them anyway, and eventually Swiftkey aggravated me so much I had to switch back.
 
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