ABC English-Chinese Dictionary Bug Report / Feedback Thread
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
Alexis
状元
Thanks Mike! The ABC E-C is a pleasant Suprise.
I ran multiple searches and here are my observations:
1) ABC vs NWP. ABC is more likely to have the first translation as the word that most matches the english word. NWP sometimes has a long list, and the most useful one is often not the first one. ABC also seems to be more accurate (ie. baozi in NWP is listed for dumpling, which is a steamed bun, not a dumpling). NWP seems to be more guilty of using sample sentences that don't contain any of the introduced chinese translations.
2) ABC vs Oxford. I like the sample sentences better in the ABC. Also the ABC includes pinyin for ALL sample sentences; oxford does not. Oxford sometimes includes a bit of extra detail (like "felid animal" (in chinese) for cat, which is probably more confusing then helpful if you're a beginner (and you probably are if you're looking up "cat"). ABC seems to have a higher grasp of what is most useful information.
3) The ABC formatting is easier to scan and read compared to the Oxford and NWP.
I've switced my primary dictionary to ABC, but will keep the NWP as a backup for more sentence examples.
I ran multiple searches and here are my observations:
1) ABC vs NWP. ABC is more likely to have the first translation as the word that most matches the english word. NWP sometimes has a long list, and the most useful one is often not the first one. ABC also seems to be more accurate (ie. baozi in NWP is listed for dumpling, which is a steamed bun, not a dumpling). NWP seems to be more guilty of using sample sentences that don't contain any of the introduced chinese translations.
2) ABC vs Oxford. I like the sample sentences better in the ABC. Also the ABC includes pinyin for ALL sample sentences; oxford does not. Oxford sometimes includes a bit of extra detail (like "felid animal" (in chinese) for cat, which is probably more confusing then helpful if you're a beginner (and you probably are if you're looking up "cat"). ABC seems to have a higher grasp of what is most useful information.
3) The ABC formatting is easier to scan and read compared to the Oxford and NWP.
I've switced my primary dictionary to ABC, but will keep the NWP as a backup for more sentence examples.
Once again, thank you Mike for your commitment not only to software feature development but also to expanding the list of titles available to use them with.
Cheers!
Darrol
Cheers!
Darrol
Alexis - thanks! That's very encouraging, and helps to justify our replacing NWP with ABC E-C in the Pro/Linguist bundles.
NWP is a title we're planning to improve ourselves, though, much like ACE - it's another one we now have total editorial control over - so I'm interested to hear that you find the ABC formatting better: is it the newlines before alternate headwords that make a big difference, or is it something else?
hairyleprechaun - you're very welcome! We've literally been waiting for this one to come out for about 3 years now - the license for it pre-dates those for several of the other titles we've released since PlecoDict 1.0 - so it's wonderful to finally be able to get it in the hands of Pleco's customers.
NWP is a title we're planning to improve ourselves, though, much like ACE - it's another one we now have total editorial control over - so I'm interested to hear that you find the ABC formatting better: is it the newlines before alternate headwords that make a big difference, or is it something else?
hairyleprechaun - you're very welcome! We've literally been waiting for this one to come out for about 3 years now - the license for it pre-dates those for several of the other titles we've released since PlecoDict 1.0 - so it's wonderful to finally be able to get it in the hands of Pleco's customers.
Yes - in demo mode it won't come up when you tap on the dictionary switch button, but you can tap-hold on that button and select it manually if the database is installed. That will let you look at the definitions for a/b/c entries and the headwords for all entries, so if you run into a word that's missing in NWP / Oxford you can check to see if it's included in ABC E-C.
We've thought about adding newlines before circled numbers in the ABC too, actually - might do that by default on iPhone since on that there's the guarantee of a larger screen, then see if we can add an option for it on Palm/WM. (we didn't do it in the recent ABC update since we think some people might be more concerned with how much text fits on the screen than how readable it is - don't want to make a change that improves things for some people but makes them worse for others)
radioman
状元
Would it be possible to color the background of the circle that holds the number? Not sure if it would look good or not, but maybe worth trying. My gut tells me it would leap out even without a line space (i.e., conserve space).
Don't think it would need to be safety orange either, just some subtle different color.
Even without a line space or colored circle, the circles are an improvement - as long as they start on a new line.
My two cents.
Don't think it would need to be safety orange either, just some subtle different color.
Even without a line space or colored circle, the circles are an improvement - as long as they start on a new line.
My two cents.
Hi,
I like the new ABC E-C dictionary...just bought the full version.
I wonder if it might be possible to switch the order of the pinyin and characters for this dictionary in the next version?
At the moment, all the other E-C dictionaries display characters first, then the pinyin, but ABC does it the other way around (both in the definitions and example sentences).
The other benefit of having the chars first is that in the full-screen dictionary list display, you can often see all the characters to the right of the English without having to go into the full entry.
Thanks.
Ben
I like the new ABC E-C dictionary...just bought the full version.
I wonder if it might be possible to switch the order of the pinyin and characters for this dictionary in the next version?
At the moment, all the other E-C dictionaries display characters first, then the pinyin, but ABC does it the other way around (both in the definitions and example sentences).
The other benefit of having the chars first is that in the full-screen dictionary list display, you can often see all the characters to the right of the English without having to go into the full entry.
Thanks.
Ben
Lurks - great! They really seem to have gone to a lot of effort on the word-selection front, yeah.
ben_gb - certainly possible, and makes sense - the printed ABC C-E actually puts Pinyin before characters in headwords, and we've been swapping those since the first release. (along with replacing the printed title's alphabetical Pinyin ordering with a more traditional character-based one; that Pinyin ordering makes a lot of sense in a printed dictionary, but when you can just type in an entry's Pinyin to look it up there's not really any need for it; much better to group words with the same first character / Pinyin together so you can look up related ones)
ben_gb - certainly possible, and makes sense - the printed ABC C-E actually puts Pinyin before characters in headwords, and we've been swapping those since the first release. (along with replacing the printed title's alphabetical Pinyin ordering with a more traditional character-based one; that Pinyin ordering makes a lot of sense in a printed dictionary, but when you can just type in an entry's Pinyin to look it up there's not really any need for it; much better to group words with the same first character / Pinyin together so you can look up related ones)