ABI for add-ons

enedil

Member
Hey,
I'm posting this in "future products" as I don't think it's already implemented.

There are addons in the app, but I couldn't find any description of how the addons work and if manual addon creation is possible. I see that you use proprietary .pdb format (it's Pleco DataBase, right?). I would be content, if for instance the availability of providing own addons would be provided for paying users only.

If nonetheless you don't want to support such usecase, be wary that according to my county law (it's the same across whole European Union in this regard), I have right to reverse-engineer software that I have license of, and any kind of license that prohibits me so is invalid, so it's probable that I'll try to understand the database format by myself. If Pleco was extendable, it would make for a truly great product (but I love it in current state too!).
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Actually, we already offer a full-featured user dictionary function; it requires the paid version of our app ("Flashcard System" add-on, specifically, as it's closely integrated with the flashcard function), but once you have that you can go into Settings / Manage Dictionaries and create a new dictionary / import entries into it.

In fact, as of 4.0 this will have considerably more functionality than is even possible in our .pdb dictionaries, as (among other things) it will support arbitrary languages via ICU - EU bureaucrats will no doubt be pleased to note that Pleco will now support the creation of a Chinese-to-Maltese dictionary that uses a correct alphabetical sort order for Maltese :)

For readers, since we support EPUB you can simply put your book in EPUB and load that into Pleco. Other add-ons like OCR and TTS and handwriting input rely on proprietary code libraries and so it's not possible for us to offer user-serviceable versions of them since Apple/Google don't allow apps to load any shared libraries that aren't shipped in their application bundle.
 
Top