Beta 1 Bug Reporting

[sfrrr]

sfrrr - audio still doesn't work? Haven't gotten any other reports of this, and since I just checked and the audio plays fine on our Axim here I'm pretty confident it's not a hardware confilct... any chance some member of the menagerie of beta-test software you've installed on there might be interfering with audio playback? Are the audio files listed in the Ordering screen? On the file search issue, the software does indeed look for files anywhere, uses pretty much the exact same search code as 1.x did in fact, but it won't go too deep into a directory hierarchy except when there's a Program Files folder or a folder with Pleco in its name involved, so try to make sure it's in \\SD Card\Program Files\Pleco or \\SD Card\Pleco or somewhere like that.

Not sure what could be causing those intermittent connection problems... perhaps ActiveSync doesn't like some of Pleco's data files being in use, does it help if you exit with the Dict/Quit command (or just exit the software via the Memory control panel, which does the same thing) before syncing?

Glad to hear your initial impressions are positive, though.

OK, I moved the PD2 files out of SD CARD/Programs to one layer closer to the root. It now resides on SD Card/PD2. Now my audio files work. Also, I checked and the PD2 orders page has me listed for everything. Now, I need to figure out why I can't even begin to get stroke order. Oh, and I don't get popup definitions. I still don't know what the ActiveSync problem is--maybe it's just that PD2 has somehow slowed down AS so much that the 30 minutes I've waited to let the sync finish isn't a long enough period. I'll work on AS later today. But I would love to see the stroke order--although I'll probably never use it in real life.

And I always quit using the official Exit command in PD1 and PD2.

Haiyou, I can't find a place to change the font.

OK, i've played with this too much and I'm getting frustrated.

*I have the audio working almost all the time. Only problem is that I chose a woman's voice and get a man's.I'm not even fiddling with it anymore. I mean, who cares whether it's a woman's or man's voice?
*I have the stroke order working just about every time.
*I still don't have access to Adso, CEDict, and the rest of the freebies. I can see the Adso.pdb (and others) in the PD2 folder on the SD Card, but I can't get them to come up. I'm still working on it.
*Doesn't PD2 automatically search? Not on my machine.
*Each icon and each hardware button works only intermittently.That's what's driving me crazy. Sometimes, I can't get to the input panel. Sometimes, none of the icons will search unless I go into E-C and then return to C-E. And then, I don't know which shortcut or hardware button will make the search happen.
*The command bar (default screen--is that main mode?) uses the icons and settings as I first set them. However, now I can't change anything. Nothing in the preferences sticks now. Nothing,
*Flashcards now don't work at all. I can tap until tomorrow morning and I still will have saved zero cards.
*I love all the new functions you've given us--now I understand why PD2 has been such a big job. It's not the same program, really. But since I'm getting such intermittent use of each shortcut/button, I don't know what does what.

Most of the program is on a 4 GB SD Card with about 1300K left. The fonts, handwriting dll, and executable is in Main Memory in the PD2 directory.

One note: I couldn't get PD to work until I installed the executable in Main AND in SD Card memory. I'm sure that this has something to do with my problems, but that's the only way I could get PD2 (and, for that matter, PD1 all these years) to work at all.

Again, PD2 is impressive. Really impressive. I just need to figure it out.

Sandra

 

[mikelove]

daniu - glad to hear it! Interesting point about audio in E-C entries; I suppose we could just pull the first definition out, but in a lot of cases I imagine that would actually be a grammar note or somesuch... at the very least we should probably have it play the highlighted characters if you tap on that button in an E-C entry and the text is highlighted; this is definitely possible, the software already breaks up words into component syllables when it can't find the entire word in its audio database.

Dictionary switching is still very quirky, yes, and the PPC font rendering speed should get a lot faster. I say "should" because we haven't started work on that yet; this week we're concentrating on Palm, most of next week on PPC and then after another day or two to make sure the PPC fixes haven't screwed up the Palm version (and a few hours to make sure the new Palm fixes haven't once again screwed up the PPC one) we'll hopefully have Beta 2 ready to go.

sfrrr - completely understand the frustration, PD2B1 much like a fine cognac is best enjoyed in very small doses. Glad the stroke order is now working. Are you sure audio is set to man and not to random? Sometimes random seems to stick a bit on one or the other. There's no way to get the freebies working yet, so don't bother trying; they're in a different database format which PD2 doesn't understand. Auto-search is a (well-)known bug which we're working on, intermittent buttons are a combination of a couple of bugs and the fact that we really need to streamline some of this search/view mode interface stuff.

Glad you're liking all of the new stuff - this has indeed been a colossal project, the rewriting has been beneficial in some ways but I don't think we're going to roll this many changes into a single update ever again; with the new engine code and the SQL-based flashcards / user dictionary entries we should be pretty solid for a while, there aren't a lot of under-the-hood improvements left to be made really.

 

[daniu]

Dictionary switching is still very quirky, yes, and the PPC font rendering speed should get a lot faster. I say "should" because we haven't started work on that yet; this week we're concentrating on Palm, most of next week on PPC and then after another day or two to make sure the PPC fixes haven't screwed up the Palm version (and a few hours to make sure the new Palm fixes haven't once again screwed up the PPC one) we'll hopefully have Beta 2 ready to go.

Hi!

Not trying to pinpoint you but that means your current plan is to have Beta 2 out by around end of next week? That is 20.10?

regards
Daniel

 

[The Duelist]

C&T English-Chinese Dictionary

Hi Mike

The C&T English-Chinese Keeps coming up Each time I Launch PD2.

The C&T Dictionaries are the Only Ones I Have not Purchased.
I'm Trying to Remove it from the Demo List.
I have Deleted the C&T C-E Database
But the C&T E-C Shows up as a Demo & I can't find the Database File Anywhere.

Any Suggestions

TIA
The Duelist

 

[mikelove]

daniu - yes, or sometime over that weekend. But in no event later than the 22nd, since I'm leaving for a semi-vacation the next day

The Duelist - the C&T is only an E-C database, not sure why it would still be coming up - check your memory card to make sure there isn't another copy on there. PD2 isn't very intelligent about the search / sort order for dictionaries yet so it's pretty much random which dictionary it decides will come up first when you launch the software.

 

[gato]

gato - try import with a PalmDoc file (do a Google search for MakeDocW if you need help making those) and you should have better luck.

I created a PalmDoc with a list of words in GB format. It can be viewed using TealDoc. But when I tried to import it as a flashcard (file browser works), hitting "start" still does nothing. Nothing gets imported. I'm using ARM-accelerated PalmOS beta version 2. Anybody got flashcard import to work?

 

[daniu]

Hi!

Didn't realize that so far but since my Pleco2 is really running I cannot open both version at the same time. I can however start Pleco2, close it and open Pleco1 and vice versa. Before Pleco2 really worked I think I could actually have the two tasks at the same time ...
Even using the original Name of the file does not help. When I try to start the other version (the one currently not running) nothing happens ...

Would be more convenient ...

regards
Daniel

 

[mikelove]

gato - import isn't working here anymore either, not sure why but should be pretty easy to fix since it was working fairly recently.

daniu - we didn't really do any testing on that, I'm guessing it's a conflict between window class names; shouldn't be too difficult to fix but there are a lot of other items we have to get to first...

 

[The Duelist]

Deleting C&T Demo

Hi Mike

The Only C&T Database File I Installed Was ctbiz.pdb.
Deleting This File From The System Leaves Behind The C&T E-C Dictionary In PD2.

I would like to be get rid of the C&T Dictionary (Demo) from my System.

TIA
The Duelist

 

[mikelove]

There must be another copy on your SD card somewhere - check the /Palm/Launcher and (if they exist) /Palm/Programs/PlecoDict and /Applications directories and see if there's a C&T-related file anywhere in there.

 

[colinsky]

More information on the Chinese font problem I seem to be having -- have not been able to find a work around to date. I've been able to replicate the exact issue on a separate device -- this one a clean install (hard reset, nothing else installed the handheld). I've taken some screenshots to demonstrate. If I'm lucky, i've put a file in the wrong place and that is the issue. (However, I have installed correctly to the point that dictionary files, for instance, are properly found).

Problem statement: Can see pinyin displayed, but no Chinese characters anywhere in the product (not even boxes or ?'s). Also unable to change Chinese font, as I can in the previous version. Switching dictionaries or simplified/traditional charactes makes no difference. Have exited the application and done soft resets after moving around files just in case.

These are both Japanese PPC devices, WM5. One is an HTC Z http://www.japan.htc.com/product_htcz.htm, 320x200 pixels, and the other a Sharp WS004Sh, 640x480. http://www.willcom-inc.com/ja/lineup/ws/004sh/index.html

On both devices I installed the product onto the external card, and then tried both with executables on the built-in memory and with fonts copied into the built-in \Windows\Fonts directory.

Here's the dictionary screen, as displayed on both devices:


Here's what I see when I attempt to select the Chinese font (I assume this is the right place to do it?) Notice that most of the options selection screen is blank, with some cut off text at the bottom.


And just to show that Chinese characters are not displayed elsewhere in the UI as well:

 

[mikelove]

The second screen is actually normal, we haven't filled in a lot of the options on there yet so there's only supposed to be one box now.

It really looks like Pleco just isn't finding its Chinese font file - are you absolutely positive that you've installed ZYSong.ttf? Is it still called ZYSong.ttf? Where on your Pocket PC is it installed? Try putting it in \\Program Files\PlecoDict if you haven't already, then soft reset your Pocket PC and reopen Pleco - does that help matters any?