Beta 5 Bug Report / Feedback Thread

[mikelove]

weight - this is a known issue, it's supposed to AND rather than OR those categories but it's not doing it correctly yet.

benzhen - go to the Button Commands section of Preferences and you can enable page-scrolling in the reader from there. Position saving is a known issue which should (hopefully) be fixed in the next beta. We've added a preferences option to not hide the start / menu bars in the document reader too, so that should help with that problem, though I'm not sure why it would be acting like a separate program.

We've gotten a couple of complaints about those arrow buttons, but they're there to stay in 2.0 at least - we'll probably add a number of additional interface customization options to the reader in 2.1 but for right now we just want to get the darn thing finished. With the auto-paste, what happens if you turn "on program activate" off but enable the option to paste in the clipboard on open - does that help?

 

[llammamama]

One more relatively small piece of feedback:

When doing a self-scored flashcard session with the "grade response" option checked, the icon placement occasionally causes mistakes in scoring. Because the "check" mark is on the left side, and the highest score "6" is on the right side, scoring a card as correct-6 requires pressing the left side then the right side. Similarly, marking a card "incorrect-1" requires pressing the right side then the left side.

It seems like a relatively small issue, but since "high scoring" and "correct" are on different sides depending on which stage of scoring you're at, I've found myself having to be more careful with scoring than should be necessary. I would suggest moving the "high / correct" options on one side, and the "low score / wrong" options on the other by changing the orientation of the numbered buttons or the check / X buttons.

 

[TaiwanSwedey]

I don't know if this has been covered earlier in the thread so apologies for that. If I don't remember wrong I could get a pop up definition of the characters (with stroke order etc.) within the flash card system in one of the earlier betas. However, now (Beta 5) it doesn't seem to work anymore. If I tap a character within the flash card system nothing happens. Pop up definition works fine outside the flashcard system.

 

[FUmminger]

Mike,
The garbage entries show up when adding new cards. I haven't done much importing, so I'm not sure if they would show up then also.
The garbage is usually one or two garbage characters, the first one always a 'd'. Doing 'Manage Flashcards', 'i', 'edit Card', 'Custom' gives a 'd' in each field.
When I used the experimental beta with VFS, I deleted the flashcards by following the instructions, and then re-imported them. Everything looked as it should in FileZ. But the difference in stability between the two experimental betas was huge; no problems at all with the non-VFS version, many resets with the VFS version.
-Frederick

 

[mikelove]

llammamama - good idea, and one that takes all of 15 seconds to implement.

TaiwanSwedey - you should be able to turn that back on in the flashcard section of Preferences, though in Beta 6 we've replaced it with a tap-hold popup menu.

FUmminger - so the garbage is appearing when you edit an existing card that's based on a dictionary entry and switch it to custom? That's odd... does the card display correctly in Card Info before you edit it?

With the stability problems, it may be that on older Palms like the 650 the old non-VFS database system works better - we're leaving both as options in Beta 6 (a screen comes up when the software is first run asking where / how you want to store user-created files, and there's also a preference setting for it). Bit of an awkward fix, but it's the best we can do with Palm's crappy filesystem - SD card storage though slow may actually turn out to be the most reliable bet for a lot of people.

 

[ipsi]

Couple more: When doing Tone Practice, if I have a headword of the form a(b), it'll only ask for the tones for a, and ignore (b) as it's inside '()'...

When creating a new Profile, selecting 'create new score file' will actually set it to use an existing one, and telling it to use an existing one will actually create a new score file. No idea why.

With regards to the reset on exit, even turning off CJKOS and ChatterEmail won't stop it from happening. I sometimes get a 'System Error!' message, but it's not terribly helpful. Got it once and had to hit ok several times before it reset. Got it another and it flashed up briefly before resetting. Other times it just resets. It will also happen regardless of the modes. e.g. Started with Profile A, which is set to test Tones, then changed to Profile B, which is Self-scored using score-based field display.

I would also like it if the amount to decrease a score by in manual scoring mode wasn't linked to the amount to increase a score by, so that I can, e.g. make it harsher or easier as I desire.

Oh, and something I've been meaning to mention for a while but never got around to: What's with the new icon for Beta 5? I vastly preferred the old one .

 

[marsch]

Some more bug reports, questions and a wish list

1. In “manage flashcards”, filtering for “uncategorized” works well unless you display or sort by values that relate to scores.

2. I tried to filter my flashcards by score < 3000, but when I come back to that screen, it always said 30008, which also seemed to be what it filtered for (i.e., not at all, as I don’t have that high scores :roll: ).

3. Sometimes in flashcards it shows that I’m doing flashcard 20/30 (for example), but still finishes without doing the 10 left.

4. Audio works well for a while in flashcards, but then may just refuse to play any more.

5. When my PDA (HP iPaq) auto powers off, there’s some strange behaviour afterwards: dictionary entries are not found, flashcards don’t work properly, system crashes altogether… It works fine again once I soft-reset. I had trouble with that with v1, too. Is that an issue with my iPaq or with Pleco?

6. in 1.0.3 it was possible to review flashcards in a certain order, e.g. by score or last review. Is there any way of setting that in v2?

7. if I manually end a flashcard session (e.g. because there are too many cards), is there a way of being asked for the ones I missed?

8. When scoring “manually”, I prefer to reduce the score by 50% on error. However, scores can get pretty low that way . Could you implement a “lower limit” that the score can’t get below?

9. Would be nice to have the option to display some other values when doing flashcards (not necessarily all at once): score, last review…

10. I sometimes need to filter by “not in category” which right now does not work without introducing a temporary category. Also would be nice to have…

11. Getting char info from within flashcards would really be cool, e.g. to look up stroke order.

But in general it works absolutely fantastic and I love the flashcards – did I mention that already? And none of the above bugs and/or “missing features” makes it impossible to work with it. Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

ipsi - skipping parentheses was a deliberate decision with our own dictionary entries (since pretty much the only things that ever appear in them are (r) and (zi)) but we shouldn't have made that apply to user-created ones too; this should be fixed in B6. The scorefile creation bug you actually mentioned earlier With the resets, are you using VFS-based flashcards now or are they back to a PDB? The scores on manual aren't supposed to be linked, looks like they are thanks to a bug - that should definitely be fixed.

On the icon, that was a decision made mainly for the sake of making the icon clearer on a lower-resolution screen; it looked good on high-res Palms and on VGA Pocket PCs but was ugly / borderline unreadable on low-res Pocket PCs and was going to be similarly troublesome on other new platforms we might support like WM Smartphone and desktops (thanks to the heavier use of mini application icons). The shadowing was also problematic since it could potentially clash with the perceived light source on other platforms' icons. At whatever point we get around to hiring an actual artist to redesign our icons (maybe for 3.0) we'll probably have them whip up something more interesting, but for right now this seemed like a good simple way of conveying "Chinese" and "South American Freshwater Catfish" in a manner that would stay consistent and readable from 16x16 to 96x96 and beyond.

marsch - thanks for the note on #1, hadn't seen that bug yet. With #2, is this coming up on the Card Filter screen or in Manage Flashcards? Where exactly (first or second field in Card Filter, main screen or More Options in Manage)?

For #3, in order to have flashcard sessions start faster the system only selects which card to show you when you actually advance to the next card, which means that if it runs into invalid / duplicated cards along the way it'll sometimes end up skipping a few; we've actually gotten rid of the number after the / in Beta 6 since for now it seems like a better bet to not show it than to show it and have people be confused.

With #4, about how many flashcards are there in a "a while" - 100? 200? Do you get any error messages / crashes when the audio doesn't play or does it just stay silent? If you go to Start \ Setttings \ System \ Memory after it does that, is your free Program Memory very low (say only a few MBs)?

#5 is something we've actually gone to a lot of trouble to work around - basically when Windows Mobile goes to sleep it forgets its memory card is installed and has to reopen / reload it when it wakes up, so our software has to check for a file no longer being accessible, wait a second or so and then try to load it again - sounds like that's not working correctly in this case. If you do a Google search you can find a lot of information on how to prevent the system from disabling the card slot when it goes to sleep.

For #6, you can't sort them by anything interesting but in Beta 6 you can at least sort them by their internal ID, so that they'll show up in the same order (albeit not a customizable one) each time. #7's already been added for B6 (necessary for Endless mode since there's no way to exit the session other than manually), as has #8 - we had minimum and maximum fields in that score screen in betas before Beta 5, took them out because we ran out of room (and there's no way we're adding a brand new configuration screen at this point), but in Beta 6 we've managed to squeeze in a minimum field again at least. 9 and 10 will have to wait for 2.1, unfortunately, and #11 there's actually a preference for in Beta 5 - in Beta 6 we've replaced it with a tap-hold popup menu so you can magnify, copy, and cross-reference text along with getting character info. (only available after the card is revealed / answered, though, to prevent cheating)

 

[ipsi]

Cool. Forgot I'd mentioned that already

I'm still using VFS-based cards - they're in internal memory, not on the SD Card. At this point it might just be a good idea to wait until Beta 6 comes out and I'll see if it keeps on happening.

 

[Fleminator]

I would suggest moving the "high / correct" options on one side, and the "low score / wrong" options on the other by changing the orientation of the numbered buttons or the check / X buttons.

It may be too late, but I disagree with lammanama on this one. I also have accidentally rated an answer, but I feel like the current button placement makes those mistakes LESS severe. If you switch it so I'm more likely to accidentally click "right-6" or "wrong-1" when what I intended to click was "right-4" or "wrong-3" then my score for a right answer would shoot through the roof or difficulty would drop drastically, respectively. If I make a mistake in scoring (in the case of a correct answer) I would rather accidentally mark "correct-4" when I intended to mark "correct-6"...because the repercusions of that incorrect grading now and then are far less.

If we are commenting on the arrangement of buttons, I get more errors when I have "reveal fields seperately"...For example, I'm being given the pronunciation, the arrangement is "reveal character"--"Reveal definition"--"reveal all" (no problem there) If I click "reveal character", then next screen is "reveal all"--"correct"--"wrong" (no problem there, if I accidently double click, it will just reveal the character fully)...but if I instead first click "reveal definition" then the arrangement still becomes "reveal all"--"right"--"wrong", when I think the "reveal all" button should always replace the button that was clicked first (ie in the 2nd case, be in the middle so I don't accidentally mark it correct) to avoid mistaken clicks. This would also make it more intuitive when using hardware buttons for "screen left/center/right"

Finally, regarding hardware buttons for flash-card sessions: if I accidentally hold down a button (screen left, for example) it scrolls through cards, marking them with lightning speed...I'm no expert, but couldn't that problem be solved if hardware buttons registered on release instead of on push? It would help prevent problems if a button got stuck (as happens from time to time), or I fall asleep with my finger on the button (yes, that happens more often than I should admit )

oh, and if there are only two buttons (right and wrong) shouldn't the screen center button be disabled? Right now, it marks the answer incorrect.

However, these issues, for me, pale in comparison to the following:

we've actually gotten rid of the number after the / in Beta 6 since for now it seems like a better bet to not show it than to show it and have people be confused.

grrrr...This is more important to me. I REALLY like that number there. I don't like that its wrong, but its better than nothing to me. How will I be able to estimate how many cards I have in a session? I'm doing repetition based spacing, it does WONDERS for study-stamina to have a goal in mind for a particular session. If you take the "total cards" number away, it takes away my carrot/gauge of how many cards I have left. From time to time, I'm assaulted with tons of cards...this is par for the course with Rep spacing, but its good to know up front. Also related to have a card count in the "Manage Flashcards" screen. Since there is no total card count there, I've been using filters on a new flashcard session to estimate how many cards fit particular guidelines. I cannot do without BOTH of these counts...one of them, maybe. But I'd rather have a count in BOTH places, and now your talking about having it in neither The number after the slash is usually correct for me, and I would MUCH rather have a total card count for the session than not. sorry for the rant, maybe you meant you'll take it out for beta 6 and add it back for the final version...even if the count is wrong, I'd rather it be an FAQ in the back of the manual to explain to those people that are confused than do without this feature

I also asked a while back if a cards score could optionally be displayed at the top of each flashcard...not too important to me, but I don't think I ever got an answer.

Sorry for all the negative feed back...but I also think the new white logo is ugly...but that is bottom priority, I know. Just make sure the new web site doesn't reflect the same style or you'll probably see a drop in sales :lol:

On a positive note: I still love the new flashcards...most of the changes I've read about the next beta are good, just a couple I think are counter-productive.

 

[mikelove]

Not too late to change the ordering back, I'm just not sure which way to go on it... algorithm-wise, though, 6 actually has less of an impact on your score than 4 does, and is in fact the default score for people who leave the answer-quality-rating feature off, so that's why it seemed sensible to me to have it right under the button once llammamama suggested it.

The number after the / was only removed for the beta, I guess we don't even really have to take it out for that - it would actually be pretty easy to just put up a little warning message at the end saying some cards could not be reviewed and that was why the session exited early. Wouldn't want to take it out permanently precisely because of repetition-spaced sessions. And we've already added a card count to Manage Flashcards, so that'll definitely be there.

On the logo, I'm still surprised by the reaction - I really quite like it myself. What bugs you about it - the simpler character, the color or the rounded-rectangle shape? I suppose we could go back to white-on-blue (which we do plan to keep on the website) without losing much readability, but switching back to 鲶 creates a big issue with resolution, and the circle likewise forces the character to be smaller than it would otherwise be.

 

[Fleminator]

great to hear...good point on the algorythm weight, however, I like the current configuration than the "X" being on the left because of the way I use hardware buttons...I could really get used to anything though.

I've been editing my post...make sure you notice the problem with holding down a hardware button ("screen left") in a session.

On the logo...color, I think, would be a vast improvement, its really not important. Also, on my TX I have it as a quick-link button (non-hardware button) next to the entry pallete. Most programs have a special grey logo for that space that matches the palm's them, but right now, all I see is the standard logo in that spot

 

[ldolse]

I like the new logo myself, just thought I'd chime in. I especially appreciate the fact that it's finally not identical to 1.0

 

[llammamama]

If I make a mistake in scoring (in the case of a correct answer) I would rather accidentally mark "correct-4" when I intended to mark "correct-6"...because the repercusions of that incorrect grading now and then are far less.

Since errors can be easily fixed within a flashcard session using a the "change score to" button (click-hold gives a popup menu with several options), arguing for an increased number of 'less serious' mis-scores doesn't make that much sense to me. If you really care about the spacing then you're going to have to click back and fix errors anyways. Also, like Mike said, a '6' has much less impact on the card difficulty score, which is not as easy to change.

I think the "reveal all" button should always replace the button that was clicked first (ie in the 2nd case, be in the middle so I don't accidentally mark it correct) to avoid mistaken clicks. This would also make it more intuitive when using hardware buttons for "screen left/center/right"

I haven't been able to get the reveal fields separately option working yet, but this seems like it might be a good idea too.

[The total number of cards being displayed] is more important to me. I REALLY like that number there. I don't like that its wrong, but its better than nothing to me.

I echo this, although it sounds like its removal was temporary anyways.


Oh, and I like the icon too! I've never actually seen the old Pleco icon, but I don't really know what all the fuss is about.

 

[marsch]

Re previous questions:
#2: New Flashcard Session / Card Filter / Score Filter / to xxx
#4: “a while” is between 50 and 100 flashcards. No error messages, stays silent, but system slows down terribly, even if I close all programs. Memory should be OK, 20 M left.
#6: would be great to be able to sort by score, so as to first do the ones I don’t know that well and only do those with a higher score if I have time left.
#11: found the preference (it’s Preferences / Flashcards / “Character Info when characters tapped”, isn’t it?), but still doesn’t seem to work: if I tap a character, the screen flashes a bit, but then is back to flashcards. Am I missing something?
Also, I sometimes find that dialog z-order doesn’t seem to work “properly” (i.e. the way I expect ). Those dlgs aren’t modal, are they? (no idea what that’s called on a PDA) I mean that sometimes when there’s an open dlg, e.g., flashcard result, you can somehow go back to flashcards and then you have the result dlg dangling in the background… I can then only go there via the iTask-Button.

Thanks for the other answers and tips. Looking forward to beta 6, then

 

[TaiwanSwedey]

#11: found the preference (it’s Preferences / Flashcards / “Character Info when characters tapped”, isn’t it?), but still doesn’t seem to work: if I tap a character, the screen flashes a bit, but then is back to flashcards. Am I missing something?

I am experiencing this as well.

 

[FUmminger]

Mike,
The garbage appears whenever I manually add a duplicate card - it creates a new garbage entry. The original card remains and is uncorrupted. Going into edit mode and custom is just for the sake of getting a good look at the garbage.

Btw, I am getting resets with the non-VFS experimental beta after all. I guess there really isn't any difference between the two, although it seemed like it for a while.

-Frederick

 

[mikelove]

Fleminator - what? I thought only I was allowed to edit posts while people are in the middle of replying to them

On reveal separately, good point but I think that change would create more mistakes than it would eliminate - having the correct/incorrect buttons jump around is kind of confusing, we'd have lots of people complaining about the fact that they accidentally hit correct when they meant to hit reveal. The only really foolproof way to implement that interface would be to do away entirely with the correct/incorrect buttons when partially revealed and just have one big reveal button, and that would be introducing a lot of extra button taps in what is for the most part a "power user" feature anyway.

But now that we've fixed the button-repeating bug (thanks for the note on that), and have implemented a timer to keep onscreen buttons from being accidentally double-tapped, accidental button presses should be a lot less likely to happen. The center hardware button is actually supposed to hit the right screen button in cases where there are only two visible - it seemed unlikely that people would hit those hardware buttons by accident so we thought that would be better than having it just do nothing. (there was a bug that sometimes had it doing a different command, though, which has now been fixed)

Card score actually has been added to the top field options -forgot to mention that in my response to marsch. Good catch on that button icon - Palm OS actually creates those based on the black-and-white program icons, which we didn't bother creating for 2.0 since every system it can run on has a color screen - easy enough to create one for that size, though. (can even invert it so it'll still be dark characters on a light background)

ldolse/llammamama - thanks for the support on the icon; as long as it's not universally hated we'll probably keep it, since I like it too - I've been off on some things before, though, like the universally-panned toolbar icons in the early preview releases of PlecoDict 1.0. (slightly less than 4 years ago - anybody other than me still remember those? )

marsch - on #2, we've never actually seen that behavior here though I think one or two other people have mentioned issues like this - anyway we'll add a couple of extra checks and see if that improves matters any. #4 really does sound like a memory leak - are you sure there are 20 MB left of free program (not storage) memory while this is going on? #6 we'll keep in mind for 2.1.

The dialogs are all supposed to be modal, but thanks to lazy programming on our part the system didn't always know what other dialog they were supposed to go on top of / block access to until dismissed; we've gone through and corrected this for Beta 6.

marsch/TaiwanSwedey - yeah, it looks like character info in flashcards actually wasn't working correctly in Beta 5 on PPC; anyway it does work in Beta 6 with that new taphold menu.

FUmminger - so you manually create a card with the same headword/pron as an existing one and it gives you a garbage card instead? Interesting. Sorry it's started crashing on you again but hopefully that'll improve in Beta 6.

 

[ipsi]

I think if you removed the border it would look a lot better - none of the other apps I have possess that sort of 'separate' border, so it looks kinda out of place. I think the colored one was better, still, but that's just my opinion .