Beta 6 Bug Report / Feedback Thread

[mikelove]

Here's the official Pleco 2.0 Beta 6 Bug Report / Feedback thread.

Things We're Particularly Interested In Hearing About:
(most of the below is carried over from Beta 5)

-- (NEW) The new database system on Palm OS; performance (particularly after moving your PDBs to an SD card / internal flash), increased/reduced crash frequency, data corruption, etc.
-- (NEW) Hardware button control on Pocket PC; we've added some new code in that area which should get application launch buttons as well as navigation pad buttons to be assignable to commands, but let us know if this screws up buttons anywhere else on your system, or if you find that sometimes the hardware control buttons become unresponsive within Pleco.
-- (NEW) Pinyin conversion, copying to the Input Field from a link / copy to input command, importing in a flashcard file, or entering as a search query. (recently made a slight tweak to the algorithm for this)
-- Crashes, obviously, especially of the reproducible (whenever I do X it crashes) sort.
-- Any sort of data corruption / data loss / files becoming inaccessible.
-- Obnoxious noises from the audio system (after making sure that it's unlocked and listed as such in the Ordering screen).
-- Instant Access not working correctly with common / widely-used applications.
-- Cards coming up in multiple-choice tests with the wrong lengths, e.g. it shows you two characters and one of the answers has three (non-parenthetical) Pinyin syllables.
-- Cards being scored inaccurately in free-answer mode; if you're entering characters, make sure to use the same character set (simplified versus traditional) that the system is set up to use.
-- Flashcard sessions inexplicably refusing to start - creating a new profile (or resetting your existing one) should fix this, but if you wouldn't mind backing up and sending the flashcard file with that bad profile in it to us beforehand that'll help us figure out how to check for / put up a friendly error message for whatever the problem is.
-- Overall flashcard system impressions / points of confusion / etc.
-- Document reader bookmarks - they should be retained pretty reliably now, but let us know if they're not.
-- Software refusing to start up on Pocket PC (requiring a reset before it will) - please be as specific as possilble about your system configuration and any other third-party software installed/running on your system.
-- Font-related conflicts on Pocket PC (CE-Star etc), or fonts appearing as blank / completely garbled, especially if this comes after you've just turned the device on with Pleco already running. (and please do install your font files on an SD card, we went to a lot of trouble to finally get that working correctly)
-- Major glitches in the dictionary databases - the "specchar" tags in GF (and occasionally 21C) are a known problem, they're rare characters we haven't gotten around to adding font support for yet, but if you see an entry which seems to consist of two entries merged together, or of the lopped-off end of an earlier entry, or is in some other way seriously screwed up, please do let us know about that.
-- Consistently incorrect traditional character conversions, especially in the GF/21C dictionaries (which are the ones in which we've had to do most of the conversion work ourselves).
-- Full-text search: the easiest way to try this out is to enter a # (or whatever character you've selected in Preferences) before a Chinese character or English search query - with Chinese make sure it's at least two characters, with English make sure it's the whole word and not just the start of it.
-- Weird behavior in the category organizer screen, such as categories randomly disappearing / having their names changed / jumping around.
-- Zhuyin / BoPoMoFo search and display.

Things To Try If You Feel Like Doing Something More Specific Than Your Normal Pleco Activities:
(nobody actually tried any of these with Beta 5 but we're listing them again anyway)

-- Unlocking and adding new dictionary databases on Pocket PC while the software is already loaded/running; this should be doable now, so try installing Pleco without a couple of dictionaries or a keyfile, launch it, put it int the background, install the keyfile, reopen it, see if it's correctly unlocked itself, then background it again, copy over the missing databases, reopen it, and verify that they're now unlocked / accessible.
-- Also on Pocket PC: the folder sync feature should now be able to back up flashcard / user dictionary databases while Pleco is running without putting up error messages, so try setting it up to sync My Documents and see if it actually does manage to back them up.
-- Different methods of installing databases to memory cards on Palm; we've added some new code to check for database corruption, but we're a bit worried that Palm Desktop might in some cases cause a file to appear to be corrupted when it's actually not, so try a mix of USB reader / Palm Desktop / Missing Sync / copy-from-internal-memory installations to the card and see if any of the databases fail to load correctly in Pleco.
-- Data fidelity in flashcard import/export - if you're really a glutton for boring repetitive tasks, after you import your flashcard database, try exporting it to XML, deleting/moving the 2.0 flashcard database file, then importing it again and see if anything has been lost / altered. (the XML files won't be completely identical, since the modified dates and the order of the category assignments for each invidual card will change, but everything else should be pretty well preserved)

 

[ipsi]

Hmm... Should have brought my SD Card reader to work today... Oh well, I'll have a play tomorrow. Here's hoping my crash bug has been fixed... .

 

[ldolse]

A few quick bits of feedback:

The bad bit - attempting to use audio still locks up the entire PDA, forcing me to go soft reset the phone via the little reset toggle. The first two times I tried it it immediately locked up the PDA - once from Pop Up Def, once from the Toolbar. The third time I tried it from the reader, and I was able to listen to three words, but the fourth locked up the whole thing.


Not so bad:
The launcher is a great idea, but it doesn't seem to work as advertised. I followed the instructions - it's installed to \Program Files\Pleco folder in internal memory alongside the HWR and main exe. Shortcut copied into \Windows\Start Menu\Programs. Went to settings, set my button that I previously used for Pleco to Pleco launch.

After doing all that it does launch the main program, but there is no discernible difference between using the launcher and just using the main exe tied to the button. Making sure Pleco was not in the background, I went to an sms, highlighted some characters, and hit the button. After the normal longish amount of time I got the full Pleco app, not the IA popup. Once Pleco was running then IA worked fine.

Character Info doesn't line wrap long definitions - check 阿 for example.

Stroke Order is still not lefty friendly, something we discussed during beta 4, forgot to mention during beta 5 - would greatly prefer that to be below the character so that it's handed agnostic.

 

[stephanhodges]

In the installation instructions for Pocket PC, it says "WM4" and "WM56". The actual directory names are different in the download. Is this the correct correspondence:

• WM4 for Pocket PC 2003 = ppcapps-wm2003
• WM56 for Windows Mobile 5 / Windows Mobile 6. = ppcapps-wm56

 

[llammamama]

I'm downloading the new build at the moment, but I have one reccommendation for the spacing algorithm which should be relatively easy to implement and useful for a lot of people:

I had noticed personally that the default minimum spacing for a correctly scored card (which varies based on the aggressiveness setting) can be too long for the more aggressive settings when trying to remember difficult cards. At the same time, I do want the more aggressive spacing algorithm for the majority of my cards. One sensible solution would be this: let the answer quality score affect the initial spacing.

For example, on aggressiveness level 4, I believe the default minimum score after one correct response is 500 regardless of answer quality. If instead answer quality 5 gave a minimum score of 400, and answer quality 4 gave a minimum score of 300, this would allow difficult cards to be effectively tackled without sacrificing the higher rate of learning for easier flashcards.

While of course I don't know how hard this would be to implement, it seems like it would be a very natural and desirable behavior for anyone using the "give answer quality" option.

 

[stephanhodges]

When looking at files using the "info" (or "delete") menu item on the PALM, most of the names say "Pleco 2 xxx". However ,the audio files just say "Pleco Audio Man B..." etc.

Under the "delete" menu, there isn't an option to see the version number. This is a small point, but it would help a little to have all the names consistent.

Same applies to "Pleco StrokeRec.."

The supplied document example "The True Story of Ah Q" doesn't have "Pleco" in the name at all, so perhaps leave as is...

 

[stephanhodges]

Palm Zodiac with a 1gb SD card

Preferences Toolbar : If I check "Change btns in landscape mode", and increase Cmd Bar to 11, when I go to "Setup" ALL the entries are empty! They should start out as a copy of the standard ones. Same goes for the search menu, of course.

It would be useful to have an option to copy from portrait when setting up landscape as well. This could be used, for example, to match up the first nn buttons for both orientations.

Also, a "reset to default" for both portrait and landscape modes.

Working much better in this beta than before. Seems to both remember all settings, and also to display correctly on the Zodiac (beta 4 did not)

 

[stephanhodges]

Document reader (Palm Tapcis)

Palm finally gets a file browser; not so much a browser as a list of files with the correct extension, but you can now open up flash/reader files without having to fiddle around with path names.

I can't figure out how to get the file browser to show any files.

(Unrelated)

Clicking on HELP on the menu hangs the device, requiring a reset. No messages. The only button that works is power on/off.

 

[stephanhodges]

Palm, Tapcis

Flashcards -> Manage Categories.
Rename of the default category doesn't change the name on the screen (under Default, bottom left)

Flashcards -> Manage Flashcards
Edit Card (from the "i" page)
Changing dictionaries pulls up different words when the dictionary is changed. The original dictionary does keep the correct definition. Example 喀 (ka1 OX noise made in coughing..) shows incorrect definitions when switching to another dictionary (ABC, etc)

Also, if I select "Custom", it should initialize the "Defn" field with the definition from the SELECTED dictionary entry (as the starting point). Now, it comes up completely blank.

Edit Card (from the "+" button)
I select an entry and press the "+" key. This brings up an "Edit Card" page, but it's completely empty (Custom is selected) It should start with "From Dict"
For the entry which is from USER dictionary, it also brings up an empty page (Custom selected at start).

The "eraser" icon wasn't obvious to me as the "delete" function. I would have expected a large red "X".
Also, in landscape mode, would like the category text to be much wider. I cannot see most of a category named "Want to know 1"

It would be much more intuitive to just click, double click, or perhaps tap and hold to edit a line (I favor tap and hold).

The category selection at the bottom of the page doesn't seem to do anything. I have three categories and 3 cards. All cards were in 1st category. Changing to Cat 3 had no effect on the display, for example.

The button should be named the FIRST word of the screen, "Search" instead of "Settings" for the "Search Settings" display. I realize you want to convey that the search settings are in effect even if they don't look at the page, but it's easier to train people to know that, and better for a first experience to tell people approximately what they will see without having to click a button. Also, most people's memory will remember the entire screen title, so the first word on the button is another memory clue.

I have no clue what the little "+" and "-" folder icons are supposed to do.

No crashes yet (except the "Help" menu selection noted earlier)

 

[goog1e]

Ipaq 110, WM6

Flashcards crashing.

Test type: Tone practice
Show: Audio

"Review incorrect cards at end" enabled
"(loop)" disabled and enabled (makes no difference)

With the above settings, every time I reach the end of my set of flashcards and it should start reviewing I get a crash and windows asks me to report the error.

If I turn off "Review incorrect cards at end", it will not crash. The "(loop)" seems to make no difference in crashing.

My flashcards were imported using Beta 5 from the HSK text file word list. However, all the other files (including dictionaries, fonts, etc.) are from the new Beta 6 package.

-------------

Some incorrect audio sounds:

pi1fu4 male
ying4 female
cong2wei4 male

bao1 female (sound quality - saturation)
ling1 female (sound quality - noise)

-------------

Noticeable improvements from Beta 5:

Resuming a flashcard session is now clean -- the flashcard screen doesn't get all garbled.

The copious "No dictionaries found" errors have stopped arising for me on boot.

-------------

I'm a new user, just started using PlecoDict a few days ago and went straight to Beta 5 (for the audio and flashcard features). Some bugs, but I'm very impressed. I hope to have a more extensive bug list for you after this weekend.

 

[mikelove]

ldolse - I'm still perplexed by this audio issue; since Beta 3 or so we've never seen an immediate audio crashing bug on any of our test systems here, the only ones we have seen have involved memory leaks accumulating over 50 or 100 audio plays (and even then they usually just fail to play rather than crashing). If you reset preferences, does that make any difference? What about if you delete / reinstall the audio data files?

I just found a bug in the launcher (actually on the Pleco side, the launcher program itself is only about 20 lines of code) that would keep the lookup-on-cold-launch feature from working correctly on a lot of WM6 systems, fixed now so it should actually do what it's supposed to do in Beta 7. Though it may still bring up the main window in the background in those cases, in which case you'd have an extra close button to deal with. (but not entirely a bad thing since it would let you know Pleco was now running in the background) Have you not noticed any performance difference?

Character Info line wrapping is tricky because there's really not a lot of extra room on that screen (unless we rearrange it on landscape displays, which won't be getting implemented until 2.1 at least) - we'll play around a bit and see if we can find room for an extra line without making the screen obscenely cluttered, but the best bet on that might be to just keep it on Show All Details if you're doing a lot of definition lookups. Same deal with stroke order controls, putting them on the bottom makes the character smaller which is a Bad Thing and adding a left-handed flip option is likewise a 2.1 feature at this point.

stephanhodges - yeah, forgot to update that; we renamed those at the last minute so there'd be a consistent application name for PlecoLaunch. The mappings you've listed are correct.

llammamama - good idea but not something we can consider before 2.1; at this point basically anything that requires an extra checkbox or button is out, and since Supermemo/Mnemosyne don't factor quality into their initial repetition spacings we'd have to make this change optional.

stephanhodges again - glad it seems to be working better. Good point on default settings, no reason there shouldn't be some kind of useful default options in there. A copy-settings button would be nice too but again extra buttons have to wait for 2.1 - otherwise we're going to be working on this until Christmas The file browser only displays files in directories Pleco is set up to search; we might get it to search subdirectories of those too, but searching the entire card is kind of problematic. The help thing is a known issue, haven't gotten around to implementing that screen yet.

What do you mean by "incorrect definitions" - are the characters/pinyin still correct but the definition wrong, or is the entire entry that it brings up incorrect? For copyright reasons we only prepopulate the definition field with the current dictionary entry when that entry's from a free / user dictionary - if you try it with Adso it should work. + is actually a New Card and not an Edit card button - we should probably try to find a way to rename the window header to avoid confusion. Good point on the eraser icon, that's generally associated with a less destructive clear command.

The category list at the bottom of the screen is for putting cards in categories - you select a category from it and tap on the folder plus/minus buttons to add/remove the current card from that category. On Search versus Settings, I'm worried that people will see Search on the bottom and think they have to click on that to execute (or, for that matter, prepare) a search; Settings makes it clear that this is where they go to change the sort order / display fields, which is likely the first thing they'll want to do anyway before they get into advanced searches.

goog1e - haven't seen that crash yet, we'll take a look on our 110 here. Sound quality on the female audio files unfortunately isn't something we can do that much about, but the mismatches are a big worry - once we've got the re-encoded / complete versions ready we'll probably try to enlist people to check the audio in a more organized way (and provide flashcard import files to do it with). Glad the "no dictionaries found" issue is gone - this version actually does search subdirectories for files so if you've got some dictionaries in a folder below \\Storage Card\Program Files\Pleco they should no longer be missing.

 

[ldolse]

I'll try doing the audio things you mention, but I did delete the preferences registry before starting beta 6, since that's bitten me with a number of previous betas. I can try reinstalling the audio, but I have reinstalled it between B4 and B5 as well. If there is any sort of advanced debug option we can run just PM me and I can download/run it.... The only point which might be unique is I'm using one of those uncommon 8GB microsd flash cards.


Also ran into some other issues today - and this is a bit of a drunk bar test, so can't give you specifics of how I got there.... Several times this evening Pleco wound up in locked the document reader, and it was completely hung there - no matter what I did I couldn't get it to exit the doc reader, and I had to reset the phone a couple times. You might just want to let the phone go into sleep mode while it's still in the doc reader to try reproducing... not sure exactly what happened.

 

[ldolse]

Regarding Char info - I realize things would have to get smaller if you stick with the square screen resolution, but if you size for proper QVGA/VGA portrait mode then you've got plenty of space. If this is a problem to code for for 2.0 then just leave it, I can deal.

 

[daniel123]

I have a question about flashcard and user dict transfer from PD 1.03 on Palm to 2.0b6 on WinMob.

If I use the Pleco Converter to export my flascards and user dict from PD 1.03 on Palm. Can I use this xml file for PD 2.0b6 import on WinMob or do I need to make any changes on that xml file first?

THX

Daniel

 

[FUmminger]

From a quick look:
- Stylus action recognition is much, much better. Thanks! The increased flexibility of assignment to actions is great also.
- The file browser in the reader is only seeing some (3, out of dozens) of my files. I don't notice any pattern to which are seen and which are ignored.
- Once got a reset when switching to the file browser.
- It would be nice if the file browser provided some way to navigate around directories.
- The "keep cats" feature in the flashcard preferences is great! Thanks!
- Loop mode is a great addition!
- Now every time the flashcards review incorrect answers, the first card is invisible. Happens with or without loop mode enabled.
- Seems more stable. I used to get a crash whenever there were no cards free for repetition mode. This is fixed now.
- Bookmarks work now. Great!

Frederick

 

[FUmminger]

Found the pattern - the file browser always shows at most 3 files, apparently in search path/alphabetical order.

Frederick

 

[sfrrr]

omigod--PD B6 has been out for about 18 hours and I just now discovered it? I'm losing my grip, guys. But at least I've got the files now. Watch my dust.

Sandra

 

[mikelove]

ldolse - try using the reset preferences command under the Misc panel instead, might work better. Also, try reinstalling the files this way: copy them over to the card to a different directory than they're in now BEFORE you delete the old ones. That way if the card is defective (not inconceivable with an 8 GB micro) the files would now be in a different spot on it. Of course that spot could have a defect too, or (more likely) there could just be some other bug here we haven't found yet, but reinstalling the files eliminates one or two possibilities at least.

Not seeing this document reader crash either - do you remember what you were doing when it locked up? Scrolling, jumping to a bookmark / top bar location, adding an entry to flashcards, or did it just happen on an auto-off?

We did manage to squeeze an extra row into Char Info, incidentally, so the bottom field actually should have a second line in Beta 7.

daniel123 - you can import the XML file from the converter straight into Windows Mobile, there's no need to import/export it on Palm first. Though I'd suggest using the newer converter included with Beta 6 on your Palm, it does a few things [like putting flags in a separate subcategory] more cleanly.

FUmminger / stephanhodges from earlier - found the problem with the file browser, the lengths of the internal volume / file lists had gotten switched so it was limiting the list to 3 files and 512 volumes instead of 3 volumes and 512 files. If only all bugs were that easy to find...

FUmminger - glad to hear the stylus selection is working better. Adding directory navigation to the file browser would be rather complicated, but if we do in fact release 2.1 on Palm (going back and forth on that) we could certainly consider it then. Just managed to reproduce that incorrect-answer bug here, was rather nasty actually (could affect a lot of different session types but particularly prone to doing so in Endless mode) so good thing we found it.

sfrrr - yeah, next time we do a beta-test we should probably have an e-mail announcement list for it, particularly if we manage to stay true to the new not-even-giving-out-a-hint-about-release-dates policy.

 

[FUmminger]

Mike,
My Advanced Settings are Chinese, Simple, Frequency adjust, Don't repeat cards in session, Review incorrect at end, either setting for loop, Show statistics at end. The Setup is 20 cards, Self-scored, Headword. I believe all other settings are the defaults. The bug is that for every loop of reviewing incorrect cards, the first question is invisible. Once you click the reveal button, the headword and definition become visible. All subsequent cards in the loop behave normally.
Just found another bug - my user dictionaries don't seem to get searched for partial matches, either Chinese-English or English-Chinese. If clear the input, I can switch to the user dictionary and see my entries, but as soon as I enter anything I get switched to another dictionary as Pleco attempts to find a matching entry. It never finds a match in the user dictionary unless I enter the entire word.
I find the dictionary management somewhat confusing. Some dictionary management is done in Preferences:Results, some is done in Manage Dictionaries, some is done in Flashcards:Import. I can't figure out how to import definitions without using Flashcards:Import, which creates a bunch of flashcards I don't want. Then, to undo a dictionary import I need to go to Manage Dictionaries:Undo Import. It is odd that import and undo import are in completely separate locations in the user interface. It seems like I should be able to import, without creating flashcards, from Manage Dictionaries.
Even with these complaints, importing a user dictionary is much easier than with Pleco 1.0. I never could get the old command line tool to work right. Now I was able to import a big portion of the dict.cc German-English dictionary without any problems. Although Pleco was not designed for this, I'm really looking forward to getting some European language dictionaries loaded and taking advantage of Pleco's excellent flashcard support.
Btw, I think it would be an excellent feature if the document reader pop-up dictionary interface included the Switch Language button as well as the Switch Dictionary button,or maybe just auto-detected the language of a selection. Then one could use the reader to help translate any language to any other language, as long as there was an appropriate user dictionary. It seems like I can do this when using the pop-up dictionary on dictionary definition text; I can just select an English word with an appropriate stylus action and get a pop-up definition for that word. Hopefully this means it would be easy for you to add this to the reader also. For non-Chinese text I think it would be fine to ignore the fancier features of the reader, like the support for finding word boundaries.

Frederick

 

[stephanhodges]

Minor menu items so far:

Palm / Tapwave

Modules menu
a) "Pop-Up Definition......" has 6 dots after it
b) Character Info and Add/Edit Custom Entry both have the same shortcut
c) Pop-Up Definition and Delete Custom Entry both have the same shortcut


(Separate note: I've put the menus up on the wiki at http://china.panlogicsoftware.com/pleco/pleco2:menus

Everyone is invited to edit the wiki as well.)