Beta 7(b) (stability-fix) Bug Report Thread

[marsch]

Hi again. Just one little problem and two questions:
1. Seems like score/difficulty can drop several times a day (even if "only once per day" is ticked), but not increase.
2. Is there a way to click on links in definitions without turning off handwriting recognition?
3. If I do "all cards", is there any significance to "frequency adjust" - maybe the order in which they are presented - or is the score just ignored then? Would I have to do "endless" in order to have the score taken into account?

And on a positive note: saving flashcard sessions now works fine. And I like the new tag/untag icons

 

[mikelove]

manchucka - glad to hear it! Sorry you had to go through that.

marsch - with #1, the score should be able to drop again after it's increased again; the once-per-day limit only applies to scores moving in the same direction, since it's mostly designed to keep people's scores from launching into the stratosphere if they repeatedly answer a card correctly on the same day. Are you seeing it drop again after each wrong answer with several wrong answers in a row, or are you only seeing it drop again after it's increased again?

#2 isn't possible yet, though certainly something we'd like to find a way to add. On #3, with "All Cards" frequency-adjust is indeed meaningless (the software doesn't even bother to do the calculations for it) - we debated whether to take away that option when frequency-adjust sessions were selected but decided it would be less confusing to leave it in but disable frequency-adjust when it was used.

Glad to hear saved sessions are working now - turned out there was a bug which only affected Windows Mobile 2003 devices (not even WM2003 SE, just the original WM2003) that was preventing those from saving. (also affected document reader bookmarks)

 

[marsch]

re #1: yes, the score can drop several times in a row without having increased in between.

 

[anchan42]

Cannot locate font....

I got a an error message telling me that the font files cannot be found but I have definetly installed all of them into the card and they were also in correct directory.
When I move font 10 to RAM the pleco just crash my Treo680.

Device:Treo 680 with lastest rom.

 

[mikelove]

marsch - OK, we'll check it out.

anchan42 - font10/font12 are only for low-resolution devices, on the Treo 680 you want font18/font24. (10/12 won't cause any problems, they just get ignored if they're installed) How much free memory does your Treo have? If it's very low, that might explain the crash.

 

[weight]

Mike, a few questions about the "review only" test:

1) it looks like the only way to get next and back assigned to buttons is with the "back" and "screen right" in configure "button actions." The problem is that after I've assigned the various buttons for the "self-scored" test (high, medium and low scores, reveal, skip, correct and incorrect) I'm left with one working button which is one too short to have two full time next and back buttons for that "review only" test. Can you assign the "back" and "screen right" actions to "correct" and "incorrect" or better yet allow us to assign more than one action to a button; or fix the up and down arrows on the keypad, which will give us just enough buttons to do everything?

2) when I'm doing the "review only" test I'll click the big forward arrow on the right a few times and then the little back arrow on the left; as soon as I go back to the previous card, I've noticed that the card counter at the top will not change depending on what card I'm at, but rather will stay fixed on the number of the very last card I reviewed. Additionally, I find it a bit strange that the big forward arrow changes into two small back and forward arrows depending on whether I'm reviewing the very last "new" card or whether I'm review previously seen cards in the deck; it seems as if there should just be two arrows - one back and one forward.

Thank You

 

[daniel123]

The problems I had before are fixed now.

There is just one tiny thing: when input in the dictionary part, every single space will be printed as double spaces. Not important but a little ugly.

THX

Daniel

 

[anchan42]

Treo 680 Crashing

Could not get rid of the font cannot be located problem so I hard reset my treo and start again. This is what I have done.

1. Hardreset the treo.
2. Remove all the file in Plam destop backup directory.
3. Hotsync the unit.
4. Install pd2b7. (the hand recognition and program in RAM, the rest in SD card)
5. Launch the pleco 2 and got a dialog to select between Internal, SD, pdb. I select internal.
6. Unit crash and reset.
7. install pd2b7b
8. Treo still crash when try to run pleco 2.0
Could not get rid of the font cannot be located problem so I hard reset my treo and start again. This is what I have done.

1. Hard reset the treo.
2. Remove all the file in Plam desktop backup directory.
3. Hotsync the unit.
4. Install pd2b7. (the hand recognition and program in RAM, the rest in SD card)
5. Launch the pleco 2 and got a dialog to select between Internal, SD, pdb. I select internal.
6. Unit crash and reset.
7. Install pd2b7b
8. Treo still crash when try to run pleco 2.0

The free space on RAM is 63.7 MB and I have not got any other 3rd party software installed except DocToGo and PTune in the ROM
+++++++++++++++

I have moved all the encodings files and font 18 and 24 from SD card to RAM. Pleo 2.0 is now running ok.
Wanted to know what really cause the problem, I deleted font 18 and 24 from the RAM and left a copy of each in SD card. Pleo 2.0 is still running ok.

EDIT: I have just downloaded the key file and activated Pleco 2.0. I have also somehow got the Unihan dict in the RAM and that the only dict pleco see. It does not seem to see any dictionary or sound files or stroke order files in the card. Very weird because the pleco 1 was working just fine with this card. I am sure I put files in correct directory "/PALM/Launcher/"

Edit: I tried to remove all of the others files in "/PALM/Launcher/" and left only the files for pleco. The pleco now can see dictionary and stroke order files but not the sound.

Edit: It seem like all of my problems are rooted from faulty SD card. When pleco could not find dictionary file, instead of giving out error message, it just crash the Treo. I re-formatted the SD card and everything’s working fine now. The sound feature is soooo sweet. So happy that I deleted pleco 1 and decided to use pleco 2 for real.

 

[ipsi]

EDIT: Gah, spent too much time thinking! I suspect it was the lack of the files in the encodings folder that caused it...

EDIT: Or not. No idea. Also, Mike, what's the reasoning behind not including the font22.pdb file? Find that the font24 to be far too large for normal use... It's also, for some reason, still referenced in the installation instructions, as is font28 (should that be font 18?).

That's very strange. There are at least two of us here with a Treo 680, and the software works just fine...

I have all the Pleco 2.0 stuff in /PALM/Launcher. Here's the full path to the essential Pleco 2 files on my card:

/PALM/Launcher/p2b5.pdb
/PALM/Launcher/p2font24.pdb
/PALM/Launcher/p2font48.pdb
/PALM/Launcher/p2font96.pdb
/PALM/Launcher/p2gb.pdb
/PALM/Launcher/p2oxce.pdb
/PALM/Launcher/p2oxec.pdb
/PALM/Launcher/p2radicals.pdb
/PALM/Launcher/p2stroke.pdb
/PALM/Launcher/p2unihan.pdb

If they're somewhere else, trying moving them there, it may help. If they're already there, or if moving them doesn't help that's a pretty serious problem... You might not need all those files (if you haven't purchased Oxford, for example, there's no need to install it. I've just included it for simplicity), but check to make sure.

I guess your Treo could have faulty internal memory, but that seems pretty unlikely...

 

[mikelove]

daniel123 - yikes, I thought that bug had been fixed a while ago - we'll take another look at it.

anchan42 - I'm glad to hear you eventually got it working correctly. It definitely sounds like there was something wrong with that SD card; ideally, if a file is corrupted / inaccessible Pleco should just gracefully skip over / ignore it, but there are some kinds of corruption that are very difficult to detect. Hopefully now that the card's reformatted it should continue working smoothly.

ipsi - font22's still included, it's just called font18 now - we switched to the same numbers we used in 1.0 (10/12/18/24/48) to make it easier for people to figure out which files to install.

 

[Marc Vermeiren]

Mike,
about the bug with the 'character info' - 'compound' - 'words starting with this character' box I wrote you about in the old B7 thread: I downloaded the B27(b)fix and the problem has somewhat diminished but I'm still not seeing it like it should be. For instance: I see '节 275033 TSL zit3 knot, node, joint;' or '庆 273F2E IK hing3 congratulate, cel' (content is truncated I suppose). What can I do for you to investigate this further, if anything?
Marc

 

[mikelove]

Have you installed the slightly-updated UniHan database file from beta 7? That included an extra code that should have prevented it from coming up in Char Info compounds searches. We'll take a look and see if there's anything that might potentially prevent that from working like it's supposed to.

 

[sfrrr]

sfrrr - well I wish you'd chimed in before we were in almost-ready-to-ship mode, but nice to have you back at least (and probably my own darn fault for not pre-announcing new releases anymore)

With the slow startup, this sounds very much like it might be a conflict with something else on your system - are you still running a lot of other betas etc as before? Anything particularly complicated / bug-prone / relevant to files loading or windows appearing? And is it still this slow even with Pleco already running in the background / with Instant Access lookups?

Are your flashcards in internal memory or on an SD/CF card? (at the moment they don't behave well unless they're in internal)

I'm running fewer betas--two besides PD and those two are a calendar and a password product--and the password program right now is dormant. Besides, I am not running anything different from what I was running when it booted quickly. Flashcards are fine again--95% of the time. They are on an SD card. I'll try moving them to main memory.

As for PlecoLaunch, I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. Whether I use PD or PL to bring up PD, the same thing happens: It takes 23 seconds for PD, 27 seconds for PL to bring up the program and, in both cases, I get two icons (one for PD, one for PL) on my upper toolbar. While they're running, it takes but an instant for a highlighted word in, say, a Word doc, to get transferred and defined in PD. If I minimize PD, PL minimizes too. If I close PD, PL closes too, no matter whether I booted from PL or PD. So, what's the point of PL again?

HTH.

Sandra

 

[Mator]

Hey Mike,

Beta 7(b) has been great with no crashes at all for me.

1. Not sure if these are bugs or just not in the design but in the popup definition window the 5 way navigation keys will not scroll the definition and the assigned button actions don't do anything (like switching dictionaries). Scolling also does not work (from nav keys) anywhere in the flashcard settings (lists of categories, cards, etc) or during a flashcard session.


2. I agree with ipsi that there is a problem with the font sizing. If the "magnify char in headword" option is checked, the font (p2font 48) is far too big especially if the word is more than one char. If only the "use large font in def" is checked, the headword size (p2font24) is not bad but the definition then gets kind of big so not as much of the text can display. What I did was remove p2font48 so now I have headword size 24 and def size 18 when only "magnify char in headword" is checked. The only problem I have now is that it is a little hard to see the magnified headwords (now at font 24) in a flashcard session while walking down the street, on the subway, etc. Is there a font that is between the two - or could the settings be changed so that in the main screen only the headword would magnify to 24 instead of 48 (or even have the choice). I tried font28 from 1.0 but didn't work at all.

3. Is there anyway in 2.0 to adjust the HWR smoothing input lines effect as 1.0 (either as an option or a fixed adjustment) - I'm finding that when I write quickly in 2.0 it does not follow very well and some strokes are rounded off quite a bit or cut short. When I use 1.0 it follows my strokes very well even when "smooth HWR input lines" is checked. If I write very slowly in 2.0 it follows great, but that's not very practical. I thought I remembered you saying something a while back about being able to adjust this, but I couldn't find it in the forums.

 

[mikelove]

sfrrr - there are a couple of things we can still try to speed up startup, I'm leaning towards one more experimental release in a few days since we've shuffled a bunch of little things around in the course of writing the user manual and would like to make sure we haven't screwed anything up in the process. (Beta 8 is now probably going to also be Release Candidate 1 so we're aiming for that to be nearly bug-free)

PL isn't designed to speed up a cold startup, it's designed to speed up Instant Access - on some systems (particularly those with heavy security, i.e. smartphones) PL brings up the Instant Access dialog considerably faster than launching Pleco itself (in both cases with Pleco already running in the background). It also provides a way of opening Instant Access that's independent of the taskbar or of launching Pleco itself, and hence easier to assign to a hardware button or bring up with a program launcher.

Mator - the lack of hardware scrolling in those screens is intentional, for various reasons it's really really hard to get hardware scroll buttons working correctly in modal dialog boxes and we haven't succeeded at it yet.

Fixing font sizing is kind of tricky because of the way Pleco handles low-resolution versus high-resolution screens; font12/24/48/96 have to each be double the previous one's size. Ironically given how few Palms are left with low-res screens we probably could have just dropped low-res support in order to offer a wider range of font sizes in high-res, but the way things are designed now it would be really tough to get a font36 implemented and working correctly. (font28 is actually font24, the font generator was sticking funny numbers on the end of those names for a while)

Personally I don't think font48 is too out-of-whack, though - you can comfortably fit four characters in the default definition width, so particularly if you set the bracketed characters to display at normal size ("Mix" option in headword display mode) most words generally end up formatting pretty nicely.

The smoothing got worse on Palm because the Palm and WM versions now use the same code for smoothing handwriting lines and WM generally gives you considerably more pen samples than Palm (meaning you end up wanting to average more points) - it might be pretty easy to check for / change the number of samples depending on the platform, though, we'll take a look at that. There used to be an option to disable smoothing altogether but we took it out since it didn't seem like anyone would miss it (in hindsight I wish we'd cut a half dozen or so other rarely-used preferences too).

 

[Marc Vermeiren]

Mike,
I'm pretty sure I had the right file. Just to be sure, I took the p2unihan.pdb (09.09.2008) from the pd2b7.zip file I downloaded again this morning from the forum. I removed the old one from the pda completely and copied the downloaded one again to my pda. I did a soft reset on the pda and the compound box still shows the codes after the character.
Marc

 

[mikelove]

OK, we'll take another look at the code then.

 

[sfrrr]

Mike--I solved the slow flashcards by moving the file to main memory, just as you instructed. The slow bootup seems to be a permanent fixture, however.

Thanks for the PL explanation. It is true that highlighting a word in a document and then opening going to PL is instantaneous, but, of course, PD already has to be open. I think it's CE-Star that works like the old TSRs (terminate and stay resident). Or maybe it's because CE-Star is always running in the background. Have you decided against such a plugin for PD/PL?

I must add, although this is not the placer, that I love the flashcard option to test auditory recognition by making the audio come up first on the card. Among other features. These flashcards are so customizable, even I am finding them useful. However, in terms of the interface, the various ways to filter the test words are on at least two different screens and it's easy for the user (me) to forget that I set one parameter on one tab that negates the filters I set on the other.

Sandra

 

[mikelove]

There are some optimizations we still haven't made in the startup file search code which we can try - they'd likely only have an impact on systems with a ton of files on them but there's a chance they could help in your case.

We haven't really considered a terminate-and-stay-resident plugin for Pleco since it seems like at that point you might as well just leave it running in the background normally - the difference in memory usage would be minimal. And with all of the likely changes coming in Windows Mobile 7 I'd rather not add any more heavily operating-system-dependent features like that until we have at least a beta version of WM7 to test them with.

I'm delighted to hear you're finding this iteration of the flashcard system useful at last I'm not quite sure what you mean about card filtering, though - the only filter that's set outside of the Card Filter screen is which categories the cards are in, which get their own separate tab. Having those extra category filter options on the Card Filter screen is a bit confusing, I agree, but we really didn't want to make the list in the Categories tab any shorter (it's already a leading candidate for having a resize-to-fit-the-screen feature added in 2.1), and there's some logic to having them on Card Filter since the category options there would most likely be used for keeping track of additional card characteristics (slang versus non-slang, mainland versus Taiwan, etc) rather than selecting which pool of cards you'd like to draw from.

 

[caesartg]

Hi Mike

Just discovered the 'group' option in 'manage categories' which is potentially a god-send for me. However, child categories seem to disappear from the 'manage flashcards' screen. Is this by design???

Cheers

Ben