Beta 7(c) Bug Report Thread

[ldolse]

I never got around to testing 7b, so some of these issues may have been there...

Bug - Space still doesn't work when using ZTA4 IME in the add/edit entry dialog, I reported this a while back, not sure if this one is just going to be chalked up to a known issue

Regression - Look up clipboard on non-IA activate seems to have broken at some point - pretty sure it worked with 7 or 7a. Nothing happens if there is a bunch of data in the clipboard now. I use that feature to get Chinese SMS straight into the reader quickly.


Bad Stuff with Add/Edit Entry
Pinyin with tone marks - go to Add/Edit entry to edit an existing entry with just Hanzi, unlock it, and copy Pinyin with tone marks from another entry. Pleco winds up saving the tone mark character and inserting 5s all over the place.

I added the custom entry:
北京阅微庄四合院宾馆
I frequently put proper place names, hotels, restaurants, streets, etc into my user dictionary. This occasionally requires long headwords like the one above. This particular entry has done numerous very bad things with the latest beta, see the saga below. Note with the way I input entries this required freqent unlocking of the entry to add Pinyin, and in some cases I cancelled the edits.

Spaces in the Pinyin:
Because the Pinyin for the name was really multiple words I added spaces between the obvious word breaks:
Beijing yueweizhuang siheyuan binguan

Before I started adding spaces I didn't see problems, but I hadn't worked with the entry much. Right after I added the spaces 7a crashed when I unlocked and attempted to continue editing. I immediately switched over to 7c. 7c didn't crash with the same sequence, but the Pinyin disappears when the entry is unlocked, the only way I've seen to prevent it from disappearing is to highlight some of it before unlocking it. Unfortunately 7b often duplicated all the Pinyin. The duplicated pinyin often exhibited the issues with tone marks described above.

After I cleaned that entry up (finally deleted the duped Pinyin and spaces) other bad things started happening - note very few of these bad things happened twice, but I rarely got the expected behavior:

• Pop-up definitions stopped working correctly... I just got a big empty box with a scroll bar and the row of buttons at the bottom. Restarting the app fixed this.
• In one case clicking 'unlock' not brings me an empty add/edit entry window, but it's now devoid of buttons. It also hung the app, which in turn seems to have locked up the entire phone. Clicking the hangup button brought up the today screen, but nothing could be clicked, so I soft reset.
  
• After restarting the app I once again tried to edit the entry by unlocking - this time I lost the pronunciation and the definition text became corrupted:
  • 'Beijing Double Happiness Hotel' became
    'Beiji g Double Happi (gibberish) Hotel'
    The reference to gibberish above was two characters - the space was also there. What's really weird though is that I when I copied those two characters into the clipboard they pasted into an email as 'ss', which which is what they were supposed to be.....
• Another try didn't cause the corruption above, but the Pinyin again didn't show up in the unlocked edit view unless I first highlighted a bit of it.
  
• After closing the entry by clicking cancel the list view in the Main Pleco window showed no entries. I put Pleco into the background, immediately brought it back to the front via the hardware button and it crashed....

Another side effect i'm seeing after this is that my user dictionary appears to be corrupted now - I've had several blank entries in the list. One did nothing when I clicked on it, and I was able to delete it from the menu. The other gives me the message 'This entry appears to have been deleted from the dictionary'. I can't find any way to delete that entry.

That now leaves me with the question - is there a way to export the dictionary and re-import it so I can fix the corruption, or will it require direct SQL manipulation?

 

[mikelove]

The Duelist - we're still not seeing this, strangely enough - so if you just open Pleco, bring up the Graffiti pad, and enter a number, it crashes? Or do you have to do something else first? Which dictionaries have you installed?

Good idea about not hiding the minimized handwriting recognizer, I can't imagine anybody would object much to it staying around when the keyboard's open.

ldolse - we had the ZTA4 space bug marked down as unreproducible, but we didn't know it was specific to add/edit entry - trying it in there just now I'm seeing it too, so hopefully we can figure out how to fix it.

With the clipboard lookup, how exactly are you activating Pleco when you try to bring in text from the clipboard? We changed the code for that around a bit to prevent it from going off in some situations where it's not supposed to, but that certainly could have had some side-effects. We also made it check for / not reopen if it's already opened once with the same clipboard text - are you sure the text has changed when you activate Pleco?

The Add/Edit entry problems almost all seem to relate to a bug in the text edit control (rather than the user dictionary), oddly enough - turning a field from non-editable to editable was setting off some potentially serious memory corruption (screwing up among other things the text buffers that were eventually getting written back to the database). I'm not sure why those entries wouldn't delete, if you send along your user database file I can remove them for you (and hopefully also figure out why Pleco was refusing to do so).

How were you in pasting tone-marked text? As of b7(b?) Pleco automatically checks any text you're about to paste into an edit field for Pinyin with tone marks and converts it to tone numbers. Are you sure you're seeing that problem with b7c?

Also, I should point out that the Unlock button really wasn't designed to be used repeatedly like this - it should work fine, it shouldn't crash like it's doing now, but even if it does work fine the constant deleting / recreating of database records is going to seriously slow down / inflate the size of your user dictionary file; we added it for the sake of correcting the occasional mistake but it's not meant to let you build an entry piece-by-piece. If you want to do that, you should create it as a flashcard and then convert it to a user dictionary entry, or alternatively marshal all of the text you want in the definition area and then unlock the entry just once to move it all into the headword sections.

 

[KesterN]

Thanks for the Beta update.

Flashcards: Free-answer layout change
It works fine, but just curious why the layout was changed. Having the input box on the right means it's easy to obscure what you've just written when you move your hand across to the left to erase a stroke or are hovering the stylus over the list of characters you are about to select from. It just feels less comfortable than when the input box was on the left side (and the work-flow was more of a natural left-to-right action).

Looped re-test option
I'd also prefer it stays available whenever a session is terminated.

Re-sizing Entry List
More of an aesthetic issue, rather than a crash-bug. My Entry List is on the right. If I try to resize it, by dragging the border left or right, the background colour spills out of the border, and a few patches of the background colour also appear around the Input Field. When I exit and reopen Pleco the problem corrects itself.

Reader dictionary scrolling action
Again, not a bug, just something I've been meaning to mention for a while: The scrolling action within the dictionary window in the Reader doesn't work too well on my Treo 680. I end up needing to tap on the down arrow very cautiously, due to its proximity with the exit button! Is there any way the exit button could be shifted to the left? In doing so, would this free up space to lengthen the scrollbar? Ideally, I suppose I'd like to be able to use the Treo's rocker to scroll within the dictionary window, as well as within the text, although I can see why this might be difficult to implement (some kind of toggle switch, perhaps?).

 

[ipsi]

You can already use the rocker to scroll up/down in the reader - head to Preferences/Button Actions and check 'Nav Buttons Scroll Pages in reader'

 

[The Duelist]

The Duelist With the number entry problem, I'm still not seeing that here - could you give me the *exact* steps you use to reproduce this? Are you entering the number using the keyboard or Graffiti? If Graffiti, is it in the onscreen Graffiti area or are you using the write-anywhere-on-the-screen option? Which settings in the Query and Input sections of Preferences have you changed from their defaults? Is HWPen running?

I Have The Onscreen Graffitti Panel Open.
Writing A Number (RHS) Causes The Crash.

Query Prefs:
Auto Detect Search Language
Clear Input Field On Lang Switch

Input Prefs:
Auto Enter Best HWR Match

The Duelist - we're still not seeing this, strangely enough - so if you just open Pleco, bring up the Graffiti pad, and enter a number, it crashes? Or do you have to do something else first? Which dictionaries have you installed?

I Can Trigger The Crash Immediately After Launching PD2 And Writing A Number In The Graffiti Area (RHS).

I've Done A Little More Testing.
The Crash Seems To Occur When:
:arrow: Preferences -> Query: Auto-Detect Search Language Is Selected.
ie When I Deselected This Option I Was Able To Write In The Number Part Of The Graffiti Area Without The Crash.

Hope This Helps
The Duelist

PS: These Are The Dictionaries I Have Installed:
Chinese: ABC/Oxford C-E/Tuttle/ADSO/CC-CEDict/Guifan/Unihan
English: NWP/Oxford E-C/21cn/LDC

 

[KesterN]

You can already use the rocker to scroll up/down in the reader - head to Preferences/Button Actions and check 'Nav Buttons Scroll Pages in reader'

I meant scrolling through a definition within the dictionary window at the bottom

 

[caesartg]

Hi Mike

In the summary after completing a multiple choice test, I'm being told that I'm getting 1 more correct than I actually did get correct. When I get 100% correct, that means that I'm told that I got 11 correct when there were only 10 cards and 6 correct when there were only 5 cards. Has this bug already been noticed/reported?

Cheers

Ben

 

[caesartg]

Oh, by the way, I created two profiles that share the same config except one has the 'review incorrect cards at end' checked and is set up for long sessions and the other has it unchecked and is set up for short tests. An easy little workaround. Kudos on your implementation of profiles!

 

[ldolse]

You're right about the tone marks - that was with 7a, didn't re-test with 7c. 7c is working fine.

Regarding auto-loading clipboard contents, I tried the original instant access changes you made earlier, and I wholeheartedly agree with that change - much better that it just opened the reader the first time it saw that same string of text. The old release was doing this but otherwise working as expected. The new release won't put the clipboard into the text field OR the reader, it just does nothing. The data is definitely in the clipboard, because I can still launch the reader and have it load the clipboard data manually.

All I'm doing is copying all the text from an SMS. Next I click somewhere to un-highlight the text to prevent instant access from trying to lookup the large block of text. Then I click the hardware button to which Pleco launch is tied. At that point Pleco comes to the fore, but nothing else happens. I thought that maybe Pleco was somehow seeing the block as a duplicate, so I tried copying different blocks quickly to no avail.

I'll send you the messed up user dict by email, will also follow your advice about using lock/unlock. Part of the reason I started stressing it extra heavily was because it was acting flakey and I was trying to figure out some reproduction steps.

 

[mikelove]

KesterN - that free-answer layout change actually came from fixing a bug, it was running in left-handed mode all the time instead of only when the left-handed input option was checked. (strange we hadn't noticed it before now) The reason it's laid out that way is that it generally seems like it's better to have the handwriting draw box on the side of the screen that the user is holding the stylus on - if you like having it the other way around you can enable that left-handed option and have the left-to-right flow both in flashcards and in the main handwriting recognizer. Doing a run-through with some different Palm color themes has been on our to-do list for a while now so once we do that that should take care of bugs like the background color changing.

That's a very good point about the exit button in the reader, it's silly to have it so close to the scroll arrow (particularly since there's no confirmation dialog for it) - might not be possible to fix this until after 2.0 but I'll definitely put it on the to-do list.

The Duelist - still no luck, though I'm interested to see auto-detect search language is making a difference - what about the "1-char results" option in "Results" and the "Match Pinyin syllables exactly" option in Query, does changing either of those (with auto-detect turned on) get rid of the crash?

caesartg - I think someone reported that issue with the answer count a while ago but we were pretty sure we'd fixed it, have to check again.

ldolse - OK, we'll do a comparison of the two versions' activation code and see if we can figure out what change might have caused this. Appreciate your hammering away on Lock/Unlock, it definitely needed that sort of thorough testing and it hadn't yet gotten it from us. (but now is)

 

[KesterN]

Hi Mike,

Flashcards free-answer layout
Thanks for solving that. I always use fullscreen handwriting palette, so hadn't noticed the similarities between the main handwriting input and flashcards free-answer until now. So, I've enabled left-handed.

But, now we're on the subject (kind of), there's something about full-screen handwriting which is sometimes a little off-putting: when you start writing the character, the dictionary entry dims into the background. However, those html-style underlines (in ABC) stay bold, as does any highlighted text that may be there for whatever reason. A situation easily avoided, so just one of those aesthetic things...

 

[The Duelist]

The Duelist - still no luck, though I'm interested to see auto-detect search language is making a difference - what about the "1-char results" option in "Results" and the "Match Pinyin syllables exactly" option in Query, does changing either of those (with auto-detect turned on) get rid of the crash?

I Am Able To Get Rid Of The Crash With These Settings:
Query -> Auto-Detect Search Language - On
Results -> Fall Back On Full Text Search - Off

 

[radioman]

A few comments early on in 7c, I am seeing the following.

1) If I am in a flashcard session, and I flip the card and am looking at the headword and the definition. I want to be able to highlight the headword in whole or in part and have it bring up the definition in a pop-up menu. Right now, for example, if I have "pengyou" up and highlight "pengyou" in the headword and then bring up a pop-up definition, it would just bring up "peng". The reason I want to do this is because there are times (more than a few) that I want to look at alternate definitions (e.g., Tuttle) for additional information on the displayed flashcard. Right now the program only gives the first character of the highlighted headword. Within the definition section, it will look the full word.

2) I used to be able to use the navigation hardware keys to move up and down the definition. I have it set that way in preferences from what I can tell, Preferences ==>button actions ==> UpDown action = "Scroll Defn".

 

[Mator]

Hey Mike,

This is not related to just 7c and I'm not sure if it is a problem or just a misunderstanding on my part of the automatic scoring. Settings are: agressiveness 2, frequency adjust, self-scored. If I have a flashcard that has a high score (ex 204800) and I get it wrong just once out of say 40 some times or more (or just tap the wrong button by accident) the score always goes back to 100 and the next time I get it right it raises to 300 and up from there. The score seems to raise back up at the same rate as new cards - is this the intended behavior or should it raise back up at a faster rate because of the score history (say 40-1) or should it just not drop back down all the way. It seems like it shouldn't be dumped back down with new cards and worked all the way back up because of a mistake while quickly running through cards. I know the skip card option will keep the score the same if not answered, but is there anyway to undo a score change after it has been marked wrong?

 

[The Duelist]

The Duelist - With HWPen, we unfortunately weren't able to do anything to stop it from crashing except to turn off handwriting recognition altogether, and since I imagine you'd rather not have Pleco refuse to activate its handwriting recognizer whenever it detects that HWPen is installed I think the best bet is for us to leave things as-is but put a note about HWPen in the knowledge base / other places where people might look if they encounter problems.

Just Wondering If HWR Is Handled Differently In PD2 ?
Since I Have No Problems Using HWPen With PD1.

 

[KesterN]

If I am in a flashcard session, and I flip the card and am looking at the headword and the definition. I want to be able to highlight the headword in whole or in part and have it bring up the definition in a pop-up menu

It's working ok for me. I can bring up the pop-up definition of individual characters or the entire headword.

Automatic open reader on start-up
Just thought I'd mention that sometimes Pleco still opens the reader automatically on start-up, even if the clipboard text has already been viewed previously. Only occasionally.

Flashcard headwork transformation
This has been mentioned a few times, I think. Just wanted to report that I'm seeing it sometimes, when I'm trying to get character info. It's only happened about 5 times over the past week (and again just a few minutes ago). Weirdly, the transformation is always to 耘 (yún).

 

[stephanhodges]

Highlighting words and looking them up works for me too. A trick I use is to use a "swiping" motion to highlight the characters, from back to first. Then, I am able to tap and hold on the character until the pop up menu appears.

This is on a Palm device. If you have a Windows Mobile device, I don't know if that words.

 

[mikelove]

KesterN - we can't do much about the fade not applying to highlighted text, unfortunately, since fading everything on the screen (rather than just the text) would require a slower and more complicated graphical transformation - we did that on WM for a while but it slowed things down too much so we got rid of it. No progress on the 耘 issue, though if you find a way to reproduce it consistently let us know and we'll see if we can get it working with that. We'll take a look at the reader re-open.

The Duelist - interesting, still not seeing it here but maybe we can find something potentially troublesome in the full-text search code. Could you let me know all of the options that you've select in Display / Query / Results? Might be something else in there that we're not trying. You're not using a user-created dictionary, right?

And yes, handwriting is a bit different in 2.0 - we integrated the handwriting code into the main application instead of putting it in a separate library file in order to work around some other stability problems.

radioman - are you sure you're selecting the Popup Defn command instead of Char Info? With the definition not scrolling, reset the button mappings (i.e., go into Preferences / Flashcards / Buttons, tap on the boxes and press the up/down buttons again) and that should get it working - we made a change to that system recently to fix some bugs with buttons not registering correctly on Treos, but it screwed up the character codes for them in the process.

Mator - the score should increase at a faster rate, but only from the second increase onwards; the first increase is always the same. So it would go to 300 regardless but it would increase more quickly from there. Let me know if you don't see that happening and we can check it out. Skip Card should actually apply for as long as the card is displayed, so it looks like there's a bug there (probably related to the earlier issue with extra scores being counted in multi-choice sessions).

 

[KesterN]

KesterN No progress on the 耘 issue, though if you find a way to reproduce it consistently let us know and we'll see if we can get it working with that.

In a self-scored session, showing headword, the following causes 耘 to appear:

1) Reveal answer
2) Highlight first character of headword to bring up the pop-up definition
3) Tap 'done'
4) Do a right-to-left stroke over the highlighted character, and the character info for 耘 appears
5) Tap 'done', and 耘 remains in the headwork, in place of the original character
6) Do a left-to-right stroke over 耘 and the original character reappears

 

[mikelove]

How have you set up your Stylus Actions? Are you tapping on that character in #2 or actually highlighting it? And in #4 could you be a little more specific about this right-to-left stroke? Is the character highlighted before you do it, i.e. you're just dragging the stylus across it and the highlight doesn't change, or does dragging the stylus cause the character to be highlighted?