Character Details not shown after installing add-ons

After installing the Stroke Order Diagrams add-on (and a bunch of other add-ons as well) I don't see any character details, except for "Code Point". All the other details are empty.

Is anyone else seeing this behavior as well? Here's how you may be able to reproduce this potential bug:

1. Search for "baozi" in the PLC dictionary.
2. On the first entry ("steamed stuffed bun") tap on the first character (bao).
3. Click on the "zi" character in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
4. On the next page select "Details".

On my iPod Touch all the fields, like "Mandarin", "Frequency", "Definition" are empty. When I select "Add New Field..." and click on "Code Point" it shows the Unicode value of this character. All the other fields are empty though.

It used to work before I installed any add-ons, so is this related to the Stroke Order Diagrams add-on or another add-on I installed?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Your phone isn't jailbroken by any chance, is it? We've had a few reports of data files not being accessible in certain cases on jailbroken phones - in this case it would be the Unihan character reference database that isn't accessible. Try rebooting your phone (power it off and on again) and see if that helps; if not, go into the Settings tab, General panel, and tap on "Reset all prefs to defaults" - does that make any difference?
 
I rebooted my iPod Touch (it's not jailbroken), but it didn't change anything. Then I reset all settings to defaults, as you suggested, but still no change. When I tap on the lower left-hand corner, where the name of the dictionary is shown, and keep my finger on it, a window "Choose dictionary" pops up. It shows the following list "Pleco C-E", "Tuttle", "HanDeDict" and "Unihan". I can select "Unihan" and browse through the entries. Does that mean that the Unihan database is ok?

Here's the list of the add-ons I've got installed:
- Stroke Order Diagrams
- DeHanDict
- HanDeDict
- NWP E-C Dictionary
- Tuttle Learner's C-E Dictionary

As I said, the character details page used to work before I installed any add-ons, so the problem might be related to one or more of these add-ons. What do you think?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
If you can browse Unihan correctly then I really don't know what might be going wrong here - that means that Pleco is accessing the data file just fine. But yeah, as an experiment why don't you delete the Stroke Order Diagrams add-on (and exit / reopen Pleco) and see if that helps matters - it's a nice small download, so once you've tested this you can go right back to Add-ons and download it again (it'll show up at the top of Paid under "Purchased but not Downloaded.")
 
Thanks, Mike, I found it! It's not the Stroke Order Diagrams add-on that's causing this problem, it's the DeHanDict German-Chinese Dictionary. Uninstalling this add-on fixes the missing character details.

So something in this dictionary is causing the problem. Note that the HanDeDict Chinese-German Dictionary does not break the character details page, it's only DeHanDict that's causing trouble. Could you install this add-on and verify that this a bug?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I just checked it here and it seems to work fine, so I don't think it's actually DeHanDict-specific... your iPod isn't extremely low on storage memory by any chance, is it? If you re-download DeHanDict does the problem come back?
 
I checked it again and here's what I found out:

1. My remaining storage memory is about 400 MB (should be enough, I think).
2. I deleted DeHanDict, then downloaded and installed it again.
3. Right after the installation the character details are showing up correctly. (The German-Chinese dictionary lookup is also working properly.)
4. When I then restart Pleco, the character details are broken.

I tried this several times. Every time, after installing DeHanDict and then restarting Pleco the character details go missing. So, as far as I'm concerned I'd say this problem it's DeHanDict-specific.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Well it's definitely not happening here... very odd. What about deleting other add-ons, does deleting any of them cause character info to work again with DeHanDict still installed?
 
Very odd indeed ... Did you restart Pleco after installing DeHanDict? Without restarting Pleco the character details are being shown ok.

I deleted ALL other add-ons, except for the Full-Screen Handwriting add-on. (It's built-in and I couldn't figure out how to deactivate it.) And the same thing happens: Installing DeHanDict with a subsequent Pleco restart after the installation breaks the character details.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yes, I restarted Pleco, and then I tried restarting the entire iPhone - still doesn't make a difference. Did you try deleting all other add-ons including DeHanDict, rebooting Pleco, then just installing DeHanDict? What generation / capacity of iPod Touch are you using?
 
I have a second generation iPod Touch with 16 GB running iPhone OS 3.1.2.

I deleted all add-ons (except for Full-screen Handwriting, which I cannot deactivate), including DeHanDict, rebooted my iPod (power off/on), reinstalled just DeHanDict and after another Pleco restart the character details are showing up as empty again. Removing DeHanDict fixes the character details.

I take your word for it that you cannot reproduce this. Maybe you're running a different OS version, or your hardware is different, or there's some problem with my hardware/software. The strange thing is, though, that all the other Pleco features work fine for me. (Very cool product, by the way.)

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to look into this. If nobody else complains about this then I guess it's some weirdness with my iPod.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Nope, no luck reproducing it unfortunately, and we've tested it on almost that exact hardware / OS combination. Anyway, we'll keep an eye out for any potentially related bugs / other issues, but at the moment I don't have a whole lot else I can suggest - perhaps something in the new bug-fix update will make a difference, though we didn't make any changes specifically to address this.
 
I just installed Pleco version 2.0.5. It looks like the problem has been fixed, at least it's working for me now.

Thanks again!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Great, but it still seems to be happening for others, unfortunately. Which suggests this is some sort of tricky intermittent thing. Hmm...
 
@Mike: Maybe the language setting of the iPhone/iPod is also a factor. When I installed Pleco 2.0.4 my iPod language was set to "German" since I live in Germany. (This is also why I installed DeHanDict.) When I was trying to find a workaround for this bug I set the language to English, which didn't fix the problem when using Pleco version 2.0.4. However, when I installed Pleco 2.0.5 my iPod language was still set to English during the installation and now it works. I have no idea whether this is relevant or just a coincidence, but it's the only thing I can think of which might be different for you when testing it and for the users who are experiencing this bug. (If they're using DeHanDict they're probably in Germany, so their iPhone language is most likely set to German.)

I'm not sure whether I want to try playing around with the language settings now to investigate this, because I might break the character details page again and might not be able to fix it afterwards if the bug turns out to be something else. But maybe you can try it on your iPhone.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Found / fixed for the next update, turned out to be an intermittent issue relating to the order in which Pleco loaded dictionaries (so it'd generally keep happening for a given install but might stop / start happening after a reinstall).
 
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