Color Schemes? (UI & tones)

[mikelove]

We've been thinking about adding a menu of built-in color schemes in a future release, and I wondered if anybody had any user interface color combinations that they were particularly fond of. (we may whip up a few using Kuler or some other color palette generator, but field-tested ones are good too) We'd also apply the same feature to tone coloring to provide an easy way to use other common tone coloring schemes, so suggestions on that front would be helpful as well - the one from "Chinese Through Tone And Color" seems to be getting adopted by a lot of apps though I'm not that fond of it personally (feels kind of arbitrary).

 

[elipio]

Hi all, I'm awfully sorry if my post is off topic, but it is about colour coding of the search results (Chinese signs). I am a TOTAL begginer as far as learning Chinese. I wasn't able to find any info in the manual on the meaning of all the different colours used in the dictionaries. Are they some sort of clues which words are the best matches for my English entries? Is there another reason for their colours?
Thanks for reading all this and for the possible reply.
Otherwise I'm extremely happy with the soft for my iPhone. Funny, I made up my mind to learn Chinese on the 16th of Dec...;-)
Best
Pete

 

[mikelove]

Those colors actually represent the tones with which those characters are pronounced - red / green / blue / purple for 1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th tone respectively. It's a system designed to help you remember tones better by building associations between tones and colors.

 

[elipio]

Cheers, Mike, I LOVE THE SOFT!
Best
Pete

 

[Eggwind]

Well, the light green for the second tone is ugly and straining to read, but I've thought so since the windows mobile version. Always had to change that to a darker color.

 

[mikelove]

It is a little on the bright side, that's true - might be worth re-evaluating that default setting at some point, as long as it's still green I don't think anyone will mind if we tone it down a bit.

 

[Beijingmac]

Is there a way to set the tone colours back to the default settings? I've played around with them too much, and of course now don't like what I've got, and would like humbly to revert to Pleco's suggested mappings.

I checked the manual, and can find a general reset for all preferences, but not for the colour mappings alone?

Shelly

 

[mikelove]

Nope, but by popular request we're adding a color scheme reset button in the next minor update.

 

[numble]

Even though it's seemingly arbitrary, I've gotten used to the Chinese Through Tone And Color scheme, since it's been used in other applications, and would like that option.

 

[js96]

I love having the color-coded tones, but I'd also cast my vote for slightly darker colors. I also adjusted the definition portion of the dictionary screen to be a shade of gray so there's some contrast between it and the word list; others may find it helpful to have it that way by default as it was a little confusing at first.
Keep up the good work!

 

[mikelove]

numble - thanks! Seems like we definitely ought to include that one, yeah.

js96 - yeah, we've finally decided to darken them (by default) in the next update - won't apply to existing installations without a preferences reset, though.

 

[gandq]

Hi Mike,

inverted colors for the UI, please! (black background, white text)
Good for the eyes and stylish at the same time.

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

Already available - "Night Mode" under Settings / General. (unless you were referring to some specific part of the UI that that doesn't work in yet)

 

[CTurner]

I'm a new user of Pleco on my IPod Touch. I've looked through the documentation, but couldn't find this one:

Is it possible to set the color for the radical in the calligraphy/stroke display? (Other than what is a kind of grey for me right now)

What an amazing app this is.

Many Thanks,
Craig

 

[mikelove]

There's no separate setting for that, but it should be the same color as the stroke order diagram itself (and other text in dictionary entry list items) - is that not the case now?

And thanks! I'm delighted to hear you're liking it so far.

 

[CTurner]

Mike,

It is the same as the stroke order colors. I do see that the radical for the character is displayed at the bottom under the stroke display, but as long as we can ask I'd like to put my vote into color variations preferences for the radicals (I'd like to use red or yellow).

Thanks so much.

Craig

 

[mikelove]

OK, we'll consider it for the next update. Is there a particular reason you want to change the color of that text? Would it also help to make it bigger / tappable / etc, or does red / yellow just show up better with your color scheme?

 

[CTurner]

Mike,

I may have been unclear here. What I meant to ask is if the radical <as it displays in the whole character> might be colored through prefs? The radical, as it exists at the bottom of the screen, is fine the way it is for me.

 

[mikelove]

That's actually a little tricky, since the data we use for stroke order diagrams doesn't indicate precisely which strokes constitute the radical - in a lot of cases they're very easy to spot (or pick out based on knowing the radical from a separate data set), but we'd have to go in and manually tag certain strokes as being part of the radical in some cases like 乘. Doable, but requiring enough tedious file-editing labor that we can't just stick it into a minor update.