I definitely don't miss the input bar. As you can see, I even forgot about its functions because, as a strict pinyin inputter, I never need them. I did turn the input bar on and tried inputting a character, but that still fails to change the dictionary to Chinese. I had gone through the settings before posting, but nothing worked. So I just tried wiping the settings on my Note (via Android's manage applications since I didn't notice the Pleco option to reset settings, and now it's working correctly. I've left my 7.7 unfixed. Is this worth tracing down, or should I just zap the settings and forget about it?
My 7.7's settings are as follows:
Dictionary / Search Settings / Input processing
Auto-detect language: enabled
Allow extra characters: checked
Combine umlauts: checked
the remainder are unchecked
Dictionary / Search Settings / Full-text
Integrate into English: checked
the remainder are unchecked
Dictionary / Search Settings / Search dictionaries
Dictionary search order: Current Only
the remainder are unchecked
Dictionary / Search Settings / Result display
Results sort order: Word Length
1-char: checked
merged: unchecked
show dicts: checked
Merge character set: Both