Disable sticky dictionary navigation?

[asun]

Question
I’d like to view the dictionary definitions in the same order all the time, no matter which dictionary the definition screen was navigated from. Is this possible with the existing settings in the iOS app?

Context
I read through dictionary items in a specific order, e.g. first the Outlier dictionary to understand the word origins. I’d like to always have it appear first, then scroll down and view the rest of the entries in the same order every time.

However, if I follow a link from another dictionary’s section or from the popup definition, then the previous dictionary is promoted to the top of the list. Sometimes this means scrolling down and scrolling back up, whereas I would rather scroll down only to cover everything on the screen in order.

What I’ve tried
* Dict hiding: this setting has “Remember” vs “Remember + open” first options, but looks like this setting rightly only affects only whether dictionaries are collapsed
* Show dict slider: tried getting used this to be able to jump between the dictionaries I want to view, but the tap targets are small and scrolling in one direction is cognitively easier to keep track of (I often dive 4-5 levels deep)
* In manage dictionaries, each dictionary also has a Use in dictionary -> Sticky selection setting, but I couldn’t figure out how it works and whether it’s relevant to this

 

[mikelove]

For links from other dictionaries, those are often referencing information in that specific dictionary's entry for another word, so it doesn't really make sense for us to override that order because then you might end up with an unrelated entry that doesn't tell you what it was supposed to be telling you.

For the popup definition, it goes by whatever dictionary you're getting the definition from - if you drag Outlier to the top of the order in Settings / Manage Dictionaries and turn *off* "sticky dict selection" in Settings / Popup Definition, that should ensure that Outlier's definition always comes up by default in the popup.

 

[asun]

Thanks Mike! Explanation makes total sense, and it’s good to hear I didn’t miss a setting that already exists. Otoh, I’m finding myself frustrated more often than I’m finding the continuity link from one dictionary to another useful. Can I put in a feature request to make it configurable?

Thanks for the tip on the popup dictionary; I already have it set this way =). I meant the navigation from popup dictionary, through arrow button, to dictionary definition. That is also set up to bump the referencing dictionary to the top, I assume for the same reason as above.

Not sure if you’ve already considered it, but one approach I’ve seen is to keep the same order but scroll to the referencing section. This could still achieve the goal of preserving continuity on navigation. But for my usage I would still prefer consistent order but no auto-scrolling - that’s what feels most stable to me.

 

[mikelove]

The big problem with that idea is variants; sometimes one dictionary might have a slightly different traditional or Mandarin or Cantonese version than another one, and the first dictionary also gets treated as the default for those things as far as what appears in the header / flashcard matching / etc. In fact, it's possible that your preferred dictionary might not even precisely match the text in the original link or reader document.

So to get what you're describing, we would either have to break the connection to the selected text - so the header / flashcards / etc would not necessarily match what you looked up - or break the connection to the first dictionary - so you would no longer know which dictionary the information in the headword was based on. And if you created a flashcard from the definition screen, it would likewise either not match the text you looked up or not match the first definition, which would be extremely confusing if you then went back and found you didn't actually have a flashcard for the word you thought you had just added. (this is actually a particularly big problem with Outlier because it's a 字典 and doesn't give much thought to pronunciation variants whereas most of our other dictionaries do)

All that being said, in our next major update there are a whole lot more customization options in this area and you'll probably be able to rig it up to force the definitions into your preferred sort order if that's really what you want. But I can't imagine us ever making it a default / easy-to-enable setting - it causes too many other problems.

 

[asun]

Thanks for the inside look at the complexities here - really appreciate your time invested to seriously consider my humble feedback. I understand that nothing is promised on feature set or timeline, but happy to have another reason to look forward to future updates.