Experimental 1.0 Windows Mobile 6 Fix Posted

[mikelove]

So I had a flash of insight today while working on the full-screen handwriting recognizer code for Pleco 2.0, and I whipped up this tiny fix (literally 2 lines of code changed) which - astonishingly enough - actually seems to get rid of the crashing-when-selecting-text issue with the current version of PlecoDict on Windows Mobile 6 (!). The only tiny downside is that the input field is no longer given back the keyboard focus after you select text, so you'll have to tap inside of it manually if you want to go back from selecting text to typing something with the keyboard, but that seems like a pretty small price to pay to avoid the crashes.

Anyway, the fix is available at:
http://www.pleco.com/pd103b-ppc.zip

To install it, exit PlecoDict completely (using the Quit command in the Dict menu), connect your Pocket PC to your desktop, open up My Computer, Mobile Device, My Windows Mobile-Based Device (if it exists), Program Files, PlecoDict, and replace PlecoDict.exe with the new PlecoDict.exe that's inside of this .zip archive.

If a few WM6 users could test this and let me know if it fixes the problem for them too, that would be extremely helpful - if this works we'll get it packed into the official PD1 distribution (with a more user-friendly update installer etc) within a day or two. And hopefully see a commensurate reduction in the "when will 2.0 be ready" e-mails

 

[sfrrr]

Yes, Sir!

(I now have three working PDAs: Axim x51v running WM5; Cingular 8323 phone, running WM5 phone edition; iPAQ 211 running WM6, although I haven't started to set it up--but will forthwith.)

Sandra

 

[ldolse]

I got really excited when you posted this - I've been feeling in limbo since other circumstances required me to upgrade to wm6.

Good news - The crash is gone - Yay!!!

Bad news - Copy to input field seems to be broken. It doesn't copy the highlighted text, it just copies the currently displayed headword. Copy to input is pretty crucial.

Worse news - copy paste seems to be completely broken (inside of Pleco). When the above failed I tried copying the highlighted text, then pasting it in - it doesn't even appear to be in the paste buffer. Copy paste does work from outside apps into Pleco, as long as you do it very carefully to avoid the windows mobile copy/paste bug

Speaking of the other copy paste bug, that should also be a quick fix now that the cause is understood, shouldn't it? As long as you're considering a new release I'd love for that to go into 1.0 as well. Let me know if I need to dig up that old thread to jog your memory.

Update:
I just re-read the copy/paste bug thread - http://plecoforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1018
I forgot some of the ins and outs of it - looks like fixing it would be a bit more of a feature request. An alternative, possibly easier fix is that the preference to control instant access doesn't work - even if you disable it in the prefs it still attempts instant access, which kills the paste buffer.

 

[mikelove]

Oops, completely forgot about the other place in 1.0.3 where those same two lines of code appear - fixed now, updated version at:

http://www.pleco.com/pd103b-ppc.zip

Which I've just now tested on WM6 and confirmed fixes copy-to-input, copy to clipboard, magnify, and switch directions.

And yes, that really is more of a feature request type thing - in hindsight, given how long 2.0 has taken to get out we probably should have put out a 1.1-type release to take care of some of these annoyances, but with the finish line in sight on 2.0 I think it's better if we don't get sidetracked at this point - the text-selection issue is both severe and now easy-to-fix enough that it merits some special treatment.

 

[ldolse]

That new build resolves all those issues on my system, very nice, Thanks!

Regarding the other copy paste thing, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, no problem.

 

[mikelove]

Great! Glad to hear it. We'll probably send out an e-mail announcement of the patch at the same time as we're announcing the new dictionary licenses (and the new pricing system to go with them, which we're taking great pains to ensure does not penalize people who already upgraded to 2.0 or bought 1.0 recently).