Experimental B4 w/ Instant Access

[mikelove]

Is now available at:

http://www.pleco.com/beta/pd2b4-iatest.zip

To install, simply replace your current 2.0 application file with the new one from this archive -make sure to exit the software first on Windows Mobile.

Post any feedback in this thread. While this release does include a lot of bug fixes, we're still working on many other bugs - this isn't intended to be a new beta, it's just a test version to get a couple of new features widely-distributed and stress tested as soon as possible.

The main new addition is the Instant Access system for looking up words in other applications on your Palm/PPC; it's now available under the "External" panel in Preferences, and since it's on by default, in WM you'll see a little Pleco icon pop up in your taskbar as soon as you launch the new version for the first time. So please try it out and let us know if it works, how well it works, whether or not it causes any crashes / weird behavior in other parts of your system, etc. Just highlight a word in any application and tap on the Instant Access icon or press the assigned Instant Access launch button to try it out - we've tested it with the built-in SMS functions on both Palm and Windows Mobile, so it should be able to translate your SMSes if nothing else.

Also, on the Palm end specifically we've now moved the font rendering code over to ARM, so the software should feel a good bit snappier on Palm. and since moving code to ARM is kind of tricky we're very interested to hear about any new crashes or new font-rendering glitches since Beta 4. The delay-before-search bug should also be fixed now, so the biggest remaining performance issue on Palm is the painfully slow startup time; we think we've got a fix for that too, but since it requires a change to our data files it won't appear until Beta 5.

However, there's no need to report bugs in this release that were also in Beta 4 - we're still working on a lot of those bugs. (we'd be happy to hear about Beta 4 bugs that have now been fixed, though)

Beta 5 should be out in a few more weeks, and there's a good chance it'll be the last beta; at the very least we should have everything actually working and pretty much all of the bugs reported here fixed by then.

Happy Mini-Golden Week,

--mikelove

 

[ldolse]

Just tried it out... doesn't appear to be too HTC Touch compatible.

The titlebar option doesn't work with default Touch settings - I think this is more HTC's fault though. Basically on the Touch they added a bit of logic to make it more finger friendly. When you click the title bar it creates a big balloon with large versions of all the icons there so they can easily be clicked with a finger or thumb. It looks like when you click on this that whatever you had selected becomes unhighlighted, so IA isn't able to grab anything when you finally click the icon. The setting which controls this is 'Enable Large Start Menu'. I disabled this option temporarily, without it I can use the title bar method, but that Touch feature is pretty handy.

Option 2, 'From Button' doesn't seem to be complete. I click (none), and it says "Press Now". After that I tried to click the button I wanted and nothing happened - 'Press Now' didn't go away. It did recognize the volume control button and changed the pref, but it wasn't able to use this as the OS seems to own it at a lower level. In any event I wasn't able to get this working in any way.

Option 3, 'On Program Activate' is the most promising so far, but it only halfway works. I already have Pleco tied to a button to activate it. So when I highlight text and click the button I DO get the instant access pop-up, which is really cool. The problem is once I click ok to continue reading the message Pleco launches the full program, which is really annoying.

Ideally I'd to be able to use just a single button to launch Pleco and have some way of choosing between the full app and Instant Access. Some ideas:

• (using WM button settings, not Pleco) Single press for IA when text is highlighted, clicking OK finishes session, if nothing is highlighted bring up full app
• Short button press for IA, long button press to bring up the app.

CLI arguments might be one way to handle some of the different behaviours, since you can add the arguments to a shortcust file.

I also didn't see a way to skip instant access but still use the highlighting function for launching the whole app. You can get it to look at the clipboard, but it will ignore the highlighted text. This may be moot if this can be fully fleshed out to have a working option on all platforms.

I tested this out with SMS messages and SPB Insight - neither of these have ever worked before, and now the characters are looked up easily, very nice!

The last bit of feedback is the matching algorithm - it pulls up far too many matches. It's seems like it's trying to find characters you may not have highlighted, which isn't neccessarily a bad thing, but at the same time it completely ignores which ones you highlight. For example, I highlighted 当你 in a text. Of course there is no word 当你, so it only showed me 当. This is all well and good, but it also showed me a list of 201 possible matches with 当, basically matching every word in the dictionary starting with that character, ignoring the fact that I also highlighted 你, so none of those match.

 

[ipsi]

Destroyed my 2.0 preferences, which was kinda weird... It does seem to be keeping them now, not sure why it didn't work first time around.

It's heinously slow on Palm. I thought it wasn't working at first, but it is. It's just taking a good couple of seconds to happen. It's quite fast, and displays properly though, once it actually loads up. It's lacking a text field to enter text now. I found that fairly useful, especially if it didn't pick up text from wherever I was trying to copy from.

On the plus side, Pleco seems to be much faster overall now, and the 5-way works about as it did in 1.0.3 (well, nearly - it skips past longer entries rather than scrolling them. Not sure which I prefer yet). The new preferences for full-screen handwriting don't work yet (what a surprise).

New Bug: Tapping link in IA gives a soft reset. Oops.
New Bug: Left 1jian4 in the text box when leaving Pleco. Used IA, and it came up with that, saying 1/0. Can't replicate it now, not sure what was up with that.
New Bug: IA doesn't work well with received text messages on my 680. It works just fine if I'm looking up text I've got selected in a text field, but if I try and call it up when something's highlighted in a read-only field, it just doesn't work at all with basic or clipboard. Works fine with Experimental though. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. Experimental also de-selects whatever was highlighted, though I assume that's supposed to happen?

Bug Fixed: Incorrect underlining for links (they worked fine, but didn't display properly, usually underling far more text than they should have).

Suggestion: It would be nice if, when you're inside Pleco, pushing the IA button actually brought up the pop-up dictionary for anything that's selected. That would make things much easier for me, I think. .

 

[haraldalbrecht]

b4ia: much better

The problem with the input delay is now gone on my Palm TX (I just copied the new Pleco Engine.prc over the old beta4 in main memory using FileZ). Together with the speed improvements this makes PD2 now quite useable (as 1.0.x was). Thank you for the interim fix, Mike!

Toolbar buttons are now finally configurable and stay there (does not lose all buttons anymore whenever I try to configure buttons).

While I never had any issues with the startup delay (yes, it's noticeable but I typically use PD for long periods of time without switching to other applications) but especially the new rendering is quite noticeable in its speed improvement.

Thank you for making b4ie available!

-- Harald

 

[beirne]

Thank you very much for bringing Instant Access back. I'm glad you thought of a way to do it. I don't use it all the time but when I need it it's very handy.

Having said that, I found a bug when I run it on my Palm TX. It has happened both times I've tried these steps:

1. Have Pleco installed without sound files
2. Bring up a word in Instant Access. I used 经常.
3. Tap on the speaker symbol. No sound comes out, of course.
4. Tap on 经. The Palm immediately does a soft reset.

Thanks again,

Beirne

 

[ipsi]

HWR is buggered. It doesn't work at all, and, somewhat weirdly, it somehow de-registers the HWR files on a reset, so that 1.0.3 can't access them anymore either. This is easily fixed by moving the HWR files to the SD card and back again. Don't know why 1.0.3 couldn't find them, as they were still in Internal Memory...

When trying to use the full-screen HWR in 2.0B4IA, it'll happily let you draw the characters, but pressing the recognise button only clears the screen, it doesn't actually show any characters for you to input. It works ok on the separate input screen, but even then, it only shows one line of characters rather than 2 (for the candidates for entry).

I'm fairly sure you only need to enter and exit 2.0 for this to happen, so it should be easily reproducable. Device is in my signature, plus most software running in the background.

 

[mikelove]

Glad to hear it's mostly-working for most of you.

ldolse - just found that bug you mentioned with On Activate, not sure how we missed that - anyway it's now fixed for B5. And it's already supposed to bring up the full application when there's nothing highlighted - does it not do that now? For hardware buttons we use WM's built-in Hotkey function, so if the volume control isn't working it does sound like that's being done at a lower level - honestly on a button-poor device like the Touch hardware button control probably won't be a good option anyway. And good point about the matching algorithm, I think there's a preference option on that that's either mis-labeled or not working correctly. (this week is Get All Preferences Working Week, incidentally, so there'll be no more of the checkboxes-which-don't-do-anything in B5)

ipsi - yeah, as I said slow startup time is something we still need to fix, but we think we've come up with a way to do it. Those full-screen handwriting preferences have actually mostly gone away now - we ended up having the fullscreen palette always go behind the list (as in 1.0), replacing the radical/keyboard buttons with one tap-hold button which lets you choose any of the input palette modes (fullscreen and regular HWR being listed separately), and leaving the backspace button always enabled since that keeps the number of buttons the same whether or not you're currently drawing a character. Experimental should probably be called something else, it's been Experimental for about 2 years now and doesn't seem to be causing any serious problems for people using it. And the IA button already does pop up the dictionary when you're in Pleco on WM, just isn't working on Palm yet.

haraldalbrecht - thanks! Glad to hear the software's now usable for you again.

beirne - thanks for the bug report, looks like this should be easy to fix.

ipsi #2 - not sure what's going on with the characters not showing up, maybe the boxes got resized by a pixel or two so there's no longer enough room for the expected number of rows of characters. The inaccessible files are caused by Palm OS not clearing the "busy" flag on them after a soft reset (so that it still thinks they're in use and hence refuses to open them again) - we already check for / clear that flag on Pleco-format data files but we still need to do it with the recognizer (a bit harder since we don't actually control its file-handling code).

 

[neilperks]

Some really strange things happening with this new beta on my Toshiba e800 (which is in general a good solid reliable WM4 machine). When I start the new Pleco 2.0 IA beta the alarm light on the front of the machine starts to flash (this indicates that a timer alarm has activated) and can't be stopped. If I exit Pleco one of 2 things occurs; if the hold switch is on (ie all the ppc buttons are locked) the light continues to flash; if the hold switch is off (all ppc buttons are active )the light goes out without pressing any buttons. Its almost as if Pleco is activating a timer alarm which can't be stopped until the programme is exited.

The previous beta without IA worked really well without any major problems.

Also trying to access IA from any other programme (I assume that Pleco needs to be running in the background for IA to operate?) simply locks up the machine as soon as you hit the IA icon and you have to do a soft reset. Maybe I'm doing something wrong here as I'm not 100% sure how IA works; I'm assuming that you simply highlight the text (say in pocket word) and tap the icon to operate it?.

Cheers

Neil

 

[neilperks]

Just a quick follow on from my last email. I have found if I uncheck the "from Taskbar icon" setting in preferences this stops the flashing light from appearing, but obviously this means I can't access IA in this way. I can now access IA through defining a hard button and this seems to work ok without crashing the machine, but unfortunately it also deletes the selected text from the source document.

One last question, what exactly does the "on program activate" setting do. Sorry if it seems a stupid question

Cheers


Neil

 

[Shadowdh]

HI there, just some of my thoughts re this new exp release... I like it, it seems smoother, faster and more polished. The IA is pretty cool and seems to work fine so far (although I have yet to really give it a thrashing and put it through some major paces) however, I do have one problem that is a bit of a thorn in my side... the bookmarks worked ok for a bit then decided to delete themselves and now wont save at all when I exit the reader... ie, when I reach point in the doc and bookmark it as long as I stay in the reader its there and I can go to that point (which is so damn cool by the way) but when I exit the program it does not save the bookmark, whether I leave it as "new bookmark" the default name or give it my own. This is a shame as I really like that feature... any ideas...?

 

[mikelove]

neilperks - that taskbar option was actually supposed to be disabled on WM4; the system we use to put the icon on the taskbar doesn't work the same on WM4 as on WM5/6 and we haven't yet come up with an equivalent substitute. It actually is a timer alarm, but on WM5 it's a silent/hidden alarm that doesn't flash any lights or otherwise do much of anything besides putting up an icon. I'm not sure why it's deleting that text, though - perhaps the hardware button press is still being forwarded to the other application after it's used to launch Pleco. "On Activate" probably should be renamed - it's invoked by launching Pleco if Pleco is already running in the background; this means you can use any of the dozens if not hundreds of different Windows Mobile program launcher utilities to activate Instant Access if you prefer that to one of the built-in methods.

Shadowdh - we're still working on debugging the bookmark system; sounds from that message like your bookmarks file might have been corrupted. Could you possibly send me a copy of that file? It should be called "Pleco Document Bookmarks" and be in the root directory of your PDA's memory. (we've avoided using our fancy new SQLite database system for bookmarks storage because it's kind of slow, but the file is simple enough that it should be relatively uncorruptible once we've gotten the last few bugs out)

 

[Shadowdh]

Hi Mike, yeah man I will send that to ya as soon as the phone stops charging (on a plug at the moment so that takes the usb socket) and just to let you know that when I have the icon in the task bar (at the top of the screen) it takes the notification slot and at the bottom of my screen it shows that I have a notification...

 

[Shadowdh]

Ok I looked for the file to t it up to send and I cannot find Pleco Document Bookmarks in the root dir, or on the card in any dir that has anything to do with Pleco or in the program files or anywhere, however when I make a bookmark and then go into my root dir (without closing P2 or the reader) I have a file called plr something (in the two cases I checked it was 05AB and 9C91).... thoughts?

 

[mikelove]

Oops, looks like that file is actually marked as "hidden" - we use the same function to access it as a couple of other more-temporary files which are also hidden and forgot to clear the hidden flag for more permanent ones like bookmarks. Go to Tools \ Folder Options \ View tab in regular Windows and set it to show hidden files and folders and it should then come up if you look in My Computer \ Mobile Device \ My Windows Mobile-based Device.

We haven't yet figured out how to get that "Notification" command to stop showing at the bottom of the Today screen - the whole taskbar icon system is a little glitchy in general, actually, so we may end up swapping its place in the preferences screen with On Activate and leaving it disabled by default.

 

[Shadowdh]

Ok Mate I found it and then sent it to ya just now. Its not that big a file (only 1kb on the attachment). Hopefully you will get it soon. Cheers

 

[ipsi]

On the HWR: Interesting. I'm sure that didn't happen with the Previous betas. Has something changed there? Oh well. It's not a big issue.

Fair enough on the rest. I don't suppose you know of a way to remove pocket tunes' binding for the side button (not the 2 volume ones, but the other one)? As I prefer to have Pleco's IA bound to that, and it's annoying to have my music stop/start whenever I use IA... I prefer to go in to pTunes to stop the music, as otherwise pTunes is still technically running, which means I lose my playlist when my 680 crashes...

 

[ldolse]

Just getting a chance to reply now.. with on activate fixed as described that will be the perfect option for me, I'll go with that. I do indeed come straight up with the full app if I don't have text highlighted.

I came up with a new bug though, and this one takes down the whole phone - I think this is basically what Neilperks ran into, but I'm seeing in on WM6. When Windows has multiple notification icons in the title bar it will coalesce them into a little thought bubble. You click the bubble, and this will allow you to select the hidden icons. On my system I'll see this bubble with the Pleco IA icon and one other icon - say the voicemail or message notification. If the IA icon is exposed directly in the title bar then there's no problem. However if it's in the bubble then the whole phone basically crashes when I click the bubble first and then the IA icon. Looks to me like it actually hangs Pleco, the Today screen, and the Phone App, the underlying OS isn't locked up, but it's completely incaccessible. A soft reset is the only way to fix it.

 

[neilperks]

Thanks for the reply Mike.

On the Toshiba e800 you can choose either the 4 direction buttons or the centre selection button; the other buttons aren't recognised. I had it set to the centre selection button which, as I said, also deleted the highlighted text from the host application (Pocket Word). If I deselect this button in Pleco, pressing the button in the host application has no effect, so not sure why its doing this only when its selected as the Pleco button. I have now changed the selection button to the right direction key, and this works ok and doesn't delete the text, so a bit of a work around rather than a solution.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Neil

 

[ldolse]

Another new issue with the title bar option - on the Today screen this appears to insert itself in the notification queue, so 'Notification' shows up on the soft key where the calendar normally sits. This typically shows up for SMS, Email, and Voicemail, and you can dismiss it after being notified. With Pleco clicking 'Notification' launches the full Pleco app. The event doesn't get dismissed, so you can't get back the normal use of that softkey until you exit pleco or disable the title bar option. Not the end of the world, but if the side effect could be worked around I think that would be a bit better.

 

[sfrrr]

My report on the new IAbeta 2:

BEFORE: I'd enter pinyin (using either system keyboard or PD keyboard) and, voila, there would be the definition of the word as well as a list of similar pinyin words.
NOW: If I just enter pinyin without writing in the tones, I get no definition nor a list of possible hits. Must have the tones. Sometimes, I can't get a definition at all unless I tap on the dictionary icon in the toolbar.

BEFORE: If the first word in the hit list wasn't the correct one, I'd just read down the list and then tap with my stylus on the one I wanted.
NOW: If I tap on another hit in the list with the stylus, PD switches to a hit list of words or expressions that contain that first word on the hit list. For example, let's say there are three characters and three meanings for di4chan3. The first in the hit list means earthworm; the second means, oh, let's say, noise from the earth; and the third means real property. If I tap on the third (real property), I get a list of words and phrases that use earthworm. In order to see the definition of the third hit (real property), I either have to scroll down using my middle hardware button or I have to use the Next Entry arrow up in my toolbar.

IA works every time, as long as PD is running. It would be nice if PD's IA could run as what we used to call a TSA and is now called, I believe, a startup item.
Categories still don't work--PD doesn't retain them from one use to the next.
Backspace key still doesn't work on PD keyboard when inputting from the main screen. On the dedicated, full page input screen, backspace does work.

There's more, but my list is upstairs and I'm not.

Sandra