Feature request (various things)

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
No, it'll be a while - we have a pretty large backlog of new features and flashcards specifically are (finally finally finally) going to get a big redesign in a series of updates starting in a month or so and extending probably right through to the launch of Android N and iOS 10 Beta next summer.
 

DonCachopo

举人
A request. In the organize cards section, if you press the search button when you are inside a category, add automatically add a filter for that category in the search window
 

DonCachopo

举人
Another: in the dictionary entries I can see the tags, but is there any way to know the categories the flashcard belongs to? If not, it would be a nice addition
Thanks
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Makes sense. At the moment we only list the tagged categories, but you can see the full list of categories through Card Info which you can get to in one tap through the [+] button if you set the duplicate handling behavior in Settings / Flashcards to "Card Info" instead of "Prompt."
 

Daniel C

秀才
Two requests:
1) With the iPad Pro Apple has just released a new pen. Would it be possible to have a feature that would use this stylus for handwriting practice? At the moment you have those animated diagrams which I find immeasurably useful. It would be good, however, if you have a button that opens up a page with ruled lines for practising handwriting. With all the extra space of the iPad pro (and most ipads) you could probably have all the stages of writing the character presented sequentially and then still have plenty of space for practice (so basically an electronic version of handwriting textbooks). I know in the flashcard feature you can practice writing but since there are no ruled lines, the characters always seem rather messy and I fear writing on the screen like this makes my handwriting worse!

2) iOS 9 introduces multitasking capabilities. Would it be possible to have Pleco in split view or in that new sidebar? This would be great for when one is using WeChat or Safari.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
1) We actually have an option for ruled lines already in the handwriting input box at least (see Settings / Handwriting / Background). We're thinking about a number of possibilities for what we might do with the iPad Pencil but it's really a question of how many people will buy it - a $100 stylus for an $800 tablet is a bit of a tall order and if we've only got a handful of users who own them it might be tough to justify, but if it proves to be a huge success and people start replacing their laptops with iPads that would obviously be a different story.

2) Already working in our development builds :)
 

Peter

榜眼
I know Pleco is a Chinese dictionary, but is there any way to get an unicode emoji descriptions in the popup dictionary.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Not at the moment, no - is this for deciphering text messages? (we're kind of skeptical whether that would be effective since so much of what happens in LINE / WeChat / etc is done via proprietary emoji and stickers and such rather than official Unicode ones)
 

Peter

榜眼
Yes. Unicode emoji only. There's so many of them with similar appearance. Just a thought bubble.

Larger icons/stickers haven't been an issue.
 

Peter

榜眼
Idea: For examples sentences, include a translate button beside the speaker button (e.g. GF dict examples).
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
TBH I'm wary of going too crazy with Google Translate - the results it produces for Chinese aren't actually very accurate, the big thrust of Translate support in 3.2.23 was actually about using it to translate non-Chinese languages to other non-Chinese languages in definitions (Ricci and other forthcoming dictionaries to English and English dictionaries to whatever other language the user is more comfortable with). Might be worth considering a convenient option to copy example sentences to the search box, though, in conjunction with the option we're already planning to let you have more than one search box (dive into a search box from a magnifying glass icon without losing your place in the original search).
 

Peter

榜眼
That would work. Just an idea, they're a dime a dozen.

Btw, on the topic of external "engines". Any hope for voice recognition through Baidu? While working through coursework, I read out answers into my phone to get crude, but immediate and unbiased, feedback on my speaking ability. I have found the speech recogniser in Baidu Translate (Android App) trumps the one in Google. Baidu more fussy about intonation, which as a beginner I find useful.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Can look into it, but I don't believe there's a standard way to interact with Android speech recognizers other than Google's at the moment.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We've actually got this coming out next year - much more in-depth etymology than those two.

Re Google Translate input, yes, that should be possible - just have to add it to the popup menu when you long press on a search term.
 

DrTea

Member
Important Feature Request: Ability to add images to flashcards. In the popular book Fluent Forever the author suggests Anki flashcards because you can add images to the flashcards to ingrain it into your memory better. I have been a long faithful user of Pleco and I hope you seriously consider adding it so I don't have to start using Anki instead.
 
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