Fill in the blank flashcard input suggestion

[erans]

I'm wondering if there's a better way to handle pinyin input for the fill in the blank flashcards. The keyboard is okay and should remain an option, but I find myself fat-fingering keys and spending a lot of time deleting and re-entering pinyin when I'm doing flashcards. Most people studying Chinese would know that "xkng" isn't pinyin, so I think a better system would be an "initial/final/tone" sort of keyboard. User is presented with all possible initials, selects one, then all possible finals, selects one, then tones. I think this would reduce typos and make fill in the blank much easier to use and more efficient. Maybe it'd be hard to implement for some reason that I can't think of right now, but I do think it'd work better in most cases. Just a thought.

 

[mikelove]

I'm wondering if there's a better way to handle pinyin input for the fill in the blank flashcards. The keyboard is okay and should remain an option, but I find myself fat-fingering keys and spending a lot of time deleting and re-entering pinyin when I'm doing flashcards. Most people studying Chinese would know that "xkng" isn't pinyin, so I think a better system would be an "initial/final/tone" sort of keyboard. User is presented with all possible initials, selects one, then all possible finals, selects one, then tones. I think this would reduce typos and make fill in the blank much easier to use and more efficient. Maybe it'd be hard to implement for some reason that I can't think of right now, but I do think it'd work better in most cases. Just a thought.

Good idea, but actually we're planning to get rid of the Pleco onscreen keyboard altogether and just switch to the system one now; the interface gets a little cramped when you do that on a device with a typical ~2010 vintage Android screen size (i.e., about that of the iPhone), but with 4-inch screens now considered "small" there's plenty of space for it. This is why the keyboard is rather primitive - we didn't quite have our Android IME support working well enough yet to make the system IME the default, but that's where we're eventually going with it.

However, while you might encounter the occasional bug with it we actually do offer the system IME as an option now - Test settings / Use builtin input method - so if you can find an IME that enters Pinyin the way you want you should be able to switch to it pretty easily.

 

[burdenofhope]

but with 4-inch screens now considered "small" there's plenty of space for it.

I really dislike this trend of phones getting bigger and bigger. I have a Desire S (3.7") and before that I had a Samsung Omnia (3.2" I think) and both of them were enough for me. I really don't understand why phones have to get larger and larger screens(4.7", 4.8"). But apparently people like it.

 

[mikelove]

I really dislike this trend of phones getting bigger and bigger. I have a Desire S (3.7") and before that I had a Samsung Omnia (3.2" I think) and both of them were enough for me. I really don't understand why phones have to get larger and larger screens(4.7", 4.8"). But apparently people like it.

I feel the same way, but it's become kind of an Android differentiator now, and in fact I'd even argue that some of the changes in Android 4.0 are pushing manufacturers further in that direction (mainly the narrow menu buttons, which would be decidedly on the small side on a sub-4-inch device).