Great job on PlecoDict! I've purchased it even though it's still technically a beta. Seems completely solid on my Treo 650 and everything works nicely.
I have three feature requests for future versions.
1. When I'm looking up a word, it'd be nice if PlecoDict gave me the matches from both languages. I'm frequently finding myself accidentally entering an English word when I'm in Chinese-to-English mode. If I enter, say, "driver" into the text field, there's no way that can be Pinyin and it'd be nice if the dictionary automatically did the right thing.
2. A mode in the flashcard app to test for correct stroke order. Since your docs say stroke order is important to the handwriting recognizer, I infer that the correct stroke order is already in the database. I'd love to have the app correct me when my stroke order is wrong. If it could also *demonstrate* the correct order, that'd be even niftier.
3. (The biggie for me.) Speech, preferably recorded but decent-quality synthesis would be okay too. I'm still very much a beginning student, but it is apparent to me that Pinyin is not a very precise representation of the pronunciation of Mandarin words. Right now all I can get from looking up a word is a general idea of how to pronounce it; hearing a native speaker say it a few times would be a great learning tool. Even hearing a machine voice would help me think of the word in terms of its sound (I learn sounds and written words with different parts of my brain.)
Right now I'm using a shareware dictionary called Yinghan, which has a speech synthesizer. The quality is not very good but it's still better than nothing. In all other respects PlecoDict easily blows Yinghan out of the water, but that one feature is enough to make me keep both programs on my Treo.
On the PocketPC, there are several talking dictionaries, e.g. the one by hnhsoft.com which includes recorded native speakers. They told me they're working on a PalmOS port but it's still many months away. PlecoDict is a much nicer product in other respects so I'd much rather you guys get there first!
I have three feature requests for future versions.
1. When I'm looking up a word, it'd be nice if PlecoDict gave me the matches from both languages. I'm frequently finding myself accidentally entering an English word when I'm in Chinese-to-English mode. If I enter, say, "driver" into the text field, there's no way that can be Pinyin and it'd be nice if the dictionary automatically did the right thing.
2. A mode in the flashcard app to test for correct stroke order. Since your docs say stroke order is important to the handwriting recognizer, I infer that the correct stroke order is already in the database. I'd love to have the app correct me when my stroke order is wrong. If it could also *demonstrate* the correct order, that'd be even niftier.
3. (The biggie for me.) Speech, preferably recorded but decent-quality synthesis would be okay too. I'm still very much a beginning student, but it is apparent to me that Pinyin is not a very precise representation of the pronunciation of Mandarin words. Right now all I can get from looking up a word is a general idea of how to pronounce it; hearing a native speaker say it a few times would be a great learning tool. Even hearing a machine voice would help me think of the word in terms of its sound (I learn sounds and written words with different parts of my brain.)
Right now I'm using a shareware dictionary called Yinghan, which has a speech synthesizer. The quality is not very good but it's still better than nothing. In all other respects PlecoDict easily blows Yinghan out of the water, but that one feature is enough to make me keep both programs on my Treo.
On the PocketPC, there are several talking dictionaries, e.g. the one by hnhsoft.com which includes recorded native speakers. They told me they're working on a PalmOS port but it's still many months away. PlecoDict is a much nicer product in other respects so I'd much rather you guys get there first!
