Happy new owner

[Mads]

I just bought your OCECD for palm and so far i have been very pleased with it and I'm sure it will become an important tool in my studies. However after messing around with it for a week I found that there are few things i thought would be cool to see in a future update of the program. Since you take time to listen to your customers (which i think is great) I might as well spill my guts...

1. Sometimes i want to look up a word that consists of 2 or more characters. The way it is now i have to go in and out of the handwritten input screen several times. It would be nice if i could stay in the Handwritten input screen until finding all the characters.

2. I know that the dictionary is based on the book, but I have been a little disappointed at not finding basic words like names of countries (tried looking up Denmark, Canada and Poland). Is there any chance that the vocabulary will be expanded in future updates?

3. Some translations seem a little odd to me (mind you that i'm still a beginner in the chinese language, so i'm not pretending to be an expert here). I looked up the word "computer" and got the translation "dian4zi3ji4suan4ji1". Now i'm sure this is correct but as far as i know "computer" is called "dian4nao3". I then looked up dian4nao3 and got computer!?

In my experience, this is a general problem when working with chinese dictionaries. Even after looking up a word i often still find myself unsure if i can trust the translation to be up-to-date. Many times my tutor has laughed at me when I've used words that i looked up by myself

4. At times i find the layout a bit confusing. It would be nice to have a clear and more defined spacing between different definitions. It would also be nice with an abrevation explanation.

Ok thats all for now. Keep up the good work.

Mads

 

[mikelove]

1) We're looking at a number of different ways to better integrate the handwriting recognition into the interface in a future release; there's really no reason it even needs to be on a separate screen at all. But whatever the new interface looks like it will almost certainly allow you to enter two characters more quickly...

2) We're not really allowed to add to the Oxford database, but we've licensed two big new dictionaries for our upcoming PlecoDict product (which will be heavily discounted for Oxford customers), one of which, the New World Press English-Chinese Dictionary, contains roughly twice the content of the Oxford's English-Chinese half and includes virtually every world country and its capital. Additionally, our friends at Wenlin and UH Press are working on an English-to-Chinese version of the ABC Chinese-to-English dictionary we're using in PlecoDict, and we're hoping to license that at some point as well.

3) Well there is a reason they call it the Oxford CONCISE dictionary... yes, there are a few confusing omissions like that, though overall we feel that the Oxford does as well as any dictionary of its size in terms of completeness. I just checked and the New World Press dictionary lists both "dianzijisuanji" and "diannao" - I've seen both used in some places though certainly the shorter diannao is more widespread at this point. (anyone with more experience in regional dialects is free to chime in here...)

4) Assuming we manage to work out some issues with Oxford, the update this summer will probably add rich text, which will make definitions etc a lot easier to read; as for abbreviations, the instruction manual (online at http://www.pleco.com/oxfordmanual.html#abbrev) includes a guide to those. We're also planning to make some long-needed interface improvements, such as making the layout a little more adjustable than it is now.

Thanks a lot for submitting these,

Michael Love
Pleco Software