How to add new dictionary entry for rare characters

I had to look up a person's name. They are from Taiwan. Their name is : 蘇㛢寧. The middle character could only be found by hand writing it in. It doesn't show up under any of the radical searches, etc.

So, I tried to add it as a special user entry. However, when doing that, the new dictionary edit window doesn't copy the character into either the traditional or simplified headword field (perhaps it should copy to both when it can't decide?), and there doesn't seem to be any way to enter characters in those fields.

There also doesn't seem to be a way to edit/change any of the information on the 字 info tab.

When I press the "Words" tab, shouldn't it list my user dictionary entry? Obviously, in this case, it's the only entry in the system for that character...

Second, as an aside, when I upgraded to beta5, it said that my custom dictionary entry was deleted, when I used history to "look it up". I had to save it back again.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
stephanhodges said:
I had to look up a person's name. They are from Taiwan. Their name is : 蘇㛢寧. The middle character could only be found by hand writing it in. It doesn't show up under any of the radical searches, etc.

So, I tried to add it as a special user entry. However, when doing that, the new dictionary edit window doesn't copy the character into either the traditional or simplified headword field (perhaps it should copy to both when it can't decide?), and there doesn't seem to be any way to enter characters in those fields.

It seems to be a CJK Extension A character, meaning it's in a group of fairly rare characters that aren't in the most widely-used Chinese encoding standards (and aren't supported by a lot of computers). Were the other characters copied correctly, so that only that one was missing?

There's no way to use our handwriting input system to enter characters in those fields yet (doable, but a LOT of work since Android isn't really designed to let apps easily use their own IMEs); however, you can download a free Chinese IME for your phone like Baidu's or Google's and enter them using that.

stephanhodges said:
There also doesn't seem to be a way to edit/change any of the information on the 字 info tab.

No, the database for that is fixed and can't be changed except by us in a software update. If you've found a mistake / correction, though, the data's all from the Unihan database so you could contact Unicode to let them know about it.

stephanhodges said:
When I press the "Words" tab, shouldn't it list my user dictionary entry? Obviously, in this case, it's the only entry in the system for that character...

It should, yes - sounds like an obscure character bug.

stephanhodges said:
Second, as an aside, when I upgraded to beta5, it said that my custom dictionary entry was deleted, when I used history to "look it up". I had to save it back again.

That's actually a bug in history rather than in the user dictionaries, but thanks for reporting it.
 
Were the other characters copied correctly, so that only that one was missing?

I only tried to enter the middle character. Could make a dictionary entry, but both simplified and traditional head character fields were/are empty and no way to put anything in there, apparently.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
stephanhodges said:
Were the other characters copied correctly, so that only that one was missing?

I only tried to enter the middle character. Could make a dictionary entry, but both simplified and traditional head character fields were/are empty and no way to put anything in there, apparently.

But you can create dictionary entries with other characters normally?
 
I don't see a way to create new dictionary (user) entries from the text reader. I would have expected something like:
1) Highlight characters
2) If not in any dictionary, then the pop up window would just show characters and pinyin (now, it only shows definition for first character)
3) Would then allow me to "add to user dictionary" (hopefully it let's me also select which user dictionary if I have more than one?)

I CAN add it as a card when I press and hold the plus button. Ah, yes. That was one of the settings that was reset to default when upgrading to b5... I'll check if I can get it back to "define new dict entry"...

Hope the "default dictionary" per document feature is on the list somewhere.

Can't enter characters when defining a new card OR new dictionary entry from the flashcard browser.

Deleting the card I just added, and then pressing on "back" (bottom left) button, I noticed that the card still showed up in the list (flashcard browser). Pressing on that card (even though deleted) caused Pleco to crash.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
stephanhodges said:
I don't see a way to create new dictionary (user) entries from the text reader. I would have expected something like:
1) Highlight characters
2) If not in any dictionary, then the pop up window would just show characters and pinyin (now, it only shows definition for first character)
3) Would then allow me to "add to user dictionary" (hopefully it let's me also select which user dictionary if I have more than one?)

I CAN add it as a card when I press and hold the plus button. Ah, yes. That was one of the settings that was reset to default when upgrading to b5... I'll check if I can get it back to "define new dict entry"...

Yes, that should definitely be working too now. Auto-detecting Pinyin for words we don't know is pretty much impossible - we can make a reasonable guess but to really do a good job we'd have to put up a prompt to force you to select the correct Pinyin for characters we're not sure about.

stephanhodges said:
Hope the "default dictionary" per document feature is on the list somewhere.

For now we're sticking with "sticky dict selection," already on by default - once you switch to a particular dictionary in the reader the system should keep using that dictionary in the reader until you switch again. If we change that it'll probably be to make it sticky on a per-document basis rather than to add a dedicated setting to the bookmarks screen or somewhere.

stephanhodges said:
Can't enter characters when defining a new card OR new dictionary entry from the flashcard browser.

Download a Pinyin keyboard for your phone and that should let you do that.

stephanhodges said:
Deleting the card I just added, and then pressing on "back" (bottom left) button, I noticed that the card still showed up in the list (flashcard browser). Pressing on that card (even though deleted) caused Pleco to crash.

Quite right - thanks for the bug report.
 
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