iPhone version: questions/problems

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
OK, we've found the bug now - really obscure one, but it should definitely be fixed for the next update. (DeHanDict's and Unihan's attribute flags were getting switched, and one of DHD's happened to prevent Unihan from searching correctly) This was an intermittent bug but one that would happen consistently for a given Pleco installation, so it's more likely that the reinstall stopped it than that the language switch did.
 

redpixel

秀才
First of all, like everyone else, I'd like to thank you Mike for bringing Pleco to iPods/iPhones! Fantastic work :)

Secondly, I have a minor issue which might be related to the cursor-jumping bug mentioned earlier by cjgait. If I'm in "results mode" (ie. HWR not visible) after having searched for a multi-character word, and try to use the cursor (magnifying glass) to remove the first character in case the whole multi-character word wasn't found in the dictionary, it will first jump into input mode (HWR), and then jump back to the end of the line and give me the "Select/Select All/Paste" popup when I remove my finger. I then have to use the cursor again to place it after the first character and press backspace to remove it. Is this fixable or is it basically the same bug as cjgait described?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I'm not quite sure if I follow you - is this with handwriting in transparent-background mode? Could you give me the exact steps to reproduce this? Are you referring to the magnifying glass icon in the popup document reader, or the actual magnifying glass that comes up when you tap-hold to move the cursor around?
 

redpixel

秀才
Yeah, sorry, I guess my explanation was not really clear :)

I was using the standard "Instructions" background for the handwriting. I wasn't aware that the "transparent" mode was available in the iPhone Pleco as well but I found it now and it's really cool!

The magnifying glass that I was referring to was the one that pops up when you tap-hold to move the cursor.

The steps to reproduce are: Enter dict mode, tap the search field and input a multi-character word, using HWR. Tap Done to see the dictionary results. Now, try to move the cursor to remove the first character in your multi-character word, by tap-holding the search field directly, i.e. without first tapping once to get into "input mode". When you tap-hold Pleco will automatically switch you back into "input mode" (showing you the HWR screen again) and allow you to move the cursor, but once you release your finger the cursor will move back to the end of the line.

I hope that was a bit clearer... It's basically the same thing that was happening to cjgait, except I'm not switching back and forth between "HWR" and "Key" while in input mode. I'm entering input mode by tap-holding the search field directly when browsing through dictionary entries. :) It does not seem to happen if I use "Key" input instead of HWR.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Ah, makes sense. Basically the problem here is that the software is switching from Apple's text input system to our own proprietary Pleco one while you're in the middle of tap-holding; the tap-hold command stays attached to Apple's system even after it's hidden, so you're moving the cursor in an invisible text field and not in the one in the foreground. So the cause is slightly different than the cjgait's bug, but fixing it would be equally difficult.
 
Hey all,

I'm wondering if I'm alone in having this problem and/or if it can be fixed simply be adjusting a configuration setting that I'm not aware of.

Namely, the problem is that, while I was scanning through my search history yesterday and going back-and-forth through some of the listed searchings and their respective definitions, I came back to the history screen only to find that most all of my searches are gone. To give a better idea, I've been using Pleco for about 3 or so weeks and have had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100, 150 searches. After erasal, I had maybe 10 or so.

Anyway, this is all very annoying as I rely upon that search history to refresh myself on new words and things.

Any ideas?


Also, I've written two reviews for Pleco already (one for the previous update and another for the newest one) but it seems that neither have posted. Both done through the iPod itself. Are they supposed to post immediately or is there some sort of screening which delays the process?

Thanks!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Hmm, haven't heard of this one before. There isn't any chance that you might have accidentally deleted / reinstalled your copy of Pleco in the course of upgrading to the latest version, is there? (did you upgrade on-device or from iTunes?) And this is the Searches, not the Entries tab of history, right? Can you give me a rough idea of what you've done with Pleco (amount of use time, modules / features you've used, etc) between the last time you remember seeing your history fully intact and the first time you realized there were searches missing?

As for the reviews, I think Apple may apply some sort of screening to some of them but I'm not sure why it would take this long to post - are you sure you're not checking the wrong store's reviews? Reviews only show up in one country's iTunes store, generally - we have a program that pulls reviews from every iTunes store, so if you let me know what username you used on your review I can check and tell you whether or not it's posted (and in which store, so that you can then open up that store in iTunes).
 

thomashb

秀才
thomashb said:
mikelove said:
Interesting, that makes two reports of this problem now but we've still never been able to reproduce it here. If you reinstall HanDeDict but leave DeHanDict uninstalled, does the problem still come back or does that make it go away?

I just tried it: having just HanDeDict installed everything is ok. After installing DeHanDict and restarting the app the bug occurs again. See screen dump:

The new version 2.06 and the updated dictionary file solved this problem with DeHanDict. Thanks a lot to the Pleco team.
 

singlung

秀才
hey!
i wanted to search based on the radicals and there i noticed that in the next step the numbers indicating the number of strokes after the radical are invisible if they are below ten.
is this a known bug?

iphone 3gs 3.0
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
thomashb - great!

singlung - No, that's a new one - could you send me a screenshot? (to take a screenshot on your iPhone, press the power button and the home button at the same time; it'll show up in the iPhone's photo catalog once you've done that)
 
Hmm, haven't heard of this one before. There isn't any chance that you might have accidentally deleted / reinstalled your copy of Pleco in the course of upgrading to the latest version, is there? (did you upgrade on-device or from iTunes?) And this is the Searches, not the Entries tab of history, right? Can you give me a rough idea of what you've done with Pleco (amount of use time, modules / features you've used, etc) between the last time you remember seeing your history fully intact and the first time you realized there were searches missing?

As for the reviews, I think Apple may apply some sort of screening to some of them but I'm not sure why it would take this long to post - are you sure you're not checking the wrong store's reviews? Reviews only show up in one country's iTunes store, generally - we have a program that pulls reviews from every iTunes store, so if you let me know what username you used on your review I can check and tell you whether or not it's posted (and in which store, so that you can then open up that store in iTunes).

To my knowledge, Pleco was neither deleted nor reinstalled. The erasal also happened, I believe, a few days after the update, which was done through iTunes. And yes, it was the searches tab that was affected. Seeing as though I never used the entries tab, I'm unaware of any changes.

As far as what I did with Pleco leading up to the erasal, I basically did it all: using the professional bundle I'd been using the web browser, reader, handwriting tool, all dictionaries. The only products offered which aren't installed are the two German dictionaries. If I had to guess a total amount of time used before use, I'd have to say about 10 to 15 hours.

Anyway, I'm sorry I can't be more descriptive in my feedback. As far as I'm concerned, my reliance on the search history was as sort of a study tool in lieu of the yet-to-be-released flashcard functionality.

As for the reviews, I just noticed that one of 'em posted, albeit a good 4 or 5 days after I sent it.

Thanks for the superior product, dude. You definitely got my word-of-mouth advertising on your side. In fact, I was flipping through my Chinese program's orientation materials and I saw a good two or three paragraphs specifically dedicated to singing Pleco's praises. Word.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It turned out there was some needlessly complicated code lying around for the recent query list that was designed to accommodate very old Palms (not even ones that can run Pleco 2.0), so we've taken that out and streamlined everything for 2.0.7 - since we never reproduced your bug I can't say for certain that we've fixed it, but the odds are very good that we have.

And you're very welcome! We're really fortunate to have some fans among study abroad program directors...
 
Anyone else run into problems when uploading .doc files to pleco?

I downloaded a bunch of them today via the upload/download function on the document reader, but it seems that I can't get any of them to actually open. When I press on the files, I get taken to the 'Choose Name' screen where I'm prompted for a filename. Once I choose one, I'm directed to a blank web browser screen.

I thought the problem might be with the particular .doc files I'd made myself, so I downloaded a couple newspapers from shucang.com (also .doc files) and tried those. Same problem.

Any ideas?


EDIT:
Tried to rename the files to .txt / move them to different folders seeing if that would have any effect. Turns out, at least for the one file I was experimenting with, I can get the 'Select Encoding' screen to come up, but upon choosing UTF-8 / GB-2312 / Big5, I get a frozen screen and have to exit out of the program.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
This is a known bug, should be fixed in the 2.0.7 update. Not sure about those freezes with "Select Encoding," though - it's kind of an obscure case, opening a binary file which has had its extension changed to .txt, but we should handle it better than crashing / freezing at least.
 
I've noticed that a few dictionaries like GF and ABC don't seem to replace the "~" with the headword even after turning off the command in Dictionary->Entry Display->Definition Screen->Replace Head With ~. It seems that only PLC and maybe one or two other dictionaries actually carry out the command. Is this some sort of glitch or should I RTFM again?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
No, thus far only PLC has actually been coded to display headwords inline like that; we've been meaning to get those added in ABC at least as well, but we've got a lot of other projects on our plate right now :)
 
It would be great if you got the ~ thing fixed in all the dictionaries, I really prefer to see the headword. Especially, if I remember correctly, in the all-Chinese dictionary. The problem is that you can't click on phrases that contain ~ to look them up further, add to flashcard list etc.

For example, if you looked up 家, and in the entry it said ~家 country, I couldn't click on it to get the entry for 国家...

Thanks!
 

character

状元
mikelove said:
No, thus far only PLC has actually been coded to display headwords inline like that; we've been meaning to get those added in ABC at least as well, but we've got a lot of other projects on our plate right now :)
Is that something you could outsource? Surely banks are having trouble storing all the money you've made off Pleco for iPhone OS. :wink:
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
This could be outsourced, but I've almost never been happy with the results we've gotten from outsourcing editorial work - always seems to be littered with mistakes / omissions / etc. (this is why the NWP's Pinyin transliterations are so glitchy, for example) And in this case the work would actually go a lot faster if there was programming involved; the best bet would be to write some sort of Perl script and then customize it for each dictionary / tweak it to minimize the number of mistakes before hand-checking and correcting the finished version. Could probably do it in most of our dictionaries in the space of a week or two, but there's still the problem of finding that week or two in our current frantic schedule...
 
C

Charles

Guest
Hi Mike,
I have the tone panel enabled above the input keyboard so that I can enter Mandarin tones without having to switch to the number keyboard. This works great, but I don't hear the normal key input "click" through my headphones when I enter the tones. If I switch to the number keyboard and enter the tones from there, I hear the click just like I am entering a letter.
I am using version 2.0.7.
 
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