iPhone version: questions/problems

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Good point, that would be nicer if it matched the keyboard - we'll try to get that added for the next update. Thanks.
 

Ke rui

Member
Hello Everyone,

First I would like to congratulates you for this amazing soft, so clear and usefull.

I have only one stupid question, but I do not know if it has been talked or not already in a previous thread but anyway. I bought the intermediate package and my friend is only using the free version, which means he only got the PLECO's dictionnary version. When he is starting typing a word, like "achiev" for example, it starts listing a lots of chinese possibilities where there is these chain of char "achiev" in the definition. But as for me, With all the english/chinese dictionnaries I just do not have this option coming up, as it's directly launching the english dictionnary. I was just wondering if there is anything we could already set up in the current settings to avoid this, or maybe to get it in a next update or something.

Anyway, you are doing a great job, I can't wait to see the flashcards option coming.

Regards
Nicolas
 
Are the default tone colors based on some "convention"? For example traffic lights are always (universally) red yellow green, so tones 1-2-3 can map to these colors, with a 4th say blue.

BTW, Thanks for 2.07. All of the stuff I requested has been incorporated. One remains, and that is displaying other fields in UNI when using the popup.

If the popup is restricted to a single definition, perhaps one can choose that single definition to be displayed in the popup. The popup already has cycling for all other dictionaries, so showing the definition from UNI is not as useful as showing the other info that is not available in the other dictionaries (since the value of UNI is the additional information aside from the definition)

Thanks.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Ke rui - yes, you can get those results in two ways; either by tapping on the "Full" button below the search input field (when it's open) to search in full-text mode, in which case the C-E entries containing that word would show up right away, or (beginning in 2.0.7) by going into Settings / Dictionary / Search Types / Full-text and enabling "Include in E-C srch", in which case you could switch to searching for that word in C-E dictionaries along with E-C ones seamlessly by tapping on the dictionary switch button. (bit hard to explain, so I'd suggest upgrading to 2.0.7, enabling that option, then cycling through all of your dictionaries to try it out)

estudiando - no particular convention, they're just the colors my friend Sam Lipoff (who came up with / pitched me the idea for tone coloring way back in 2001) used in his original paper-based prototype and he based them on the four colors of pen he happened to have available. Though it seems sensible enough - keeping R/G/B for the first three colors might make them easier to remember for some people at least, and associating the similar 2nd/3rd tones with "cool" colors and 1st/4th tones with "warm" colors is also very logical. John Pasden (of ChinesePod fame) had an article about tone colors on his blog at http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2009/08/11/tone-and-color-in-chinese - his proposed scheme is similar, keeps the cold/warm distinction for 2/3 / 1/4 and uses the same colors for 2/3, but he makes 4th tone red and 1st tone orange. Which I suppose makes more sense - 4th is really more deserving of the "hottest" color - though orange doesn't show up that well on computer screens (particularly not in daylight).

Anyway, there are a lot of different strategies for this, which is why we make the tone colors customizable - we've already gotten about half a dozen emails with proposed alternate coloring schemes, changing our defaults would probably be a bad idea (people wouldn't know how to get back the colors they were used to) but we're thinking about including a built-in list of color schemes that people can choose from without having to fiddle around with the color picker. We'd actually love to use the tone colors in other parts of the UI too if we can - stick them around the borders of flashcards, say, to see if people would pick them up better peripherally / subconsciously than by staring directly at them in the headword characters.

UNI alternate fields are still in the pipeline, just didn't get to it in this release - after we finish the mad dash to flashcards, you're going to see a ton of cool little things like this added (both on iPhone and on WM) in the next few releases that follow them.
 

Ke rui

Member
Thank you a lot !

It's working perfectly, love this Soft.
I only can support you and wish you all the best for next developments.

You are doing an amazing job.

Kind regards
Nicolas
 

charnobo

Member
I am wondering is pleco for iphone is considered a success moneywise ,or most users just transfer a palm licsense and therefore not bring money to the table ?
 
Keyboard autohide?

Can the keyboard autohide when one is searching and then taps the result list? or is this a fixed behavior in the OS?
 
C

Charles

Guest
If you put the wildcard character in front of another character (e.g., $费), it seems that you should only get results ending with that character (报费, 房费, etc.). However, when you do this, you get all entries that include 费, whether it occurs at the beginning, middle or end of the entry. On the other hand, if you put the wild card character after 费 (费$), you only get entries beginning with 费 (as expected).
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
charnobo - oh it's been quite successful money-wise, we've been happy with it anyway - iTunes statistics for in-app purchases are very spotty / inconsistent, but during the brief windows we're visible in the rankings we're usually in the top 10 highest-grossing iTunes reference apps. (but for all we know, that might just be an extremely short averaging window that happens to overlap a couple of closely-spaced Complete bundle purchases)

estudiando - that's certainly doable, should be easy to add a "hide kbd on list tap" option to the next update - thanks.

Charles - our search system in general treats everything as a prefix, so this is actually the expected behavior, though it certainly might make sense to add another option to search for the ending of a word. Thanks for the feedback.
 
C

Charles

Guest
Michael - If the search system treats everything as a prefix, wouldn't the search results for 费$ be the same as the search results for $费? The search results for 费$ include only the entries starting with 费, but the search results for $费 include all entries where 费 appears anywhere.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
But a prefix still matches in the beginning - the start of the search term has to match the search query. So with 费$, 费 still has to be the first character, while with $费 other characters can appear before it.
 
C

Charles

Guest
I have set "Insert Pasteboard" in the "Startup Search" settings to "on". I have also set "Use reader if length >" to "8". So, when I copy a passage of Chinese text from another application and then open Pleco, it goes straight to the Reader. This works fine, except if I then select a character or word (bringing up the pop-up bubble) and touch the magnifying glass at the top of the screen (which should take me to the input screen with that word or character entered), Pleco shuts down. If I have set "Only if changed" in the "Startup Search" settings to "on", I can re-start Pleco and go to the Reader manually and then touch the magnifying glass -- and it works as it should. However, if I have set "Only if changed" to "off", when I re-start Pleco it goes automatically to the Reader and the problem will happen again.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Definitely a bug - it looks like this is happening because the dictionary portion of Pleco hasn't been loaded yet when you bring up the reader this way. Should be easy to fix, anyway - thanks!
 
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