Japanese flashcards

[HW60]

After several years with Windows Mobile I finally changed to Android. Now I have a big problem: my japanese flashcards (more than 5000) cannot be used. In "edit card text" the field "Pinyin Pronunciation" shows hiragana and katakana, but during test sessions this field is displayed as "--". There is no problem with Kana or Kanji/Kana in the "Simplified Character Headword" during test sessions. Is there any hidden setting to solve the problem? (I did not use any special characters like % in the Pinyin field).

 

[mikelove]

After several years with Windows Mobile I finally changed to Android. Now I have a big problem: my japanese flashcards (more than 5000) cannot be used. In "edit card text" the field "Pinyin Pronunciation" shows hiragana and katakana, but during test sessions this field is displayed as "--". There is no problem with Kana or Kanji/Kana in the "Simplified Character Headword" during test sessions. Is there any hidden setting to solve the problem? (I did not use any special characters like % in the Pinyin field).

Put a @ at the start of the pronunciation - that should keep Pleco from attempting to interpret it as Pinyin.

 

[HW60]

Thank you - that works well. Is it possible to change all cards with a batch job?

A probably non-Pleco question: is there no copy/paste in Android?

 

[mikelove]

Thank you - that works well. Is it possible to change all cards with a batch job?

Not for this sort of change, unfortunately. However, if you hack around in your flashcard database with a SQLite utility you might be able to automatically insert a @ before all of them using that.

A probably non-Pleco question: is there no copy/paste in Android?

There is, but in our dictionary entries we've replaced it with our tap-lookup system (it's not really practical to support both). You can copy out the text you've selected in that via the clipboard icon in the top toolbar, or can copy out the text of an entire entry by tapping-and-holding on the entry you want to copy in the search result list and choosing the appropriate command.

Other Android apps / UI controls support it to varying degrees - when it works it's generally invoked via a tap-hold on the text, as on iOS. (that's also how you would access it in edit controls in Pleco)

 

[HW60]

Thank you - that works well. Is it possible to change all cards with a batch job?

Not for this sort of change, unfortunately. However, if you hack around in your flashcard database with a SQLite utility you might be able to automatically insert a @ before all of them using that.

It will take too long to lern SQLite, so I will change my cards during flashcard sessions.

There is another problem now: in Windows mobile no "@" was needed for non-Pinyin input, and I could search with hiragana. The Android version needs "@", and the search with hiragana (in the Pinyin field) does not seem to work anymore. Is it a matter of settings?

 

[mikelove]

There is another problem now: in Windows mobile no "@" was needed for non-Pinyin input, and I could search with hiragana. The Android version needs "@", and the search with hiragana (in the Pinyin field) does not seem to work anymore. Is it a matter of settings?

You were able to search with Hiragana? That shouldn't have ever been possible except maybe if they were in the headword - the system would get rid of anything in the search string that wasn't Pinyin. Are you sure you remember that working before?

 

[HW60]

As I am still in the process of overtaking the flashcard database (and Pleco!) from Windows mobile to Android (adding e.g. a @ in every hiragana/Pinyin field), I have not yet erased the Windows mobile version and can repeat those hiragana searches (search with "pron") without problems.

 

[mikelove]

As I am still in the process of overtaking the flashcard database (and Pleco!) from Windows mobile to Android (adding e.g. a @ in every hiragana/Pinyin field), I have not yet erased the Windows mobile version and can repeat those hiragana searches (search with "pron") without problems.

Well that's odd... But unfortunately, given the way the system works now it would take a significant amount of work to add back Hiragana search support in the pron field, so I don't think we're likely to do so given all of the other things we're working on; however, it should be possible to add and search for Hiragana using our "custom field" system once we implement that.

 

[HW60]

I copied my Android flashcard.pqb to Windows mobile and created by export/import a user dictionary (seems to be impossible so far with Android because of the duplicate records/categories). This user dict has for some flashcards a @ at the beginning of the pron field, for most of the flashcards not yet. In WM this dictionary shows all information for all entries. With a copy of the WM user dict in Android, no hiragana can be seen (for flashcards with and without @ at the beginning of the field). The same records in the flashcards became visible as soon as I added a @. The user dicts actually has the information, but does not show it: with Edit Entry it becomes visible. When I then add a @ and save the user dict entry, the whole field gets erased.

I think the Android version has a lot of improvements and new features compared to WM, but the loss of most of the (obviously unsupported) japanese features is a big drawback. The behavior of flashcard and user dict database is not easy to predict - the above described erasure of information comes without information.

One other question: Is full text search enabled for user dicts? I can't find informations in the manual, but so far was not successful to search with # in my user dict.

 

[mikelove]

The user dicts actually has the information, but does not show it: with Edit Entry it becomes visible. When I then add a @ and save the user dict entry, the whole field gets erased.

Are you sure it's getting erased and not just remaining invisible? I can't think of any reason why the @ would cause it to disappear altogether. But it is possible that it could become invisible depending on your device's built-in fonts (Android font fragmentation is both ugly and totally unnecessary given that Google includes perfectly usable open-source ones with Android).

I think the Android version has a lot of improvements and new features compared to WM, but the loss of most of the (obviously unsupported) japanese features is a big drawback. The behavior of flashcard and user dict database is not easy to predict - the above described erasure of information comes without information.

Yeah, I'm afraid that we just have too many other things to do right now to make restoring and maintaining Japanese support a priority. But we can take a quick look at least and see if there's some obvious way to bring it back (or at the very least to get hiragana to display correctly).

One other question: Is full text search enabled for user dicts? I can't find informations in the manual, but so far was not successful to search with # in my user dict.

Nope, we still haven't gotten around to that - we've got a bunch of user dictionary improvements, including that, on our to-do list, but again we just have too much other stuff to do right now to make them a priority when it's such a little-used feature relative to other parts of Pleco.

 

[HW60]

The user dicts actually has the information, but does not show it: with Edit Entry it becomes visible. When I then add a @ and save the user dict entry, the whole field gets erased.

Are you sure it's getting erased and not just remaining invisible? I can't think of any reason why the @ would cause it to disappear altogether. But it is possible that it could become invisible depending on your device's built-in fonts (Android font fragmentation is both ugly and totally unnecessary given that Google includes perfectly usable open-source ones with Android).

1. I hit the user dict record and see the Character Info Screen / Text without Pinyin / Hiragana
2. I hit Edit Entry and see the Entry Management / Adding Entries Screen with the desired Hiragana, but without @ in first position
3. I add @ in first position of the Pinyin field and hit Save
4. I see the Character Info Screen without Hiragana
5. I hit Edit Entry and see the Entry / Adding Entries Screen without anything in Pinyin

So I think it is not remaining invisible, but it becomes visible when I hit Edit Entry and gets erased when I add @ in first position of the Pinyin field and exit with Save. (Just to remember: my user dict was completely made in Pleco for WM and actually cannot be made with Pleco for Android.)

Actually the hiragana become invisible or get erased when I just hit Edit Entry and exit with Save without changing anything (this is really strange and unexpected; it would be interesting to see the detailed content of the pinyin field in this case including all non visible charactes). Therefore my actual solution is to look at the Hiragana with Edit Entry and then leave with Cancel. It would be much more comfortable, if the user dict entries (pinyin) could be seen without looking at the Character Info Screen - in flashcard I can see all pinyin entries as soon as I added the @.

When in the hopefully near future additional fields in flashcards (and user dict?) can be used for additional ways of searching, I would like to copy the pinyin fields (which cannot be used with hiragana for searching) to one of the additional fields for searching with hiragana. It would be great if you could provide some basic SQLite commands to support that (like copy from field to field and add @ in first position) - it will take me 2 or 3 months to add @ to my 5500+ japanese flashcards one by one during flashcard sessions, but learning SQLite now would not take much less.

 

[mikelove]

Actually the hiragana become invisible or get erased when I just hit Edit Entry and exit with Save without changing anything (this is really strange and unexpected; it would be interesting to see the detailed content of the pinyin field in this case including all non visible charactes). Therefore my actual solution is to look at the Hiragana with Edit Entry and then leave with Cancel. It would be much more comfortable, if the user dict entries (pinyin) could be seen without looking at the Character Info Screen - in flashcard I can see all pinyin entries as soon as I added the @.

Well we'll see if we can improve matters a little bit, at least - just can't put too much time into this when we have so many other projects in the works.

When in the hopefully near future additional fields in flashcards (and user dict?) can be used for additional ways of searching, I would like to copy the pinyin fields (which cannot be used with hiragana for searching) to one of the additional fields for searching with hiragana. It would be great if you could provide some basic SQLite commands to support that (like copy from field to field and add @ in first position) - it will take me 2 or 3 months to add @ to my 5500+ japanese flashcards one by one during flashcard sessions, but learning SQLite now would not take much less.

Sure, once we've got the format for those custom fields finalized we'll be happy to provide some SQLite instructions.