Latest on Beta 5

[sych]

The name "Profile" is fine with me, but if a people are confused I would also suggest "Test Profile".

Here is an explanation of "Profiles" as I understand them:

A reason one might want to have multiple profiles is if one wants to study multiple "skills", with separate scoring and test settings for each.

Currently I have a set of words I would like to be able to read, and a smaller set that I need to be able to write. So in Pleco 1, I have created a list of words I want to write, and a list of words I want to read. Whenever I study my "reading" list in Pleco 1, I first click "Start New Session", then go into "Test Settings", and check the boxes to show me pinyin and definition when testing, and uncheck the option to show characters. If I don't have writing paper and a desk where I am, I also check "Show Sketch Box". Because I find it a bit more difficult to remember how to write a character (as compared to reading one), I also go to "Rank Settings" and adjust the Advance/Retreat settings a little so that cards show up more often. Then I return to the "New Session" screen uncheck all my "Reading" lists and check only my "Writing" lists, and finally I "Start Session".

Of course, when I want to do "reading" study, I return to "New Session", set "Test Settings" to show me the Character but not Pinyin or Definition, go to "Rank Settings" and make the cards progress quicker up the ranks, return to "New Session", uncheck my "writing" lists and check my "reading" lists, then finally "Start Session".

What a pain in the bum! So with Pleco 2's "Profiles" I will be able to save both these sets of settings into two different Profiles - one for reading, one for writing. The profiles will contain data about what skill/s to test me on (i.e. "Writing" profile: show Pinyin and Definition but not Characters; "Reading" profile: show Character but not Definition or Pinyin), and what list/s (categories) of flashcards I want to review/test in each profile. This is going to save me a lot of hassle!

So I hope now that those who weren't sure what use "Profiles" would be will now have some idea!

 

[ldolse]

I'm impressed with your diligence with 1.0! That pretty much confirms what I was thinking as I wrote that yesterday... note it probably took me an hour to figure that out while I wrote that post and combed through previous posts and the UI.

Still don't see any use case for having more profiles than there are test types though, which would be the only reason not to create a hardcoded set of profiles/modes.

 

[mikelove]

ldolse - profiles can also have separate sets of scores (technically "scorefiles," but you rarely have to deal with those directly), which means they affect not only New Session / Advanced but Statistics and Manage Flashcards too. This is also why I'm hesitant to put a qualifier like "Test" in front of "Profile," since the profile affects the flashcard system even when you're not actually in the middle of a review session.

The main reason we didn't want to tie profiles to specific test modes is that you might want to use the same test mode in multiple ways; different sets of cards, for example (one for one textbook's vocabulary and one for another), or multiple-choice characters in one and multiple-choice Pinyin in another. Or even a particular filter, say - all cards studied within the last month (we've added "within" to "before" and "after" in the card filter screen in Beta 5), or only cards with scores below a certain threshhold for extra practice. Or multiple languages, now that you can have E-C flashcards you might want one profile for those and one for C-E ones. (it's not possible to do both in the same session) sych's description is pretty much spot-on; there are all sorts of ways you might want to use the flashcard system and it's a pain to have to keep manually configuring each one.

Also, even if we're not actively promoting it, the separate scores mean that you certainly could employ profiles to have multiple users sharing the same handheld; you'd have to share the same pool of vocabulary, but if you were taking the same class anyway it wouldn't be too bad. And in the desktop version this becomes a much more important usage case, since there are lots of families / schools where everyone has their own handheld or smartphone but the computers are a shared resource.

BTW, since this is technically still a Beta 5 status thread: the dictionary data files are officially done, we even did manage to add traditional characters in the 21st Century and Standard dictionary definitions (automatically, but with some hand-coded tweaks to improve accuracy for tricky cases like 只/隻 and 里/裡), fonts are almost done too so my current thinking (which you should absolutely not hold me to) is late next week for B5.

 

[hairyleprechaun]

Great news! Thanks for the update!

 

[sfrrr]

I'm hyperventilating!

Sandra

 

[ipsi]

Good stuff .

Also, another use case for profiles - not sure if it's easy to do, but I'd like to have, say, one profile for simplified, and another for traditional characters, but it would be best if I could exclude ones which don't have a simplified form.

Basically be nice to be able to learn how to read traditional characters, but not have it impact my learning of simplified characters.

Could also be accomplished by more flashcards too, I suppose.

 

[mikelove]

There's no way to filter cards with differing simplified/traditional characters, but it wouldn't be hard, just a select cards where tc != sc, so we could certainly consider it for 2.1. You can separately configure a given session to display in simplified versus traditional, though, so if you want to use one mode with one character set and another mode with another (say if you're trying to pick up traditional so you want to use that for reading tests but stick to simplified for writing) that at least is possible.

 

[ipsi]

Good to hear . Just means I could avoid going over words I already know when all I want are the ones that have a different traditional form.

 

[ldolse]

Sounds good, really need to work with it some more in Beta 5. Note the first thing I will do is create separate scorefiles for a couple of the modes - the fact that you can test your progression at different types of recall is awesome. The use case might be made more obvious for new users if a default installation just included a couple of predefined common profile types, just an idea.

 

[mikelove]

Good idea, but I worry that if we did that people would end up thinking they *had* to use the different profile types, and would end up getting their scores distributed across half a dozen different files without wanting to. (there's not really any way to combine card scores from multiple sources)

 

[ldolse]

Sorry, mixed up the two concepts together. For my personal use I'm definitely inclined to create a couple sets of scorefiles, but I didn't mean that for everyone.

When I was referring to creating a couple of default profiles I didn't mean to imply that they should have separate scorefiles, just that creating a couple profiles with names like 'reading' 'writing', 'review', etc would make the use case better than a single profile called 'default'.

That said, I think a default separate scorefile for writing specifically makes a lot of sense.

 

[mikelove]

Another factor I haven't mentioned here yet is importing flashcards from 1.0 - the importer automatically creates a new scorefile (and an attached profile) for those, we didn't want to have it alter any profiles that were already there so creating a new profile and setting it as the active one seemed like the best way to ensure people would immediately be able to access their imported score data. So that's another thing that worries me about adding default reading/writing/etc profiles, people might think they needed separate profiles for those functions and then not be able to figure out how to get them with their imported-from-1.0 cards.

 

[hleperlier]

Just a repost, just in case:
I hope in version 5, Zhuyin Fuhao inconsistencies (previous post in another forum, sorry) has been fixed. (about "uo" displayed with the corresponding "u" in Bopomofo).

thanks
:? Henry

 

[mikelove]

Been fixed for several weeks now, yes - we're always happy to cross a straightforward bug like that off of our list.

 

[mikelove]

Beta 5 should hopefully be out Monday, for those of you following this really closely - my "end of the week" calculation before neglected to factor in the time it's going to take to type up a rudimentary here's-what-each-checkbox-does instruction manual, but we don't have any serious bugs left that we know about, so assuming we don't find any in the next 3 days (fingers crossed anyway) Monday should be it.

 

[Dan_78cj5]

Mike, so it's been a while since I've been on the message board, but I've been taking another stab at flash cards, and reading a lot of your explanations and responses.

I can buy into categories and profiles, from a logical stand-point, and I am excited to get started using them. But... I've been trying to test out these functions on Pleco 2.0 Beta4(ia) and remain frustrated. First, I have been adding a few flashcards based on what I am reading, and have built upto 152 cards, quite a humble start considering on PD1.0 I had thousands going in my lists, but its enough to play with for now. At this point I'd like to keep one profile and focus on the categories, but I think I see your logic on profiles, and don't mind the naming - it doesn't make me think its just for other users. I am reading two books now and would like to sort my cards by category (one per chapter) and group my categories, one per book, or two sets. As the two books are related I expect to have several words overlap, so the advantage of categories having one card referenced to both categories but only a single entry to prevent double-tapping in the repetition and scoring of cards for review is awesome. Am I tracking so far? Is that how this is supposed to work? OK, now the problems...

So far I can create, rename, delete and move profiles up and down, but other than this I can't see what effectthey have on anything. I think I am getting the same cards under both profiles I have, and the statistics (total repetitions, average score, number reviewed per day, etc) are all the same for both profiles. How do I use profiles again?

OK, I said I was trying to focus on categories, so I open manage categories. Again, I open manage categories and I can make new Cat, move, promote, rename, duplicate split, etc. But I don't see where I can assign cards to a category, or view what cards are in a category. In the list system from this screen I could select edit a list and a nice handy list of the lead words for the entire list would pop up and I could quickly scan what was in the list, as well as move, copy, remove, etc., from the list immediately. Where do I go to see what's in a list, uh I mean category? If this doesn't exist, boy that'd be a nice function. Well, when I'm done making categories (I have three) I try to run a new flash card session and select one or more categories or use the card filter tab to filter out a category or two (even though I have yet to figure out how to assign cards to a category). At this point, any time I select or filter a category, or all categories and start a session my Palm soft resets, so I cannot even tell by test run if there are any cards in any of these categories.

Next I try to manage my flashcards, but when I open this and get an empty screen. It doesn't appear to change no matter what category I select, or what button on the page I hit, there are no words listed. My plus button (add flashcard) does not have to tap and hold function of a drop down list appearing, so I cannot assign cards to categories there either. How do I assign cards?

When I run a flashcard session with no categories selected I get all of the 152 cards I have input, so I know there are cards in there. I just can't figure out how to manage them into categories or profiles. Is some or all of the functionality you mentioned 'aspirational' and not yet enabled on P2B4? Am I missing some obvious key combination or pull down?

One other thing. In the old list system, once I made a list I could beam that to my study partner's Pleco. In that way we could divvy up card input and spend more time on card review. WIll I still be able to beam a list, er category to a classmate? And if my classmate now lives in another town or country, or is really a Pleco Forums friend, is there a convenient way to make my category or profile a database file and send it to someone as an attachment to an e-mail or a forum post?

Finally a minor note, I continue to use a T|X in landscape mode and many of these screens (manage profile, category, flashcards, etc.) once closed only refresh the main part of the screen (the left two thirds). The extended portion of the screen holds an image of the right third of the previous dialog screen (like the flashcard manage list) until I start poking around with my stylus, or until I open and close the Palm hidden keyboard.

OK, anyway. Excited about the opportunities, and can't wait for Beta 5, and the final shazam (PD2.0 release). Keep up the great work, and thanks for the awesome responsiveness.

As far as your previous question about running Pleco 1.0 and beta 4 on the same machine I had removed all the Pleco 1.0 because I thought removing all of those files was necessary for install of the beta. Either way, I wouldn't want both loaded, because I am already addicted to stroke order, the guifan dictionary and pop-up dictionary functions - way too useful to go back to 1.0.

Thanks
Dan

 

[ipsi]

I think most of your complaints will be addressed in Beta 5 - probably worth waiting for that. Monday is the current date (but that could easily turn into Friday, or Christmas), so not long. 320x480 support is a known bug, I believe.

All the cool stuff Mike's talking about for the flashcards should probably be enabled with Beta 5, along with a rather less confusing interface. Have a look at some of the more recent posts in this forum and others.

 

[daniu]

Hi Mike!

Another reason why you really should get B5 out now is that new users seam to pop up all the time that start to complain about old, known B4 problems ... so give us a new discussion base ...


ips: I thought it was end of this week ...

regards
Daniel

 

[ipsi]

Check up a few posts in this thread. Mike is hoping Monday.

 

[daniu]

Hi!

Oh - you are right ...Not reading everything anymore - usually I do read Mikes posts - missed that in between the long feedback post ...

Well - I'd take it without manual and would not comment on it at all until the manual is out ... But I know most people are not able to do that.

best regards
Daniel