Missing sample sentences on flashcards

[Trobert]

Hi,

I already asked this once before but I didn't get an answer I could use. When using the Pleco 2.0 flashcard feature, I no longer receive sample sentences when I reveal the definitions on a large number of flashcards. This issue seems to be restricted to the cards drawn from the ABC dictionary. Take the word 出于, for example. On the flashcard, the sample sentence "我这么做是出于好心 / wo zheme zuo shi chuyu haoxin" from the ABC definition are missing. These sample sentences are extremely important to me and until I get it sorted out I'll be sticking with version 1.0. Mike, can you please let me know what the problem here is?

p.s. Can someone please send me a link to the latest version of handedict for Pleco 1? I deleted it in anticipation of installing and using 2.0, but now I'm going back to 1 until this flashcard problem is sorted out.

 

[mikelove]

Just turn on the "Include example sents in cards" option in the Flashcards section of Preferences and that should bring them back.

 

[Trobert]

Just turn on the "Include example sents in cards" option in the Flashcards section of Preferences and that should bring them back.

Hi, so from the main dictionary screen I press the "dict" button on the lower left and then "preferences...". I then get the following option choices "headword display mode", "mandarin pronounciation", "defn font size", "list font size", "head size", "zoom size", "font rendering mode", "dict name" and "choose panel". I don't see anything about a "flashcards" menu here, and there are no buttons at the bottom of this screen either. I have been going nuts searching the menus and I don't see anything to this effect.
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Okay, I just found it. It did not occur to me that "choose panel" is for bringing up submenus, particularly since submenus are denoted by tabs at the bottom of the screen in verision 1.0 and also in many menus in 2.0. This is not clearly marked IMO. I also think it's frustrating for some customers that things that were previously defaults are now only accessible from a hard-to-find options screen. Because not activating the "include example sents in cards" doesn't do away with the example sentences entirely (only those from ABC dict, it seems), this inconsistency lead me to conclude it's a bug. The info I needed may or may not be in the manual, I don't know. I'm a believer that I shouldn't have to consult a manual when I make a new software purchase. I maybe get a flaming from the RTFM crowd, but I've got around 20 pieces of software on my PDA and another couple dozen on my laptop. If I were to read the manual every time I downloaded something new, I would never get away from my desk.

Thanks for your help, Mike. I think the menus and the flashcard features are not very intuitive and user-friendly, but otherwise I agree with others here that you've made great product that has helped me a ton over the last year and a half. It's a great feeling to have over 100,000 dictionary entries on my telephone.

 

[ipsi]

It's not, strictly, a bug, but rather a problem with the data files. Only the ABC dictionary has the sentences marked up correctly so they can be hidden, as far as I'm aware. The other dictionaries don't differentiate between the definition and the examples.

Also, Pleco is a sufficiently complex application that opening the online manual and doing a search for whatever you're looking for is generally a good idea. Reading the manual may be tedious, but it's still a useful reference. When the knowledge base comes online, that may be a better place to look for queries like this.

I do agree that it may have been better to default to including examples, for the reasons you give.

 

[mikelove]

In general the strategy with default settings is that we leave things the same unless there's a clear advantage to be gained by changing them; with example sentences, since the new flashcard test modes often leave less screen space for dictionary definitions we decided it made the most sense to hide them by default. I think you're actually the first person who's complained, though we've gotten quite a few complaints about them not being hidden in other dictionaries (which as ipsi says is a data file issue, though one we're working on fixing).

The reason for the "Choose Panel" interface is that while it's slightly harder to figure out at first, it's much faster/easier to get around Preferences once you know how than it would be with tabs; Pleco has way too many preferences panels to comfortably fit at the bottom of the screen, so if you want to jump to a particular one you'd have to scroll through them using those awkward little arrows and read through that not-particularly-visible black-on-gray text to try to pick out the one you want. Even with only 6 panels in 1.0 that interface always bugged me and with the 11 panels in 2.0 it started to get downright silly.

I agree to some extent with your manual-free approach to software, but only if you've just started using a program and are simply trying to figure out its basic features; for delving deeper into the system I think it's entirely reasonable to expect people to read the instruction manual. Understanding how to get around Pleco's Preferences is not something you need to do in order to simply look up words, so in designing a section like Preferences it makes more sense to build it to be efficient once you know how to use it than to be easy for people new to the software to understand. There are other cases where the opposite approach is best, for example the new Menu button on Palm OS - for people who already know how to use their Palms this is slightly annoying, since there's always another way to get to the menu and people who know that have to waste time reconfiguring the toolbar to get rid of that button, but a huge number of new users were having trouble finding the menu bar so we added that button for their benefit.

Balancing the needs of heavy users and people new to using the software is incredibly difficult, even more so for a tiny company like us without the usability-testing resources of a Microsoft or an Apple; we do what we can, but if you want a piece of software where everything's easy and intuitive it's going to have to have a LOT fewer features than Pleco does (particularly since time spent simplifying / refining the user interface is time not spent adding new features). But certainly there's the potential for some modest improvements on this in 2.1 at least.

 

[westmeadboy]

I'd have to agree that I would expect the example sentences to be included by default.

I thought something was wrong when I first started using Pleco 2.0 (an early beta), but I never had the time to investigate whether it was a bug or just that those definitions did not have example sentences. In the last few months I havent used Pleco for anything other than playing around with the new version. If I had used it more for proper study, I would have realised this "bug" (pleco bug or dictionary bug - still a bug ) and reported it!

Why not set the defaults to those suitable for new users? Heavy users will be more comfortable/familiar with the preferences section etc and so can set strange things like removing example sentences from flashcards.

Also, I would have expected to set this in the "New Flashcard Session" screen. I want to show "Defn" or "Defn including examples", for example.

 

[mikelove]

I agree we should move most of those preferences to flashcard profiles (particularly this one and buttons), but I still think hiding example sentences by default is the right move, particularly in cases like multiple-choice sessions where long entries really screw things up. Perhaps once it's profile-dependent we could make it use a different default depending on the test type, so you'd see them in self-scored but not in multi-choice (that is if we also add the option of populating the profile with different defaults depending on its initial test type, which I'm not sure about yet), but as long as there's one setting for all profiles I think whatever makes entries shorter is the better choice.

 

[westmeadboy]

How about including a button/link in the definition (for flashcards), to reveal the examples?

 

[mikelove]

That might be a possibility, yes - perhaps along with one or two other new fields, like the annotation feature which we're very much hoping to add in 2.1.

 

[sych]

When studying flashcards, I generally read the example sentences aloud to myself after revealing - so having them not shown by default doesn't suit the way I study. 我的￥0.02。

 

[mikelove]

A bunch of e-mails have come in to that effect too, actually. Since I don't honestly care that much maybe it would just be easier to change the default, at least until we make it a profile-specific option - less confusing even if it does muck up multiple-choice tests a bit.

 

[radioman]

Just a note with regard to annotation.

I think it is very important feature. Perhaps clarified before, but my hope would be that any text in the annotation would be able to be fully searched. Also, for "ideas" sake, I wanted to note that for the iPhone, there is a program that I have been using called "Annotater". If you have not seen it, It basically lets you read PDF files on the iPhone and annotate them for later searching. There are some neat ideas within the program, probably a lot of them not patentable, perhaps a potential source for additional ideas. Anyway, I have no affiliation with the program's author or the program. I just thought the implementation was well done.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks - we'll take a look at that. Annotations would unfortunately not be searchable, for the same reason flashcard / user dictionary definitions aren't; we can't use SQLite's full-text search indexer on Palm and we're not going to deploy it on WM until we drop Palm support. (so perhaps an argument for holding off on annotations until 2.1/3.0)