New Type Design

bentolsky

Member
Hi Mike, thanks for the update. The different color for the Chinese and pinyin from the English in the examples is really nice, makes it very easy to see.

However is the different color characters for the different tones going away? I really like that feature. I still use the default colors and I couldn't tell you which color is which tone, but I instinctively know the colors now so I'd hate to see that go away. Of course, this doesn't change my inability to hear or speak tones, if you could figure out how to do that for me in Pleco you would be a genius.

I also really like that you now have the part of speech near the top, but what will it look like for words that are more than one part of speech (梳) or have multiple meanings (象)? Also, will there be a reference for what the abbreviations are, and even what each part of speech is? Noun, verb, and adjective are easy but I'm sure there are parts of speech that I'm unfamiliar with.

Also, I've been developing my own user dictionary that is now around 3000 words and quickly growing. I'd like to know that this will be supported still and that I would still be able to format it. Currently I use line breaks, bold, and links, but if you could offer more formatting I would be absolutely thrilled. I would especialy like it if I could make the entires on the results screen show only the definitions and not the examples and other stuff I include, kind of like the regular Pleco dictionary does. I would also be very happy if I could treat parts of speech differently like they are in the new design, and do colors and the vertical bars.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
bentolsky said:
However is the different color characters for the different tones going away? I really like that feature. I still use the default colors and I couldn't tell you which color is which tone, but I instinctively know the colors now so I'd hate to see that go away.

Certainly not going away - in fact we're hoping to get them working in example sentences too sometime in our next few updates - but we may not keep them on by default.

bentolsky said:
I also really like that you now have the part of speech near the top, but what will it look like for words that are more than one part of speech (梳) or have multiple meanings (象)? Also, will there be a reference for what the abbreviations are, and even what each part of speech is? Noun, verb, and adjective are easy but I'm sure there are parts of speech that I'm unfamiliar with.

The tentative plan is to list them all at the top but then show specific parts of speech at the start of the 'blocks' associated with them (if the dictionary bothers to separate them in that way). Hyperlinks to explain parts of speech are already implemented / should definitely be included, though we may only include them for the dictionaries in which they're tricky / non-obvious (like ABC).

bentolsky said:
Also, I've been developing my own user dictionary that is now around 3000 words and quickly growing. I'd like to know that this will be supported still and that I would still be able to format it. Currently I use line breaks, bold, and links, but if you could offer more formatting I would be absolutely thrilled. I would especialy like it if I could make the entires on the results screen show only the definitions and not the examples and other stuff I include, kind of like the regular Pleco dictionary does. I would also be very happy if I could treat parts of speech differently like they are in the new design, and do colors and the vertical bars.

In this release the user dictionary format is going to remain pretty much the same - won't have access to all of these cool new formatting features yet; far and away the most popular user dictionary feature request is full-text search support, so most of our user dictionary efforts in this update were focused on that. (though the "Browse" screen is also quite useful since it'll let you efficiently go through and check / edit / delete all of your user dictionary entries)

But down the line we plan to bring the same sort of "semantic tagging" support to user dictionaries (and flashcards) that we're now rolling out in our own dictionaries, so in the future it should indeed be possible to separate your own examples / parts of speech / etc - we just weren't able to get that done for this release (and in any event we'd rather have a little more time to make sure we're happy with it in our own dictionaries before committing to it for user-created ones).
 

Eddy

举人
Hi Mike,

I very much like the new type design. It looks clean and crisp.

In addition I'd like to second bentolsky's user dictionary remark.

bentolsky said:
Also, I've been developing my own user dictionary that is now around 3000 words and quickly growing. I'd like to know that this will be supported still and that I would still be able to format it. Currently I use line breaks, bold, and links, but if you could offer more formatting I would be absolutely thrilled.

I'm happy to hear that current user dictionary formatting will still be supported. I find it very helpful to add my own example sentences and occasional class notes to my user dictionary. More formatting options are very welcome :)

cheers
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Eddy said:
I very much like the new type design. It looks clean and crisp.

Thanks! Just took delivery of the first version of the Chinese font two days ago, we're probably going to wait for one more update at least (character set support is still a bit limited) but it's looking good in our app so far.

Eddy said:
I'm happy to hear that current user dictionary formatting will still be supported. I find it very helpful to add my own example sentences and occasional class notes to my user dictionary. More formatting options are very welcome

Well it may not be supported forever, but since user dictionaries are relatively easy to export / reimport (not really any useful data lost in the process), it should not be too difficult to export your user dictionary to a text file, apply a simple formatting script (we may even supply one if there's demand, but we'll supply all the info needed to create one if not) to update to the new formatting tags and then reimport it.
 

sandwich

举人
Any chance of seeing how this looks with bopomofo? And for what screen were these mockups made for?

In the current version using an iPod, bopomofo can span several lines making it harder to read the dictionary entries. Reducing the font size of the entire entry helps a bit, but it'd be nice if there was a better solution. (Other then disabling the pronunciation on example sentences like I suggested in another thread.)
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
sandwich said:
Any chance of seeing how this looks with bopomofo? And for what screen were these mockups made for?

We should have actual screenshots with the new design shortly - the mockups were designed around an iPhone.

sandwich said:
In the current version using an iPod, bopomofo can span several lines making it harder to read the dictionary entries. Reducing the font size of the entire entry helps a bit, but it'd be nice if there was a better solution. (Other then disabling the pronunciation on example sentences like I suggested in another thread.)

Disabling example pronunciation is likely to be supported, actually. Collapsible examples are a possibility but probably not in this first release since we're already antsy about how many changes we're making to our rich text field control (both for this design and to allow us to display definitions from multiple dictionaries in a single scrolling box while keeping performance good).
 

yoose

探花
this is looking good and appears to be worth the wait. i did notice that there was no Cantonese pronunciation there next to the speaker. will there be an option in the app to add that in similar to the current pleco dictionary? keep up the good work!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
this is looking good and appears to be worth the wait. i did notice that there was no Cantonese pronunciation there next to the speaker. will there be an option in the app to add that in similar to the current pleco dictionary? keep up the good work!

Yes, there'll be Cantonese too, and in fact it should even be getting its own speaker icon...
 

yoose

探花
Yes, there'll be Cantonese too, and in fact it should even be getting its own speaker icon...

Awesome, will it be limited to the pleco dictionary only like it currently is or will it be possible to add it the other dictionaries as well?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Awesome, will it be limited to the pleco dictionary only like it currently is or will it be possible to add it the other dictionaries as well?

That's up in the air at the moment - we need to come up with a way to do it that doesn't require us to add Cantonese to every individual dictionary database, both for space-saving reasons and for legal ones (publishers don't want us adding a bunch of data they didn't approve). Initially it may just be PLC plus a few Cantonese-specific dictionaries.
 

scykei

榜眼
That's up in the air at the moment - we need to come up with a way to do it that doesn't require us to add Cantonese to every individual dictionary database, both for space-saving reasons and for legal ones (publishers don't want us adding a bunch of data they didn't approve). Initially it may just be PLC plus a few Cantonese-specific dictionaries.
Yeah. In addition to that, while I can't think of any examples on the spot, sometimes there are dictionaries that give more entries to a single character in Mandarin. Sometimes, they are variant or obsolete pronunciations. Other times, they have two different meanings that are pronounced the same way in Mandarin, but have separate pronunciations in Cantonese. You can't actually predict accurately which pronunciation to give to which character.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yeah. In addition to that, while I can't think of any examples on the spot, sometimes there are dictionaries that give more entries to a single character in Mandarin. Sometimes, they are variant or obsolete pronunciations. Other times, they have two different meanings that are pronounced the same way in Mandarin, but have separate pronunciations in Cantonese. You can't actually predict accurately which pronunciation to give to which character.

Exactly - we're working to straighten those out in PLC, but it would be quite painful to do that for every dictionary in our catalog. Enhancements like Cantonese support are the biggest reason why we went out and licensed PLC the way we did - frees us from other people's editorial control. (an issue even with open-source dictionaries like CC-CEDICT if they're updated regularly - a Cantonese-enabled CC-CEDICT would require a *ton* of effort to maintain)
 

yoose

探花
Yeah. In addition to that, while I can't think of any examples on the spot, sometimes there are dictionaries that give more entries to a single character in Mandarin. Sometimes, they are variant or obsolete pronunciations. Other times, they have two different meanings that are pronounced the same way in Mandarin, but have separate pronunciations in Cantonese. You can't actually predict accurately which pronunciation to give to which character.

Exactly - we're working to straighten those out in PLC, but it would be quite painful to do that for every dictionary in our catalog. Enhancements like Cantonese support are the biggest reason why we went out and licensed PLC the way we did - frees us from other people's editorial control. (an issue even with open-source dictionaries like CC-CEDICT if they're updated regularly - a Cantonese-enabled CC-CEDICT would require a *ton* of effort to maintain)

i see, looks like it might be more trouble than it is worth for supporting those additional dictionaries. are there plans to have that field available for user dictionaries?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
i see, looks like it might be more trouble than it is worth for supporting those additional dictionaries. are there plans to have that field available for user dictionaries?

Yes, once those are updated to support custom fields.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Both are available as options in our new iOS update, along with a slightly wackier 硬笔行书 that quite a few people are already humming along with delightedly, but the default remains 黑体 since that's the most readable of all. (we've licensed a much prettier 黑体 than the Apple or Google system ones)
 
Top