Official iPad Thread

[DotComCTO]

I - like most others - am pretty underwhelmed by the iPad thus far. That said, I think it could be a great device in a classroom setting - especially with Pleco. As someone else said, the opportunity for handwriting practice is a great idea. Perhaps a side-by-side display where one side has the animated character strokes and an area next to it for the user to draw their character. I also think a full screen document reader with that screen size would be excellent. The extra screen real estate could be put to great use in Pleco.

I'm on the fence about an iPad, but if I ever got one, I'd be sure to have Pleco on it. Of course, the only problem is that I'd want Pleco on my iPhone *and* my (hypothetical) iPad.

8)

--DotComCTO

 

[mikelove]

stisev - don't worry, flashcards are our top priority; we just submitted what will probably our last non-flashcard-equipped update with a few more bug fixes / tweaks / minor improvements, and we'll soon be releasing a new beta on Palm/WM that's also designed to help test out / get feedback on a few changes to the repetition spacing algorithm that we'd like to have ready from day 1 on iPhone, but we won't be doing any other major projects until after iPhone flashcards are ready.

DotComCTO - understandable, but I really think things will get a lot more compelling once iPhone OS 4.0 is out. In the meantime, even if the OS itself is underwhelming the things developers can do with it should be considerably less so. (personally I'm hoping for a real port of Civilization, not just the watered-down console version)

And yes, this would be fantastic for Pleco document reading - we definitely need a dedicated definition area now, though, the popup bubbles won't do on a big screen like that. (though we'll still keep them in definitions, I think)

 

[garysaville]

I watched a live stream of the Apple iPad anouncement today, and I thought I might pass on the first version, but then I suddenly remembered the Pleco Reader. Now I'll probably be standing in line.

G=-

-夏嘉瑞-
www.garysaville.net

 

[radioman]

I am sure Pleco could come up with a million and one ways to make the tablet thing fly fast. Just one thing off the top of my head is utilizing the regular dictionary windows (or larger) with a simultaneous other view to flashcards.

And just a comment that I believe, as people dig into this, they will find the performance of this is very impressive compared with wannabe platforms. (of course, here's hoping that batteries don't explode or screens start fracturing 2 months after production units ship...)

 

[gandq]

Hi Mike,

I am eagerly awaiting the Apple Tablet for one single reason: using Pleco Reader on a big, portable screen. This will be the most important gadget for me since buying my first Palm device (I think it was a used Sony Clie N760C) for the sole reason of runnig Pleco Dict on it, five or six years ago.

I don't care about the missing camera, lack of a physical keyboard (or the lack of physical buttons in general), the overly simplified hence unnessecarily complicated iPhone OS user interface and all the other stuff that could come to mind. All I care about is a simple equation: iPad + Pleco = Yay!

So I appreciate you starting this thread and letting me dream up a short whishlist for an iPad-optimized version of your wonderful software. Here I go:

Dictionary Screen:

• - HWR and/or keyboard on screen alongside entry list and dictionary/entry view. Basically an all-in-one-screen-layout like the Palm OS versions. There should be more than enough room for this and it would eliminate the need to tap the search field first before being able to actually start searching.

Pleco Reader:

• - ePub support!
  - Ability to browse and download server content (for example files hosted on my computer and shared on my home network or even the internet via CALIBRE (http://calibre-ebook.com/), a free, cross-platform E-Book Library Manager)
  - support for RSS Fedds (maybe using a google reader suscription)
  - Maybe another way of looking up words apart from the pop-up dictionary. As the screen is so large, part of it could be reserved for viewing the dictionary entries for the selected text. After de-selecting, the entry could remain displayed.
  - I am also hoping for the possibility to customize the screen layout of the viewed document (e.g. page margins!)
  - Icons to quickly change text size
  - Options for creating Flashcards. Maybe a preview of the card info screen, with the possibility to assign different categories/tags, edit custom definitions and so on before adding the card to the database.

Flashcards Study Session Screen:

• - Make use of the huge space available. Maybe an optinal free-draw area on the bottom and/or dictionary look-up on the side etc.

Pleco Desktop:

• - Ability to sync data between several devices that run Pleco, e.g. my iPhone or iPod Touch and my iPad

That's all I could think of for now. Maybe someone else wants to add their items to the wishlist?

Cheers,


jo.

PS: I attatched a little sketch to better convey my thoughts on a possibile reader layout.

 

[radioman]

@caesartg ...

I am with you on that. I just wanted to throw out there that on the iPhone (at least my 3Gs, it has those Accessibility features, one of which is zooming by taping with 3 fingers to go in out, along with scrolling around the page. Not sure thats readily apparent unless you are looking for it and hunting around the UI. Its not an overall solution, but a great tool for times when certain things just have to be zoomed to to see.

Hooray! A Pleco platform suitable for those with crappy eyesight!

 

[character]

BTW, should this subforum now be called "Pleco for iPhone OS"?

While enhancing Pleco on the iPad in other ways also makes sense as the iPad will likely be popular in educational settings, my main interest in it would be for use as a reader.

The big feature I would like to see is the ability to show/edit two documents at once, usually a Chinese text and a translation. I would envision this in portait mode with one view above the other, with a movable separator between them. Text size should vary independently, so the Chinese text can be displayed larger than the English text. The ability to edit the documents would allow users to fix bad Internet copies of Chinese texts and do translations/make notes. A really nice-to-have feature would be the ability to sync the two documents, perhaps by selecting text in both documents and pressing a Sync button. Synchronized documents would both scroll to the topmost sync point shown in a particular view when that view is scrolled. The sync information could be saved in a third file, allowing people to share the three files so others could benefit.

Some other thoughts:
"ePub support"
Probably a good move.

"Ability to browse and download server content"
Some of this already there. Also, it sounds like the iPad will allow users to copy files into a directory for each app when directly connected to a computer.

"support for RSS Feeds"
RSS is a can of worms without a library to convert all the different variations.

"Maybe another way of looking up words apart from the pop-up dictionary."
Something the current version for iPhone OS could use as well.

"Icons to quickly change text size"
I think the text size does need to be configurable, but once set it would be changed rarely.

 

[radioman]

Yes, and an option to translate a document on fly like Google Docs Translation.
In fact it would be very cool to get up a Google Docs translation of your Chinese Text, English on the right, but the ability to mouse over the characters on the left. (I know that the English translations come out less than perfect. But I still find it useful as I can look at the grammar and all of the Chinese and pretty much figure out what is the right representation of the translation while being able to do individual character lookups.

The big feature I would like to see is the ability to show/edit two documents at once, usually a Chinese text and a translation. I would envision this in portait mode with one view above the other, with a movable separator between them.

 

[character]

In fact it would be very cool to get up a Google Docs translation of your Chinese Text, English on the right, but the ability to mouse over the characters on the left.

The big feature I would like to see is the ability to show/edit two documents at once, usually a Chinese text and a translation. I would envision this in portait mode with one view above the other, with a movable separator between them.

I hope if Mike implements this feature he'll make view placement configurable. I suspect side-by-side views would be too skinny for easy reading in the iPad's default orientation, portrait.

---

On a more general iPad note, seriously consider getting more than the base 16GB -- my iPod touch (8GB) is perpetually filled, and adding book storage on top of apps, podcasts, and videos (which I would expect to have more of on this bigger screen device) would certainly fill up 16GB in no time. Digital books are small individually, but even w/o an eBook reader I already have over 2GB of PDF books and the like. Just a suggestion.

 

[character]

iPad question: does it have a Kensington security slot or other way to prevent it from walking off without locking it in a drawer? It's not pocketable like an iPhone/Touch.

 

[gandq]

@character:
Side-by-side editing of two text documents? Pleco as a CAT (computer aided translation) tool?
Well, why not? This is a wishlist after all.

"Ability to browse and download server content"
Some of this already there. Also, it sounds like the iPad will allow users to copy files into a directory for each app when directly connected to a computer.

You're right, part of it is there. But as I understand it, Pleco will let the iPhone act as a server to which I than can upload files from my computer. Should also work the other way round, especially if the iPad allows a more direct way of file storage and access...


@Mike:
One more suggestion that I would like to make regarding the reader:

• - ability to permanentliy highlight text in stored documents and maybe even some sort of annotation feature.

When I come back to a text that I've read some time before, I find it very helpful to see which words I checked before, which I thought were important, which I even added as flashcards / created custom flashcards from (= multiple highlight colors would be a must), and what thoughts and/or associations I might have had at the time (those could nicely be shown in a pop-up-bezel, BTW).

iSilo on Palm OS used to handle this with additional files stored for each document, I think, but there surely is a more elegant way to do it.

Cheers,


jo.

 

[character]

@character:
Side-by-side editing of two text documents? Pleco as a CAT (computer aided translation) tool?

And a stripped-down version is pretty easy to add and differentiates iPhone Pleco from iPad Pleco.

• - ability to permanentliy highlight text in stored documents and maybe even some sort of annotation feature.

Highlighting words (and showing annotations) might be a something users would want to apply across documents (or not).

 

[johnh113]

Dear Reader,

Regarding hi-lighting, a very minor and completely dismissible suggestion, I would like to have some sort of indication that a dictionary entry is already in one of my flashcard lists.

John

 

[numble]

Care to comment on this list of SDK features?

http://modmyi.com/forums/ipad-news/6991 ... found.html

Support for Kerberos and NegotiateV2 HTTP authentication schemes
CoreText framework for advanced typography support
A simplified API for formatted text
Built-in regular expression engine now accessible to developers
Much richer Movie player API
Richer CoreAnimation properties (layers can have shadows and effects; effects can be rasterized for speed)
Text layers for optimized drawing of formatted text
Simplified Beizer path drawing API (formerly a private API)
User-accessible filesystem and built in view controllers for accessing them (note: applications that access files directly and not through controller probably won't be approved)
Simplified gesture recognizer API (available in 3.0 as a private API; some of us have been using this already
Simple CoreGraphics PDF-creation API
Ability for applications to add custom items to the select/cut/copy/paste menu (similar to what my ActionMenu does)
Spell-checker in text fields and web views with support for multiple languages, grammar checking (English-only), address book integration, user added words and SDK access (via AppleSpell; similar to what my Inspell product does)
Custom keyboard views; hardware keyboard (possibly via USB: USBKeyboardLayouts.plist or Bluetooth?)
Support for querying attached screens (AppStore-permitted external display support?)
Simplified zoom support for standard scroll views
SpringBoard maintains orientation
Support for hardware media keys (not sure what this is)
Ability to set the desktop background (private)
The beginnings of file upload support in Safari
iPad codename: Wildcat ([[UIDevice currentDevice] isWildcat])
Legacy code from iPhone 1.x is still around (if stripped out, could save some RAM for memory-constrained devices)
Swipe and flick gestures on keyboard
Split-view and popover styles
Handwriting keyboard is being prototyped
"Book" view controller
"Peripheral views" are being prototyped (not 100% sure what this is, but appears to be plugins that hardware vendors can inject into all applications?)
Possible integrated Java Virtual Machine (in the public frameworks path, but only for Simulator?)
Support for DMG and other disk image formats (in the public frameworks path?)
Printer support is being prototyped
Speech Synthesis is mentioned in public headers (is currently a private API)
Slideshow integration with iLife
USB Host for transferring images is being prototyped (perhaps Wildcat only? supports PTP only currently)
Ads are being tested for the integrated maps application
MobileStorageMounter (ability to mount mobile storage?)
Included dictionaries: Apple Dictionary, New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, Shogakukan Daijisen, Shogakukan Progressive English-Japanese Japanese-English Dictionary, and Shogakukan Ruigo Reikai Jiten

 

[mikelove]

gandq - thanks for the detailed wishlist. All-in-one layout should definitely be coming, we'd actually like to do it on regular iPhone too once we get our custom keyboard implemented (which will probably wait until after the next big iPhone OS update). When / why do you find yourself needing to rapidly change the font size? And how large of a page margin do you really want, given the already large black border on the iPad?

character - "iPhone OS" is confusing because a surprisingly large number of people don't realize that iPhones and iPod Touches run the same OS; this is why we say iPhone / iPod everywhere else on our website too, and why we'll probably add iPad to that instead of replacing them all with "iPhone OS." Document translation is interesting, but would require us to improve our text editor function first (though that's definitely on the to-do list too). Could you expand on that "Sync" feature a bit? Would this basically be about designating particular ranges of text that correspond to each other?

Kensington security slots are useless - way back on my first day of college the university police department came and demonstrated how easy they are to break. Should still be lockable in a drawer as long as it's a reasonably-sized drawer, though.

gandq again - you actually could download files from your computer with Pleco's built-in web browser if you set up your computer as a web server; lots of ways to do that. And yes, directly transferring files via USB would work too if the finished iPad actually does support that. Highlighting documents has been requested a few times before, actually - neat idea but a little tricky to rectify with document editing (have to maintain an internal array of locations / update them as the text is updated / recognize if the file has been replaced and either update them based on adjacent text or keep the old version and put up a warning).

johnh113 - the only thing that's ever stopped us from indicating that a dictionary entry is already in flashcards is performance; we don't want to slow down the speed of search / definition retrieval with that extra flashcard database query. But we can keep re-checking it every couple of updates and see if the speed reaches a point where it becomes practical.

numble - well I can't confirm or deny, of course, but typography improvements like those would certainly be nice; the tricky thing is that until they're supported on all iPhones / iPods / iPads we can't really rely on them too much for our text display system. And likewise with custom keyboards, though we could actually implement one of those even without any help from Apple. A lot of that prototype stuff is probably on tap for iPhone OS 4.0, which is kind of nerve-wracking; we want them to enable new functionality, so something that made pop-up translation support (for example) possible would be lovely, but at the same time we don't want the stuff that we've painstakingly developed to be replaced / rendered unnecessary / useless, so our fancy hacking to enable popup translation in the web browser would be rendered largely unnecessary (though perhaps still better than would be possible with Apple's API, which would likely require the extra step of tap-hold text selection, be a bit less flexible about word / character boundaries, and need at least an extra button or two to invoke).

 

[character]

Document translation is interesting, but would require us to improve our text editor function first (though that's definitely on the to-do list too). Could you expand on that "Sync" feature a bit? Would this basically be about designating particular ranges of text that correspond to each other?

I'm sure a basic editor wouldn't be too hard: search/replace and perhaps reformat selected text (remove newlines). Yes, for sync I was thinking it would be ranges of text, though being able to mark a pair of "points" (line number, character position), one in each document, would also be nice (and much faster). The basic idea is what is important; as long as it's usable I'm not too hung up on any particular implementation.

Kensington security slots are useless - way back on my first day of college the university police department came and demonstrated how easy they are to break. Should still be lockable in a drawer as long as it's a reasonably-sized drawer, though.

I agree they aren't very useful against a determined/prepared thief but they can stop a passerby from giving in to temptation.

Highlighting documents has been requested a few times before, actually - neat idea but a little tricky to rectify with document editing (have to maintain an internal array of locations / update them as the text is updated / recognize if the file has been replaced and either update them based on adjacent text or keep the old version and put up a warning).

Or you could keep a list of words to highlight and highlight all occurrences in the document.

johnh113 - the only thing that's ever stopped us from indicating that a dictionary entry is already in flashcards is performance; we don't want to slow down the speed of search / definition retrieval with that extra flashcard database query.

Could you add a field to the dictionary entry and update it on flashcard creation/removal? That way you wouldn't have the extra query during those more speed sensitive operations.

 

[Andy]

China's on the cutting edge again

Looks like Shenzhen came out with their own ipad six months ago: http://news.wenxuecity.com/messages/201 ... 05003.html

 

[garysaville]

Re: China's on the cutting edge again

Looks like Shenzhen came out with their own ipad six months ago: http://news.wenxuecity.com/messages/201 ... 05003.html

There have been Windows based touch screens for years. I remember seeing them in Taipei 5 years ago. They have all been awful. Trying to push tiny little buttons with your fingers just doesn't work. The nice thing about the iPad, and the iTouch / iPhone for that matter, is that they have been designed from the ground up with a touch interface in mind. There will be tons of devices with GUIs plastered on top of Windows and Windows CE, but as always, they will lack features, standards and they will probably slow the device down. Love them or hate them, Apple are great at interface design.

G=-,
-夏嘉瑞
-
www.garysaville.net

 

[radioman]

I like this one as well as noting if I looked up the word before (maybe different highlight colors)

Dear Reader,

Regarding hi-lighting, a very minor and completely dismissible suggestion, I would like to have some sort of indication that a dictionary entry is already in one of my flashcard lists.

John

 

[gandq]

When / why do you find yourself needing to rapidly change the font size? And how large of a page margin do you really want, given the already large black border on the iPad?

Actually, you're right. I hadn't thought about the black frame, which makes margins less important. Still, I'd like to be able to choose the width of the displayed text, mainly for ensuring comfortable / faster reading (less eye movement) on such a large screen by reducing line widht.

Regarding the font size, you're also right, I am using Stanza (iPhone) to read both english/german and Chinese texts. So I tend to change font sizes in between (bigger font for chinese). Won't be such a big issue with Pleco.

you actually could download files from your computer with Pleco's built-in web browser if you set up your computer as a web server; lots of ways to do that.

I've tried, but I can't get Pleco to access the server I've set up with Calibre. I don't know if the inbuild browser can handle logins with username/password and port configuration? My server adress (as displayed when testing the server with my desktop browser) looks something like this: http://123.0.0.1:8080 Stanza can access it without problem, but I get nothing via Pleco's browser or Safari.