Pleco 2.0 on WM6 device with WVGA screen

[goulniky]

I installed Pleco 2.0 a week ago on my old HTC TyTN, just noticed that the Xperia X1 is available in Europe so I was eager to upgrade the hardware too. It's a Sony Ericsson smartphone made by HTC with a 3" WVGA screen (800x480) running WM 6.1

I was wondering if anyone had a chance to run Pleco 2.0 on it, or on the new HTC touch HD (also WGA but 3.8") which I am now seriously considering instead. Since the HTC HD has no physical keyboard, I'd be interested to know what the experience is entering pinyin or English in Pleco with the virtual keyboard.

Other than the virtual keyboard, the main question is Pleco's behaviour on an 800x480 screen, I remember Mike saying a few months back that it should be fine, and with all the new features and dictionaries, it would reallly be great

THX

 

[mikelove]

Seems to work OK per this thread - we tested it on low-resolution screens with the same aspect ratio here (the WM emulator for WVGA is broken, but the 400x240 one works fine) but we probably need to get an actual Xperia in here at some point too.

 

[Eggwind]

I'm using Pleco on my X01T with a WVGA screen, and it works excellently. Only issue is that it doesn't take advantage of the full screen in the character info screen, and I think Mike said something about wanting to fix that... mhm?

 

[ldolse]

That's a problem throughout Pleco, and was by design. Many screens are hardcoded for 320x320, or whatever the smallest square screen resolution is. It's on the to-do list to fix someday.

 

[goulniky]

here's how it roughly compares to my WM5 TyTN in terms of real estate on 320x240 screen. What's available for me is the area in red, as well as the Dict/Modules bar obviously, and with a lower resolution. In practice, the icon bar spreads over 2 rows, so that's even less room available for definitions etc. I also don't know whether colors are a WM5/6 difference or just be a configuration issue, but I don't get the extra characters in a different color like here with 权 ，人

 

[goulniky]

Just received my HTC Touch HD and installed Pleco 2.0 on it.

One problem I immediately came across is keyboard input. This device runs under WM6, which in addition to the standard tiny virtual keyboard, has a Full QWERTY keyboard mode (which works fine) and a Compact QWERTY keyboard mode, which has larger keys with 2 letters on each. Much like phone keypads, pressing twice brings up the second letter.

This works fine with most applications, but not with Pleco, which simply does not react to those events. It's unfortunate, because the Full QWERTY keys are a little too small for finger input.

Other question, I can't seem to get this device do automatically switch to landscape as it's supposed to, is there a way to force Pleco in that mode?

 

[mikelove]

Yeah, supporting all of those non-standard keyboards is really tough because a lot of them seem to work by hacking / modifying Windows' built-in text edit boxes (which won't work in Pleco since we use our own proprietary one) - I suppose that's an argument for adding an Input Field Compatibility mode on WM as we have on Palm. Once we get one of the newer Touch models for testing we'll at least take a run at supporting T9/Compact QWERTY/etc, but it may be that there's simply no way to do it without using a built-in Windows edit field.

There's no way force Pleco into landscape mode if that's not how the system is configured - it would take an enormous amount of work to get Pleco to rotate all of its text / UI controls / etc into landscape if Windows is still running in portrait mode, so that's not something we're likely to consider adding. I'm pretty sure there are utility programs available which will streamline the process of telling Windows to rotate the screen, though - something which would rotate it when you tap on a particular top-of-the-screen icon or press a particular button sequence.

 

[ldolse]

Put the ZTA4 VGA version on your touch HD. It will work fine with Pleco in it's T9 mode which is thumb friendly. For some reason it's missing some punctuation characters, but those generally aren't neccessary for Pleco.

 

[ipsi]

I'm actually quite surprised they see a need to hack the standard text field - Windows Mobile has this whole SIP thing (which is what ZTA4 uses, I imagine), and given that I can get Chinese input that way (into the main Pleco search box, which is definitely one of the ones that uses your custom controls, yes?), I'm a little (well, very) puzzled as to why they wouldn't use it.

EDIT: I do use CE-Star for my Chinese Input, as I'm not sure that ZTA4 works on 320x320 screens. If it does, I'll happily give it another try.

 

[mikelove]

I think it has to do with keeping track of the text that's already in the field and modifying it - Chinese input systems don't generally need to do that if they pop up a separate box for Pinyin input (as CE-Star / ZTA4 do, I believe).

 

[ben_gb]

You could try using the Touchpal keyboard (from http://www.cootek.com). This works pretty well on my current Touch HD, as well as my previous HTC phones. The keyboard is very nice to use, and they even have chinese add-on packs (simp and trad), if you need to enter chinese characters directly.

With Touchpal, you can easily turn the word prediction mode on and off (you want it on for entering english words) with a swipe of the finger. With it off, you it lets you enter character by character which works well for pinyin (or entering things like passwords).

There is a little bit of a learning curve with this SIP, but after using it on and off for a day or so, you will soon get the hang of it, and find that it massively speeds up your typing on a touch screen (certainly better than the HTC keyboard, or fiddling around with the CE-Star stylus keyboard).

By the way, in answer to the original question, I am using Pleco on a Touch HD, and it's working fine. The extra screen size makes Pleco (and other applications) a joy to use.

Regards,
Ben

 

[goulniky]

Thanks. The HTC Touch HD I received had a technical glitch so I had to return it... while waiting for the replacement, I installed Touchpal on my TyTN and I can only agree that there is a bit of a learning curve, but it may be worth it, I need so see what it looks like on a WVGA screen.

I also installed their chinese add-on packs, but having removed a previous version of Monster Chinese, I didn't seem to have Chinese fonts anymore so that doesn't seem to work. Incidentally, I checked the Maction website and they don't seem to support this product anymore ?!

I'll go take a look at ZTA4 when I'm home (company network blocks this site :x

Having now installed ZTA4 (and sunglobe font) on my TyTN, I think I will stay with it. Keyboard expands to screen width in landscape, so I guess the VGA version will likely be thumb-friendly on the HTC Touch HD. I am amazed, is this tool really free?

 

[goulniky]

the trouble is, now that I have both ZTA4 and Touchpal installed on the TyTN, Pleco handwriting recognition no longer works. The strokes are drawn alright, but no recognition takes place.

I hadn't tested it right after installing Touchpal which I did first, but having now removed Touchpal, the problem has been fixed.