Pleco for Android 3.1 Beta 6

mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Another long wait - this one was a combination of Michael moving to a new apartment and a second Major Android System Change We Really Ought To Do Something About While We've Got Lots Of Active Beta Testers, specifically the adoption of Google's new (v3) in-app billing system. Which brings two big advantages for Google Play users: add-on prices will now be displayed in accurate local currency, and it's now much more efficient for us to fetch your list of purchased add-ons on startup, because of which, we can now automatically prompt you to activate new ones purchased on one device on another device, or prompt you to reactivate your add-ons the first time you run Pleco.

To hopefully get a little extra testing on this very different IAP implementation, we've also now enabled purchasing for our new 3.1 add-ons on this beta, the only exception being the Oxford Chinese Dictionary since we can't start selling that until Oxford approves it. So you can browse and buy the new dictionaries, enhanced handwriting and Cantonese audio add-ons now; these are real GPlay purchases, they'll be charged to your credit card like any other purchase (though of course we'll be happy to refund them if you encounter problems) and they'll count exactly the same in the finished version. If you don't have access to GPlay in-app purchases, our website store doesn't have a 'beta mode' but if you contact support we should be able to arrange to take a payment from you manually by PayPal, or you can just wait a little longer for the official release.

Note, however, that if you bought a bundle of Pleco on Android or if you transferred a copy from iOS (haven't decided about Palm/WM yet) we're actually planning to give you the enhanced handwriting recognizer for free - we haven't gotten that active on our server yet, unfortunately, but if you accidentally buy it without seeing this, let us know and we'll be happy to give you a refund. The same applies for other new add-ons that were already out on iOS - generally these should have transferred over, but if any of yours didn't, please email support rather than buying them again. (unless you feel like giving us more money, of course)

Lots of bug fixes too, and a few UI tweaks, including most notably a different logo icon in the action bar - we were worried the fish was taking up too much space so we changed it from an actual 魚 to a 魚字. Feedback on this is most welcome. Apologies to those of you with poor internet connections for yet another data file update - should be the last one, we wanted to make it possible to delete the basic handwriting module after installing the enhanced one and also wanted to refresh CC-CEDICT again (it'd been a month since the last time) in the hopes of having it relatively fresh for the official release.

If you already have an earlier beta and you got it through Google Play, it should show up as an update within a few hours. Otherwise, you can get it:

a) Through Google Play. Sign up for our Android Beta Testing group at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pleco-android-beta-testing

And then sign up for beta versions of Pleco at:

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.pleco.chinesesystem

after which you should be able to get it right from them. (this isn't up yet but should be in a few hours)

b) Directly from our website; APK at:

http://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-140531-310b6.apk

The Google Play version makes it easier for us to collect crash reports, so please use that one if you can.
 
ckatt

ckatt

状元
So far so good. I didn't find the old logo to be to large, but the new one is ok too.
I'm glad to see that the reveal parts separately buttons in landscape mode are working on the left now but there is one other problem. it looks like the buttons are covering up the card number on the info bar at the top.
 
G

giokve

进士
Tapping on a word and then on the search button doesn't take me anywhere. I hope this will be fixed asap.
EDIT: I managed to narrow it down a bit: it works only when the search box is empty.

I would like to remove the + button next to the logo. Is that possible?
 
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alex_hk90

alex_hk90

状元
Just updated to Beta 6 via Google Play. The 魚字 probably isn't as aesthetically pleasing as the 魚 was, but it does save some space so probably worth the change.

I purchased the Cantonese audio (female) from within Pleco using Google Play and it seemed to work well. :)

Regarding the Cantonese audio, some common characters don't play anything for me, including zau6 (就) and si6 (是).
 
T

Taichi

榜眼
Is your icon
1.jpg
too large to fit in the action bar?
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@ckatt - yeah, seeing that clipped too - must be a glitch in our layout files, thanks.

@alex_hk90 - still going back and forth on 魚字, definitely not as pretty (and versions in 楷体 etc tend to be too thin / kind of disappear so no help from that).

And thanks very much for the note on audio - the files seem to be missing everything alphabetically after 'put', oddly enough; fix shortly, check your Updates tab in an hour or so.

@Taichi - it's not that it's too large but rather that it's proportioned oddly - fish part is too wide; if we keep it to the standard action bar icon width of 32dp (=96x96 on an xxhdpi screen) it looks small and blotchy but if we make it taller it takes up too much width.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Update: Cantonese audio now fixed, thanks again for the note on that (would have been a really embarrassing problem to have on launch).
 
alex_hk90

alex_hk90

状元
mikelove said:
Update: Cantonese audio now fixed, thanks again for the note on that (would have been a really embarrassing problem to have on launch).
Click to expand...
Thank you for the quick response - much appreciated as always! :)

However since posting I seem to have lost all the JP audio (the speaker icon no longer shows). Searching in Jyutping doesn't give any results either. I'm going to try reinstalling the add-on (I've downloaded the update but it didn't bring back the icon.

EDIT: Reinstalling has worked, and the missing audio from before seems to be fixed (at least for my two examples above). Thanks. :)
 
HW60

HW60

状元
Pleco should know where the old version is stored and make an update. With the APK file I was asked which volume, and after installing all program files and add-ons had to be installed again.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@alex_hk90 - that's odd; did that happen after you updated the file?

@HW60 - had you been using the Google Play version before this recent APK install? Unfortunately, installing a new APK can often have the side effect of deleting a lot of Pleco's settings - not much we can do about that except to steer people towards GPlay updates when possible.
 
ckatt

ckatt

状元
The Hui tts voice isn't playing when it should be. The only place I hear it is in the reader when tap the icon to read the whole document. But in the rest of the dictionary it always plays the recorderd voice files. Also in the pop up dictionary it will sometimes crash if I were to highlight 4 or 5 characters and try to play the audio.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@ckatt - that's odd, it definitely should be using TTS for headwords when there's no exact recording. With the crash, did you send your crash logs to Google Play?

@Taichi - doesn't look good, actually - in any other orientation the fish tends to be weirdly uneven (tail loops too far one way or the other). But we think we may go back to the old fish and just shrink it a bit. 'pleco' string doesn't help, the problem is that at 32dp width the fish is just too small to make out clearly.
 
T

Taichi

榜眼
I'm seeing the TTS problem as well. By default it plays syllable by syllable instead of hui. If I turn on "skip if no recording" in the setting, it plays Hui.
 
T

Taichi

榜眼
CY has layout problem on flashcard test (xperia z ultra, default font)

Edit: CY in the pop up has same problem.
 

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J

jmu3

Member
Some feedback:
  1. When I installed the v3.1 Beta 6 update from the Play store, some settings were lost. I see an earlier post mentions this shouldn't happen when installing an update from Play, though it did in my case. (I was previously running v2.4.18 which I had installed from the Play store.)
  2. In the Updated Add-ons section, when there are multiple pending updates, the last item in the list says “Download All”. However if you tap this text, nothing happens. The download only starts if you click the arrow icon. I think it would be more intuitive if tapping the “Download All” text/description could also be used to start the download.
  3. In the Add-ons and History modules, pressing the hardware menu button opens the menu, though this doesn’t work in the OCR module. Is this intentional?
  4. The dictionary field chooser always uses day mode even when night mode is enabled. Same for “Rearrange
    sidebar sections” in Settings.
  5. In Language settings, there is a typo in “Hide example pronunciaition”.
  6. I have also submitted a few crash reports.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@ckatt / @Taichi - thanks.

@Taichi - ah, this one's a bug in the Android text layout system (doesn't like indents) which we forgot to work around in the flashcard screen - thanks.

@jmu3 - thanks for all of this. On 1), we do reset some settings when updating to 3.1 - most of the UI ones, actually. But tone colors, simplified/traditional, and most of your search settings should be preserved - do you remember if any of those were reset?
 
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