Pleco for Android 3.2.15 Beta 4

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Second one with some fixes on the first. UPDATE: slightly modified third version with a fix for a Cantonese TTS problem. UPDATE 2: another slightly modified fourth version.

If you previously signed up for beta testing through Google Play, this new beta should show up as an update within a few hours. Otherwise, you can get it:

a) Through Google Play. Sign up for that at:

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

(no more Google Group necessary thanks to a recent Play update) after which you should be able to get it right from there.

b) Directly from our website; APK at:

http://cdn.pleco.com/androidapps/plecodroid-150827.apk

Changes in Beta 4:
  • Made our earlier fix for file access errors after a system restart work more reliably.
Changes in Beta 3:
  • Fixed an issue that kept Cantonese TTS from working correctly on Android versions prior to 4.3.
Changes in Beta 2:
  • Added an option in "external access" settings to hide characters in the Screen OCR overlay.
  • Made PDF files show up in the document reader "recent files" history.
  • Restored Android 4.0 support (we think/hope with no loss in stability from before).
  • Made flashcard sessions persist more reliably if your device crashes while in the process of waking up from sleep.
  • Tweaked Android 6 file installation so that it no longer requires us to request external storage writing permission (which we now keep around in our app's manifest only for the sake of users on pre-KitKat devices where there was no other mechanism for us to save files to an SD card at all) - now the only "dangerous" permissions we ask for are camera access for Live OCR and accessibility / screen capture / screen overlay for Screen Reader / Screen OCR.
  • Fixed a couple of crashing bugs.
  • Fixed issues with the new Screen Reader/OCR invocation interface that could cause floating buttons to stick around when they shouldn't or cause commands to fail to trigger entirely.
  • Fixed (finally) a bug relating to imports of user dictionaries in which some entries could go missing if too many entries had identical Chinese characters.
  • Fixed a bug that made the multi-level category selection option unavailable in the PDF reader.
  • Fixed a bug that made character highlight rectangles offset a bit from the characters themselves in screen OCR.
Changes in Beta 1:
  • Overhauled the interface for invoking Screen Reader and OCR; there's now just a single Screen Reader sidebar item (which we're awkwardly calling "Screen Reader + OCR" for a couple of releases until everybody gets used to it and we can change it to "Reader" all the time), tapping that (or using the Screen Reader shortcut) will toggle both items, and the states of whether they're visible / invisible are now controlled solely via long-pressing the floating button. And the buttons are vertically instead of horizontally stacked.
  • Added an option to invoke Screen Reader / OCR via a notification instead of a floating button. (long-press menu or Settings)
  • Added new shortcuts (which can be created via the shortcut app of your choice) to directly invoke Screen OCR / Screen Reader rather than merely toggling the availability of their button.
  • Improved Screen Reader results in a number of apps, including QQ and WeChat-when-it's-running-on-a-very-old-version-of-Android.
  • Greatly improved stability / reduced memory usage of OCR on some (ironically) new and memory-rich devices by adding a custom memory allocation function for OCR (this is our workaround for the infamous Lollipop "memory leak" bug as it manifested in Pleco).
  • Officially added support for Android M, including the new permission request system, floating text selection commands (only supported by Android on editable text at the moment, but highlight a piece of that and you'll see a "Pleco" option in the spillover menu), and some new requirements for native library string relocation (this was actually a huge pain in the butt which is why we're mentioning it here even though hardly anybody knows what we're talking about).
  • Migrated (at last) to the new Android Studio developer tools, which probably won't be noticeable on your end unless we screwed something up but will streamline some things about Pleco releases going forward.
  • Added separate definition scrolling buttons to the Clip Monitor notification since the mix of left/right / top/down buttons in the old one was very confusing and the wasted space is minor / infrequent.
  • Made the "jump to dictionary" command in the Clip Monitor notification and in some OCR modes fill in results from other dictionaries besides your current one, when previously it hadn't.
  • Added a "recognize" button in handwriting in flashcard tests in fill-in-the-blanks mode with "conceal until finished" enabled, for the sake of our stylus-using customers who can't use the two-finger tap gesture, and redid the way we advance through characters in fill-in-the-blanks tests a bit
  • Made the Screen Reader floating button hide itself when the system is in Doze mode.
  • Made text-to-speech work again on some x86 devices (<cough>Asus</cough>) through a clever hack that did not require us to release a separate version of our app for them.
  • Made both Screen Reader and Screen OCR preserve your last keyboard status when possible (rather than forcing the keyboard to close).
  • Made Screen Reader get along a bit better with other apps that float stuff on top of the screen.
  • Made Screen OCR save its last focus rectangle a bit more consistently.
  • Made selections of of items from your search history no longer cause your search history to be re-ordered - they should now stay in their previous order.
  • Added an option in Settings to show invert/orient buttons in Screen OCR (though the UI is currently a bit awkward - you have to resize the recognition area in order to be able to tap on them).
  • Made the "use TTS if no recording" setting match its iOS behavior, defaulting to "off" with only the free system TTS and "on" with one of our paid TTS add-ons.

  • Fixed a bug that caused wacky display when rotating the screen with Screen OCR active (even if it was only in the background).
  • Fixed a bug that could sometimes prevent CC-CEDICT from downloading initially, and added a ("don't show again"able) alert on startup if CC-CEDICT is missing.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause initial file downloads to hang (rather than putting up an error message) when encountering certain problems accessing SD cards.
  • Fixed a crash when opening Card Info from a duplicate prompt in Screen Reader / OCR (though we have to jump into the full Pleco app to pull it up).
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the highlight from updating correctly when interrupting the system text-to-speech engine.
  • Fixed a bug that made using custom startup directories on external SD cards impossible on some devices.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause unexpected behavior when switching between dictionary groups with a particular combination of fallback settings. (you'd end up searching a random dictionary you hadn't chosen)
  • Fixed a bug that could cause crashes on tapping on a full-text Chinese search result.
 
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Taichi

榜眼
I noticed that when screen reader service is enabled, pleco keeps using over 200M memory with my setting. This seems to be because of the GooglePlayService (in app billing?). I attached a screenshot.

Also, when clipbmonitor service enabled (and screen reader service disabled), pleco process keeps staying in memory (i.e. not cached) . Is this expected behavior? shouldn't only the clipboard monitoring service staying in memory?

Update: It seems clipboard monitor behavior is ok. pleco isn't using much memory. In my case around 60M (30M is google TTS)
 

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Marc

举人
I'm getting the Storage Location Changed message again with the new beta. Can't start Pleco. What do you suggest?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@Taichi - I believe the billing service would get automatically unloaded if your system runs low on RAM, though we'll double-check. The Pleco process does stay in memory when the clipboard monitor is running, yes - only way around that would be to put it in a different process from the main app, and that would end up using more memory since we'd have to have duplicate copies of everything.

@Marc - OK, seeing that here too - fix shortly.
 

Marc

举人
Thanks Mike, not available yet through Google Play but I guess is just a matter of hours. Will keep you posted...
 

Marc

举人
Ok, just arrived and installed. Started it several times, rebooted and it still seems to work. (This was the problem before.) Will let you know in case is stops working again. But for now: Thanks for fixing.
 

Taichi

榜眼
I see. That make sense.

"Made flashcard sessions persist more reliably": I'm not sure if it's because of this change, but my flashcard session seems become less persisitent lately. Launching flashcard shortcut sometimes ends up with "New Test" instead of continuing the last session. In some cases it ends up with blank flashcard test screen with many buttons (I attached a screenshot).
 

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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@Taichi - does this tend to happen after you opened Pleco and then exited it after a very short period of time (so that you were in our app for less than 5 seconds total)? Doesn't have to be because you're entering / exiting it for flashcards, could be for some other purpose like looking up a word, but the best explanation we've found so far is that one.
 

Taichi

榜眼
Hmm, actually I'm not sure. It seems to tend to happen when I haven't used pleco for a while.
I can (not reliably) reproduce it by enabling screen reader (not sure if this is required), do flashcard test, use other app for a while, then kill pleco from the recent apps.
 
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