Poll: Beta 7 Status

[mikelove]

Since roughly 6x as many people have downloaded / activated 2.0 as have actually submitted feedback on it, I thought a poll might help to get some broader-based feedback from people who haven't spoken up so far. So if you've installed / tried out Beta 7 we'd appreciate your answer to the question above. We're very much hoping Beta 8 will be the last one we need to do, but if it's still not ready there are certainly other approaches we can take to releasing it (say, making the beta more completely public on our website with full documentation / installers / etc but still calling it a beta for a while longer).

 

[ipsi]

For what it's worth, I haven't used Pleco 1.0 for some time now. 2.0 does everything I need and more! I must say that, apart from those niggling memory issues (How much RAM does a 680 have? 32MB?), it's been rock-solid for both betas 6 and 7. As soon as I can start adding my own dictionaries, I'll be happy. . Still a few minor issues here and there (one of which I've just posted about to the bug reports thread), but overall, it's very close.

 

[ldolse]

Yeah - at this point I'm only using 1.0 for my homemade makepleco dictionaries. Generally speaking I think beta 8 could probably be a release candidate.

 

[stephanhodges]

I'd suggest at this point that you release updates once a week, rather than a full blown "beta" package. Have newcomers install the full package, then updates. That way, you can immediately (almost) resolve issues (such as my crashes), that may in turn hide new ones.

 

[mikelove]

ipsi - still not 100% sure the pTunes problem is a memory issue, actually, it might just be some sort of obscure conflict in ARM-land; Palm's ARM runtimes are buggy as hell (spent 3 days once tracing down a SQLite bug that turned out to be caused by an error in the runtime's *long division* function) so you're always playing with fire when you try to run two ARM-intensive programs at once.

stephanhodges - that's pretty much the plan now, Beta 6 was supposed to be the last release with significant feature changes but between more of those and the new databases Beta 7 ended up taking a lot longer than we would have liked. But there aren't any of those things left for Beta 8 so that should be out a lot faster.

 

[ipsi]

It could be both... Wouldn't that be wonderful? Either way, I hadn't realised that the ARM implementation was as buggy as that. Could explain a few things I'm sure...

 

[Dan_78cj5]

OK, so I've only had it loaded for one day and only used it for a few hours on the commuter train, but this baby is ready to go. Remember when you release it as 2.0 you still have plenty of room to release 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.0.3, etc.

Searched a whole mess of words in many dictionaries, did a LOT of changing preferences, switching tool bar set-ups, in and out of screens, wide screen back to narrow screen with the graphitti pad in and out (I'm on a T|X in wide screen mode) and ran through a lot of making catagories and moving them, flash card reviews, etc. None of the previous Beta sloppy screen changes, difficulties with wide screen, problems with many of the tool bar buttons, etc., none of those old problems. Though there are likely still issues to work out, I found it an easy load up and immediately useful for most functions. OK, ok, only 3 or 4 hours using it so I'll keep at it, but I say make it a go!

Thanks for all the work, this really is a great tool!
Dan

 

[johnowenschina]

I haven't had any major problem with b7. After installing it I installed CE-STAR 2.2 Suite, and my system totally crashed. I did a hard reset, ug, and installed CE-Star first, then b7. All seems to work fine.

My may problem is not having the documentation yet and needing to guess what each control is used for and how it is used.

Anyway, great product.

 

[stephanhodges]

"beta" documentation can be found here: http://china.panlogicsoftware.com/pleco/start

 

[The Duelist]

I'm Still Using Pleco1.

Much As I'd Like To Be Using All The Cool New Functions Of PD2,
I'm Having Major Stability Issues With Pleco2.
Pleco2 Keeps Crashing Just Navigating Between Many The New Functions.

Most Of The Functionality Generally Works,
But Switching Between Functions Always Eventually Ends Up In a Crash
ie After Every 4-5 Operations

 

[mikelove]

What do you mean by switching between functions, switching between functions in Pleco or switching between Pleco and other programs? If it's all in Pleco, what switches are causing these?

 

[The Duelist]

What do you mean by switching between functions, switching between functions in Pleco or switching between Pleco and other programs? If it's all in Pleco, what switches are causing these?

I've Logged More Info In The Beta 7 Bug Report Thread

 

[tianma81]

Unfortunately, I had a very large number of soft crashes after installation. I decided to hang it up until a later beta or the real deal. I'm on a Tungsten E2. They occurred most often when I was moving quickly between different different features. Change dictionaries back and forth, changing flashcard options quickly...Often times there is a small lag time (no more than half a second) after changing, say, the fashcard settings to English, during which if I press something else, it crashes. I also got a number of crashes using the feature that allows you to look up words outside of the program. For example in the built in ToDo list. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good beta tester and haven't made specific notes. Also my system is old. Tungsten E2 with 10 whatevers of ram. Good luck, though. It looks really great. I'll keep check back every now and then...

 

[mikelove]

Yeah, the E2's been pretty troublesome so far - I'm on my way out to replace our recently-broken E2 right now so hopefully we can reproduce/fix some of these E2-specific problems that have cropped up in the last couple of betas.

 

[tianli]

Pretty solid but needs another couple of Betas was my vote and I know that anything above this is simply immature.
The energy to release is high and I understand this as well as any. I resisted installing any of the Betas until now because I did not want to become any kind of burden when this development time was necessary for development and not for an inrush of technical support. That you offered Betas was a practical move and really pulled the Pleco community together, those of us less able to give the proper time in terms of usable data and reportage were I hope smart enought to stay away, and those that contributed are regarded with the greatest respect and gratitude.
I am on a T/X and it has been an excellent experience but I still have some problems and will post these shortly in the suitable forum. It is close there is no doubt, but being close is not the same as being finished.

The user interface, the new features ....it is such a mature product now, I feel so empowered everytime I switch it on but I still have a way to go before understanding many of the new functions (and solving these couple of problems). A user manual beyond the present prototype would be terrific, but again I think it would give an impression of a final release and that would be a misconception.

 

[stephanhodges]

One of the problems with the poll is that it depends on what YOU mean by release. If it's the same schedules as the past (about 1 per 6-8 weeks), then it becomes hard to judge, since a +/- of 1 is a significant amount of time.

If, on the other hand, you release every week with just the executable (as you just did), then people can retest quickly, but more importantly, they can test BEYOND the previous bug to see if there are ripple / side effects.

If you do one a week, I think everything could be releasable in about 3-4 weeks. Maybe sooner, but I haven't played with the latest 7+ beta yet.

 

[mikelove]

Well part of the issue here is Palm versus Windows Mobile - the WM version I think in its current state is already significantly less buggy than the release version (thanks to all of the longstanding bugs we've managed to work around on that), and I suspect most of the people who picked "perfect" on this survey are WM users, so I'd very much like to get that out to people ASAP - WM users have been dealing with disappearing fonts and corrupted user dictionary files and blank boxes and other stuff like that for two years now and they shouldn't have to wait any longer than necessary. But at the same time, if we release 2.0 on WM without releasing it on Palm that's going to make a lot of people very angry and lose us a lot of the goodwill which is, to be honest, the biggest remaining justification for putting 2.0 out on Palm at all at this point, so there has to be a Palm version ready that most people are going to be satisfied with.

The # of betas counts weren't necessarily a good idea since that is indeed difficult for people to judge, but the basic goal is to get most of the Palm users up into the second category and most of the WM users into the first one - once we're at that point I think we can reasonably release this and fix any lingering issues with patches. (perhaps even releasing it with the proviso that non-technical Palm users might want to wait for 2.0.1)

stephanhodges - this test version may not do as much in your case as in other people's since most of the bugs we fixed concern the NVFS file system on newer-model Palms, but hopefully it'll fix a few glitches at least.

 

[Jim]

Mike, as a Palm user I wouldn't mind if the WM users got theirs first. I know I am only one user and you need the good will of all but I think it might surprise you to find out that most wouldn't mind as most are aware from these forums the differences in programming for the two systems. Besides, the betas are far enough along that we are not going completely without. Don't know if it is worth your time and effort to email all the Palm users to ask for a simple yes or no response that you could count quickly.

 

[mikelove]

I appreciate that, but I think a lot of customers would be much less forgiving. And if we did do that the temptation would be pretty strong to leave the Palm OS version in an extended "beta" state while we worked on the vastly-more-lucrative iPhone version (particularly given the way Palm versus WM sales are trending lately), at which point the Palm version might not ever actually get finished. We're certainly not trying to conceal the fact that Palm OS is no longer at the center of our product plans, but there's a big difference between losing interest in Palm and abandoning the huge number of people who've already bought Palms with the good-faith belief that they'd be able to run 2.0 on them.

 

[radioman]

I'm reading the string here, and will add my two cents.

For me, the Palm E2 was a disaster with Version 2 pre-Beta 7. That is why I bought the Axim x51v.

But the Axim is materially bigger, the screen is not quite as vibrant, and the battery life is not there relative to the Palm. (and most frustrating was that it does not play well with my Mac). The Palm screen vibrant, battery life is great if not amazing (albeit, the digitizer is a bit screwed up).

So when Beta 7(a) came out and I had the problems with Axim/Apple interface, I gave the Palm E2 another try.

On the E2, Beta 7(a) is light years ahead of Beta 6 relative to stability. With Beta 7(a), I do not expect it to crash (in general). In Beta 6, I could hardly bring up a screen without something going sideways. I still get crashes in Beta 7(a) (see below), and they are unfortunate. But I have been working the program over pretty well, flashcard sessions where I am constantly moving between the flashcards and Char Info; saving flash sessions and successfully returning; even general wailing on the virtual keys to try and force problems - but very few are there. Great feature set, very useful.

As for today's crashes, I had two so far. One was just turning off the device when on a dictionary window - same old "Line 10 703, Can't move open DB" that happens when I do a hard power off in the middle of something. The other was a Fatal Alert - Memory Manager.c Line 3732, NULL handle - this one was encountered when running a flashcard session and hitting the speaker. I believe I pressed the virtual speaker button to hear the word and the fatal alert occurred. Version 1 did not have these stability problems - when I turned it on, it was up and running and did not crash (I know Version 2 is much more complex).

If you had asked me a month ago when I was buying my Axim, I would have recommended the Palm version 2 development be scrapped completely (just a bit of personal problem/frustration from an E2 owner ) But for better or worse, Beta 7(a) for Palm as so near the mark, that I certainly have changed my opinion.

My own wish list would be to get the crash items I have identified above stabilized (especially the "can't move open DB" issue), and get a simple way to back up the flashcard database (without having to use backup buddy). After that, I would be more than happy have development frozen on the Palm and shifted in force to the iPhone.