problem importing flashcards (on iPad)

[jyh]

Greetings,

I have created a set of flashcards (for the DeFrancis "Beginning Chinese Reader") but when I try to import the flashcards on the iPad, my custom definitions are overridden by dictionary definitions. Also, my flashcards have duplicates and some extra characters in the pinyin fields, all of which fail to appear on the iPad. I don't encounter these problems on the iPhone, only on the iPad, even though the settings seem to be identical on both devices. What did I miss?

 

[mikelove]

I have created a set of flashcards (for the DeFrancis "Beginning Chinese Reader") but when I try to import the flashcards on the iPad, my custom definitions are overridden by dictionary definitions. Also, my flashcards have duplicates and some extra characters in the pinyin fields, all of which fail to appear on the iPad. I don't encounter these problems on the iPhone, only on the iPad, even though the settings seem to be identical on both devices. What did I miss?

Sounds like you might have previously imported some dictionary-linked flashcards on the iPad, and the new cards are now being linked to those instead of being created anew.

If you don't care about any flashcards that were there before now, the simplest fix is to erase your flashcard database - Settings / Flashcards - and start again. If you do care about those cards, configure the importer to "allow" "duplicate cards" before importing your DeFrancis cards again.

 

[jyh]

Hi Mike. Thank you for the quick reply.

I already have "allow duplicates" checked in, which is why I am completely mystified why my custom cards fail to load properly on my iPad while I have no such problem on my iPhone. Until now I have only deleted the problematic database (and then removed the cards from the "Uncategorized" group) before importing it again, but to no avail.

This weekend I will try to delete my complete database and re-import all the card sets, and will report the results.

Best,

jyh.

 

[jyh]

I had a bit of time while waiting for a student to show up, so I exported all the flashcards from the iPhone, erased the flashcard database on the iPad and imported all and...it worked (I already had the proper settings). I guess something had gotten messed up with the database at some point.
Thanks again for the help.

jyh.

PS. Because my database is somewhat large, I had several minutes to experience first-hand the screen flashing reported by another user on this forum. On the iPhone, while exporting, it's only the "battery level bar" that was flashing, not really noticeable, but on the iPad it's about a third of the screen that was flashing, while importing. Pretty distracting. I also noticed that if I run Pleco while running a sync. with iTunes, I will get a lot of screen flashing too.

 

[mikelove]

PS. Because my database is somewhat large, I had several minutes to experience first-hand the screen flashing reported by another user on this forum. On the iPhone, while exporting, it's only the "battery level bar" that was flashing, not really noticeable, but on the iPad it's about a third of the screen that was flashing, while importing. Pretty distracting. I also noticed that if I run Pleco while running a sync. with iTunes, I will get a lot of screen flashing too.

Yeah, we've been debating whether to release an interim update to address that. We were going to do one to fix lingering bugs for iOS 4/5 users, due to the likelihood of the big new update being OS6-only, but to be honest virtually every bug we know about now is exclusive to OS 6.1, including this one. So we're not sure whether it's worth delaying the update by yet a few more days in order to prepare an update for the old version for this.

 

[jyh]

Yeah, we've been debating whether to release an interim update to address that. We were going to do one to fix lingering bugs for iOS 4/5 users, due to the likelihood of the big new update being OS6-only, but to be honest virtually every bug we know about now is exclusive to OS 6.1, including this one. So we're not sure whether it's worth delaying the update by yet a few more days in order to prepare an update for the old version for this.

As far as I am concerned, the "screen flickering in Pleco during sync-ing or I/O operation" bug is not a big problem, as these are not operations that do continuously for hours on. I will be happy when the fix eventually arrives, but in the meanwhile, I can't say that this is a hindrance in any shape or form.

 

[sandwich]

Yeah, we've been debating whether to release an interim update to address that. We were going to do one to fix lingering bugs for iOS 4/5 users, due to the likelihood of the big new update being OS6-only, but to be honest virtually every bug we know about now is exclusive to OS 6.1, including this one. So we're not sure whether it's worth delaying the update by yet a few more days in order to prepare an update for the old version for this.

Oh I wanna hate you now :x . Actually... no wait, I'd be better off directing that towards apple.

 

[mikelove]

Oh I wanna hate you now . Actually... no wait, I'd be better off directing that towards apple.

No, it's mostly us. Apple made us drop OS3 and OS4.0/1/2, and hardly anybody uses 4.3, so we were going to require OS5.1 regardless. But we're just not seeing enough sales on OS5 anymore to justify building around it for another release cycle, particularly not with OS7 likely to show up in a few months. Hardware-compatibility-wise, all we're losing by requiring 6 are the original iPad and the (very rare) iPod Touch 3rd-gen - everything else that ran 5 will run 6 - and the one major change in 6 that people were complaining about went away a few months ago when Google released a standalone Maps app.

(also, it seems likely that 5's maps will stop working this summer when Apple's contract with Google for mapping services is believed to expire, so that may motivate a lot of people who were still running 5 to upgrade to 6)

 

[sandwich]

Oh I wanna hate you now . Actually... no wait, I'd be better off directing that towards apple.

No, it's mostly us. Apple made us drop OS3 and OS4.0/1/2, and hardly anybody uses 4.3, so we were going to require OS5.1 regardless. But we're just not seeing enough sales on OS5 anymore to justify building around it for another release cycle, particularly not with OS7 likely to show up in a few months. Hardware-compatibility-wise, all we're losing by requiring 6 are the original iPad and the (very rare) iPod Touch 3rd-gen - everything else that ran 5 will run 6 - and the one major change in 6 that people were complaining about went away a few months ago when Google released a standalone Maps app.

(also, it seems likely that 5's maps will stop working this summer when Apple's contract with Google for mapping services is believed to expire, so that may motivate a lot of people who were still running 5 to upgrade to 6)

No, its apple. I'm stuck with a 4th gen ipod touch and didn't wanna upgrade to ios6 because of the performance and battery issues. I get that I'm a minority and was just ranting.

 

[mikelove]

No, its apple. I'm stuck with a 4th gen ipod touch and didn't wanna upgrade to ios6 because of the performance and battery issues. I get that I'm a minority and was just ranting.

Ah, I see. That's actually the main reason we still haven't 100% committed to the iOS-6-only strategy, though we're also waiting for the iOS 7 announcement - haven't yet done anything iOS-6-specific that we can't easily reverse if we decide to.

 

[jyh]

Sounds like you might have previously imported some dictionary-linked flashcards on the iPad, and the new cards are now being linked to those instead of being created anew.

If you don't care about any flashcards that were there before now, the simplest fix is to erase your flashcard database - Settings / Flashcards - and start again. If you do care about those cards, configure the importer to "allow" "duplicate cards" before importing your DeFrancis cards again.

I believed that erasing the database an re-importing all my flashcards had solved the problem...but it did not (on the iPad; all is OK on the iPhone). So, yes, after re-importing the flashcards they look fine, but if I import an additional set of custom flashcards, then these are screwed up again (and I always have "allow duplicates" checked in). It looks like every time I want to import another set I will need to erase & re-import the entire database. I guess that would be OK if I was doing all the flashcards for the entire book in one shot, but since I do them while reading/studying the book, this is going to annoying pretty quickly.

 

[mikelove]

I believed that erasing the database an re-importing all my flashcards had solved the problem...but it did not (on the iPad; all is OK on the iPhone). So, yes, after re-importing the flashcards they look fine, but if I import an additional set of custom flashcards, then these are screwed up again (and I always have "allow duplicates" checked in). It looks like every time I want to import another set I will need to erase & re-import the entire database. I guess that would be OK if I was doing all the flashcards for the entire book in one shot, but since I do them while reading/studying the book, this is going to annoying pretty quickly.

Sorry, is the problem that the cards are being duplicated (which was what I thought you wanted), or is it that you're still getting weird display / extra characters in the Pinyin fields? The latter problem wouldn't have anything to do with the duplication - it would mean that the data that you're importing is screwed up in some way, in which case we just need to fix that (perhaps you could PM me a sample of your data file).

 

[jyh]

Sorry, is the problem that the cards are being duplicated (which was what I thought you wanted), or is it that you're still getting weird display / extra characters in the Pinyin fields? The latter problem wouldn't have anything to do with the duplication - it would mean that the data that you're importing is screwed up in some way, in which case we just need to fix that (perhaps you could PM me a sample of your data file).

My cards contain two fields that have been customized:
- the pinyin field may contain an extra character (the book uses an asterisk to designate "items which are restricted in use"; I replace by a # sign because originally I could not get the asterisk to display properly. In retrospect, I wonder if this was not the same problem that I am seeing now)
- the "card text" field contains only a subset of the translation of a character or word (the one for the chapter)
So, for example (sample from one of my files):

// Beginning Reader/Unit V/Lesson 27
饭[飯]\t                fan4\t              ① cooked rice; ② food, a meal
馆[館]\t                guan3 #\t           establishment
或[或]\t                huo4 #\t            ① either or; ② perhaps
者[者]\t                zhe3\t              (verb suffix indicating doer of an action)
朝代[朝代]\t            chao2dai4\t          dynastic period, dynasty
吃饭[吃飯]\t            chi1 fan4\t          to eat (food)
吃饭馆(儿)[吃飯館(兒)]\t chi1 fan4guan3(r5)\t to eat in a restaurant (colloquial)

Note: the lines above have been edited for display on the forum:
- I explicitly added a \t here to indicate the location of a tab in my file
- I added spaces to align field on this web page. There are no extra space characters following a tab in my flashcard files.

After I have typed in the flashcard for a lesson, I copy the file to Pleco via iTunes and import the flashcards in Pleco.

On the iPhone: No problem, the flashcards appear with custom pinyin and "card text" fields as I entered them
On the iPad: My custom pinyin and "card text" fields are ignored and those from the default dictionary are displayed instead. However, if I erase my entire database and reimport all, the cards appear properly. The problem will come back the next time I import cards for another lesson, though.

 

[mikelove]

On the iPad: My custom pinyin and "card text" fields are ignored and those from the default dictionary are displayed instead. However, if I erase my entire database and reimport all, the cards appear properly. The problem will come back the next time I import cards for another lesson, though.

That really really sounds like a settings issue, then - are you aware that the import screen has its own separate duplicate card handling option (rather than going by whatever you've configured in the dictionary)?

 

[jyh]

On the iPad: My custom pinyin and "card text" fields are ignored and those from the default dictionary are displayed instead. However, if I erase my entire database and reimport all, the cards appear properly. The problem will come back the next time I import cards for another lesson, though.

That really really sounds like a settings issue, then - are you aware that the import screen has its own separate duplicate card handling option (rather than going by whatever you've configured in the dictionary)?

No, I was not aware of that setting, and now I can see that they are different on the iPhone (allow) and iPad (merge). I will find out tomorrow after I import some new cards, but this look like this could be what causes the problem (or rather, what comes out as a problem for my use). Thanks again for the prompt reply!

So how does this import setting work with the "Flashcard duplicates" setting in the main settings section? Does the latter only affect flashcards entered by hitting "+" from within the Dictionary mode??