Problem with Importing Flashcards Without Pinyin

[adam.hamilton]

Hello,

I am having a problem with importing flashcards in a plain text, UTF-8 encoded text file, supplying the character and definition but skipping the pinyin. The format I am using is:

Character<Tab><Tab>Definition

It imports correctly, putting the character in the character field and the definition in the definition field, but it is not automatically filling out the pinyin for me.

I have tried using all four of the different Definition Sources. With "File Only" and "Prefer File" it puts the Character and the Definition in the correct fields but it does not automatically fill out the pinyin - it leaves it blank. With "Prefer Dicts" and "Dicts Only", everything is put in the correct fields, and it automatically fills out the pinyin, but it also replaces the definition that I entered with a dictionary definition.

How do I import cards so that it saves my original definition but fills out the pinyin automatically for me?

I have searched the forms here, but I cannot find one that relates specifically to this problem - if there is one, please refer me to it.

Thank you!

Adam

 

[mikelove]

I have tried using all four of the different Definition Sources. With "File Only" and "Prefer File" it puts the Character and the Definition in the correct fields but it does not automatically fill out the pinyin - it leaves it blank. With "Prefer Dicts" and "Dicts Only", everything is put in the correct fields, and it automatically fills out the pinyin, but it also replaces the definition that I entered with a dictionary definition.

How do I import cards so that it saves my original definition but fills out the pinyin automatically for me?

I'm afraid there's no way to do that now. It's actually by design - since the same words can often have more than one Pinyin reading with a different meaning (particularly single characters, but occasionally multi-character ones too), and since even our own dictionaries don't always agree on the correct Pinyin, we don't want to automatically insert Pinyin that turns out to be incorrect or not to match the definition you imported.

We could consider adding a feature in the future to let you do this with a confirmation box in cases of ambiguous Pinyin, though - not sure if there's much demand for it, but since it would also apply to a number of other parts of Pleco it does have some appeal.

 

[adam.hamilton]

I'm afraid there's no way to do that now.

Really? I must have misunderstood - I thought in the flashcard reference section under Import/Export File Format it says:

If you supply a definition in the import file, that will always be used as the card's definition; if you don't supply one, Pleco will attempt to find one in its built-in dictionaries. Pleco can also fill in the Pinyin pronunciation if you skip that. Make sure not to use more than one tab in each of those <tab> spaces, otherwise the importer might get confused about whether it's reading Pinyin or the definition for a word.

Ah - however, after revisiting this with the new information that you told me in mind, is this saying you can import the character and the pinyin and let Pleco fill in the definition, or you can just import the character and let it fill in the definition and the pinyin, but not just the pinyin?

...the same words can often have more than one Pinyin reading with a different meaning...We could consider adding a feature in the future to let you do this with a confirmation box in cases of ambiguous Pinyin, though - not sure if there's much demand for it, but since it would also apply to a number of other parts of Pleco it does have some appeal.

It would certainly make it less time consuming to make flashcards...Which is only one of the reasons I wished to do it actually - the second was for just the reason that you said, about dictionaries not always agreeing on correct pinyin - I figured I would just decide to always use pleco's, because I'd have to decide some way anyways, so unless I heard something different from a native speaker, I would just use Pleco's pinyin and I would let Pleco fill it out for me...

But anyways, it would definitely be appretiated and make things quicker...

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

[mikelove]

Ah - however, after revisiting this with the new information that you told me in mind, is this saying you can import the character and the pinyin and let Pleco fill in the definition, or you can just import the character and let it fill in the definition and the pinyin, but not just the pinyin?

Yes - one of a number of examples of why we ought to hire a professional documentation writer instead of relying on not-always-clear programmers to do the job

It would certainly make it less time consuming to make flashcards...Which is only one of the reasons I wished to do it actually - the second was for just the reason that you said, about dictionaries not always agreeing on correct pinyin - I figured I would just decide to always use pleco's, because I'd have to decide some way anyways, so unless I heard something different from a native speaker, I would just use Pleco's pinyin and I would let Pleco fill it out for me...

That's the problem, not even all of our dictionaries agree on Pinyin - especially with tones there are a lot of different interpretations.

 

[adam.hamilton]

Yes - one of a number of examples of why we ought to hire a professional documentation writer instead of relying on not-always-clear programmers to do the job

That's the problem, not even all of our dictionaries agree on Pinyin - especially with tones there are a lot of different interpretations.

Oh...That does make things quite difficult.

Well, for now (and perhaps forever, if you don't find away around the problem/if there isn't enough demand for it) I'll just manually enter the pinyin when I am creating the flashcards. Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

Oh...That does make things quite difficult.

Well, for now (and perhaps forever, if you don't find away around the problem/if there isn't enough demand for it) I'll just manually enter the pinyin when I am creating the flashcards. Thanks!

No problem! Ultimately we'd like to resolve these differences - review every case where dictionaries agree one-by-one and come up with an "official" Pinyin reading for any uncertain words - but we don't quite have the resources to do that yet. (and frankly I don't know if there'd ever be enough money in doing that to justify it)