Reader: no duplicate card warning (although duplicate exists)

[etm001]

Hi,

I'm working with a PDF and adding creating flashcards from it. I've noticed that when tap-selecting some words, the [+] on the screen does not change indicating that the word is an existing flashcard. In other situations, the [+] correctly updates, but when I tap [+] and select to read the card details, not all of the existing categories are displayed in the dialogue window. (I verified whether the word already exists as a flashcard by performing search in Organize Cards).

This problem doesn't have an apparent pattern. One notable thing is that this PDF was one in which I previously had problems tap-selecting words (which I reported in a prior post. I sent a copy of the PDF via email, and the last Pleco update seemed to have largely solved that problem).

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

This sounds like it might have to do with some cards/entries not quite matching - do you have any user dictionaries installed? Or did you perhaps import a bunch of flashcards from a file that only had simplified and not traditional (or vice versa, or no Pinyin)?

 

[etm001]

Hi,

I do have one user dictionary installed, the Taiwan MoE dictionary (although very few of my flashcards are sourced from it). I also have imported thousands of flashcards into Pleco with only traditional Chinese, no simplified Chinese (99% were imported with pinyin). I recall that in the past, the import would dump the traditional Chinese characters into the simplified Chinese flashcard field; now Pleco seems to put them into the correct field, and automatically populate the simplified field with simplified characters (unless I'm miss remembering; in any case it's never affected my ability to use flashcards).

I also just noticed this is happening in regular dictionary searches. That is, I pulled up the definition of a word, and no flashcard tags were displayed. But when I did a flashcard search, two results were returned. The word exists in two flashcards created through two different file imports (I'm fine with having duplicates). In both cases the import dumped the traditional Chinese into the simplified field; the pinyin is the same for both cards.

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

Ah, this definitely could explain the problem then. We've added some tools to deal with this to the "Batch" screen recently - there are commands there to generate new simplified + traditional headwords (including an option to replace the existing ones). There's also now an option in the import screen to generate missing fields as it imports, though that'll only work with traditional-to-simplified if you enclose the headwords in [] brackets so that it knows they're traditional.

 

[etm001]

Is duplicate detection failing because the traditional Chinese was placed in the simplified field during import? To solve the current issue and to avoid it in the future, should both fields be populated with their respective simplified/traditional characters?

I'll make a backup of my database and experiment with the new tools in batch.

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

Yes - that would cause it to fail, all three fields (simplified + traditional + pinyin) have to match the entry you're looking at. Populating the fields with the correct characters should fix this.