screen reader not copying complete text block anymore

QDPleco

Member
Hi. I'm using Pleco's screen reader function a lot to translate from Wechat. When I activated the screen reader and longpressed on some Chinese character the complete text block was copied ("Copy to Clipbaord") or passed to Google Translate ("Translate"). For a few weeks now the behavior has changed and only the single character I'm pressing on is passed on. This started when I upgraded the phone from Android 7 to 8.1. I'm not sure if 8.1 is the culprit or an update to Pleco or any other service around the same time.

Like this the feature is pretty useless. How can I get the old behavior back?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Does it work better if you tap on a blank space without any character? To be honest, it sounds like the behavior you're seeing now is more-or-less what we intended - namely, if you select a particular character or word the copy/translate commands will only apply to what you selected - but we do copy the whole block if you long-press it without any text selected, which should happen if you tap on the edge or in a blank space.
 

QDPleco

Member
hm. You are right, if I happen to find a blank space and press it the whole text block is translated. At least in Wechat the white text bounding boxes are so small, though, that it is impossible to hit a blank space. Tapping outside of a white box immediately turns off screen reader.

To translate single characters or short expressions I use Pleco directly (short tap). I only use the translate function to get the meaning of longer sentences. And for those I need the complete text block to be passed on. Using "Translate All" on the other hand passes the complete page to Google Translate including English and hidden text without any breaks.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Hmm... we'll do some testing and see if we can come up with a way to make this work better, then; what brand/model of phone are you using? Perhaps the order of events is such that on most other devices the menu comes up before the character is actually marked as selected.
 
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