Should I just buy OCR or take a look at the bundles?

[cai]

Hi,

I'm a new user of Pleco. My initial interest was caught by the OCR preview videos.
Now that the OCR is released, I'm thinking if I should buy it with other add-ons or with a bundle. So I'm asking the Pleco Dict users out there, what do you suggest?

Stroke Order Diagrams: I don't really see how I could be using these. I rarely need to check how a character is written and if I do, I can check it online.

Full-screen Handwriting: Since the iPhone already has a pretty good handwriting recognition are there some good reasons for buying this add-on?

Document Reader: This seems like a good investment. Are there any reasons not to buy this?

Flashcard System: All my flash cards are already Anki based, which satisfies basically all my needs, so I can't see investing in this unless there's some ground breaking stuff in there.

Audio Pronunciations: I know how to pronounce words, so don't see the use of these either. However audio for example sentences would be something I'm interested in. But I think the audio packs only have characters and words?

Dictionaries: So far I have managed well with free dictionaries. Yet I don't have any experience about paid dictionaries. How good are they and are they worth the money?

Sorry if this had a little negative undertone... I think Pleco is a great app and the OCR alone makes me feel like I can walk through walls... :lol:

 

[mikelove]

I'm the most biased person here, of course, but FWIW, you can try out the fullscreen handwriting recognizer by going into the Pleco "Add-ons" tab, tapping on "Fullscreen Handwriting Recognizer," then tapping on "Try Handwriting Now" - that should give you some idea about whether or not it you prefer it to the built-in one. (a lot of people do - it's far and away our top seller among non-bundle add-ons, or was before OCR came out anyway)

You can also try out dictionaries through that system (tap on the name of one, then tap on the button to download the demo of it) - the ABC Chinese-English has a *ton* of vocabulary, and even though the demo only lets you see definitions for the first few thousand entries in it it lets you see / search for all of the headwords, so you can try it out and see whether you encounter a lot of extra words that are in it but not in the built-in ones.

Our flashcard system does have a lot of features not in Anki (fill-in-the-blanks / multi-choice / stroke order tests, lots of additional search / organizational options, easier cross-referencing of words in flashcard definitions, lots more customizability in general) not to mention easier integration with the dictionary (tap on one button to create a flashcard), but it takes some time to learn to use them all, and if you're happy with the setup you have now you might prefer not to change it.

The audio system does indeed only have characters and words, though it'll happily play a longer phrase for you syllable-by-syllable if it doesn't have a recording for it; we're thinking about licensing / developing a TTS (text-to-speech) module at some point, which would be a bit less accurate than our native-speaker recordings but do a better job with sentence-length stuff, but especially if that involves our licensing a TTS system from another company there'd probably be an additional fee for it.

 

[gato]

The Stroke Diagram add-on enables the search for
characters by components and shows which characters are made up of another character.

Mike, this I think should be more widely publicized. I wasn't interested in stroke orders in of themselves, either.

 

[mikelove]

The Stroke Diagram add-on enables the search for
characters by components and shows which characters are made up of another character.

Mike, this I think should be more widely publicized. I wasn't interested in stroke orders in of themselves, either.

It's one of those "experimental" things that we're not satisfied enough yet to make a selling point out of - eventually we're going to finish the (very tedious) work of linking up non-standard radical forms (the four-dots-on-the-bottom water radical, e.g.) to their standard forms for Pinyin / definitions, and once that's done I think we'll be ready to make a bigger deal out of this feature, but at the moment it's still not quite reliable enough.

 

[cai]

that should give you some idea about whether or not it you prefer it to the built-in one. (a lot of people do - it's far and away our top seller among non-bundle add-ons, or was before OCR came out anyway)

The main improvement to me seems to be the bigger area to write on and some gestures for better usability. All good improvements, but not crucially better than the iOS default handwriting recognition. How was the handwriting recognition in iOS3? I have only used iOS4.

Our flashcard system does have a lot of features not in Anki ... lots of additional search / organizational options, easier cross-referencing of words in flashcard definitions

Could you elaborate more these three? Especially the cross-referencing.


The component search function does make the Stroke Diagram add-on more interesting, I should reconsider buying this.

I will demo some of the dictionaries. Which one is the most popular of them?

How about the Document Reader? Any arguments against it?

 

[gato]

that's done I think we'll be ready to make a bigger deal out of this feature, but at the moment it's still not quite reliable enough.

Why not list as an experimental feature for this add-on so that people can at least try it at their own risk? I think I only knew this feature existed by reading this forum.

It still seems to be a helpful feature even if it's not totally reliable at the current stage. For example, it can tell you that one of the characters that contains 敏 as a component is 繁, which is not bad.

 

[mikelove]

The main improvement to me seems to be the bigger area to write on and some gestures for better usability. All good improvements, but not crucially better than the iOS default handwriting recognition. How was the handwriting recognition in iOS3? I have only used iOS4.

I think they're pretty much the same - Apple hasn't noticeably improved the accuracy since OS3 (or even OS2) in my experience at least.

Could you elaborate more these three? Especially the cross-referencing.

Basically, in a Pleco flashcard definition you can tap on any Chinese word to instantly pop up a definition, just like in our dictionary; you can then instantly create a new flashcard based on that definition. Especially useful if you've got flashcards with lots of example sentences or if you often notice a single character you don't know that's part of a multiple-character word and want to give it its own flashcard.

I will demo some of the dictionaries. Which one is the most popular of them?

Definitely the ABC Chinese-English - it's incredibly comprehensive and has nice clear concise definitions.

How about the Document Reader? Any arguments against it?

Some people aren't big fans of the interface - we've had a few requests for an option for a definition box to be permanently embedded at the bottom of the screen, which I personally can't stand (especially on iPad - really annoying to have to keep flicking your eyes back and forth between the definition box and the text, distracts you from what your'e reading) but the requests are insistent enough that we probably will add that as an option in 2.2.something or 2.3.

It's the same basic interface as looking up words in dictionary definitions, anyway, so you can try it out in the free version just by tapping on a character in an example sentence.

Why not list as an experimental feature for this add-on so that people can at least try it at their own risk? I think I only knew this feature existed by reading this forum.

It still seems to be a helpful feature even if it's not totally reliable at the current stage. For example, it can tell you that one of the characters that contains 敏 as a component is 繁, which is not bad.

Well that's another part of the problem - we don't have a good way to do a demo version of that feature; Apple frowns on time-limited trials, and the cross-referencing doesn't really demonstrate its use unless you have access to the entire data set. Maybe we just have to find a way licensing-wise to offer a version of it with common characters only at a lower price...

 

[johnh113]

Basically, in a Pleco flashcard definition you can tap on any Chinese word to instantly pop up a definition, just like in our dictionary; you can then instantly create a new flashcard based on that definition. Especially useful if you've got flashcards with lots of example sentences or if you often notice a single character you don't know that's part of a multiple-character word and want to give it its own flashcard.

Dear Mike,

Except for GF dictionary. To get a pop up definition from GF in flashcards, I first have to click the > button. With the other dictionaries I can tap any Chinese word to instantly pop up a definition.

John

 

[mikelove]

Except for GF dictionary. To get a pop up definition from GF in flashcards, I first have to click the > button. With the other dictionaries I can tap any Chinese word to instantly pop up a definition.

That's news to me - I just tried that on a device here and it worked fine; go into Settings / Manage Dicts and tap on the Guifan item there, is "Use in reader" turned off?

 

[johnh113]

Except for GF dictionary. To get a pop up definition from GF in flashcards, I first have to click the > button. With the other dictionaries I can tap any Chinese word to instantly pop up a definition.

That's news to me - I just tried that on a device here and it worked fine; go into Settings / Manage Dicts and tap on the Guifan item there, is "Use in reader" turned off?

Dear Mike,

Sorry I didn't report this earlier. It has been this way for as long as I can remember.

"Use in reader" is turned on. All of my dictionaries are set up the same way in Settings / Manage Dicts. All of them except GF work as expected, i.e., I can tap the hanzi and get a pop up definition, while with GF I first have to click >.

John

 

[mikelove]

"Use in reader" is turned on. All of my dictionaries are set up the same way in Settings / Manage Dicts. All of them except GF work as expected, i.e., I can tap the hanzi and get a pop up definition, while with GF I first have to click >.

Maybe I'm just not understanding you correctly - so you tap on a character in flashcards and you can cycle between dictionaries to look it up in but you can't switch to GF? I'm definitely not seeing this here... have you changed any other dict / reader settings away from their defaults?

 

[Wolvenstein]

I have one question, i tried to buy OCR but it's written "You must purchase the app that this item for before you can purchase the item". Which app does this message actually refers to ?

 

[iphneusr]

I have one question, i tried to buy OCR but it's written "You must purchase the app that this item for before you can purchase the item". Which app does this message actually refers to ?

This means that you have two apple ID's and you are trying to download the add-on using a different apple ID.

The way I solve this is to add pleco to another iphone or ipad using your other apple ID, and purchase the add on on the other device. Then go back to your main device, and use the "check for paid addons" or whatever its called.

 

[Wolvenstein]

Bought it successfully, but I cannot turn the educational discount for some reason, it keeps failing. Thx for iphneusr's help