SMS dictionary lookup

[bam]

Can the Pleco iPhone app help me correct SMS messages. Here's the scenario: I'm responding to a Chinese SMS. I don't know the right character to say something, so I goto Pleco, look up the words I need, cut and paste them right into the SMS text box.... Or something like that.
If not, is that something planned for the future?

TIA

 

[mikelove]

It's sort-of possible now and it is indeed an area we plan to expand on in a future release. At the moment, you'd want to enable the "Show copy button" option in Settings / General, and in Settings / Dictionary / Entry Display set "Head tap action" to "Select word." Then, to copy a word out into an SMS you'd simply go into the relevant dictionary entry, tap on the word and tap on the copy icon (picture of a clipboard) that appears in the toolbar to copy it to the pasteboard.

In a future release we plan to integrate the still-kind-of-experimental built-in text editor function with dictionary lookups to allow you to compose entire Chinese texts in Pleco (with quick inserts from dictionary lookups) and copy-and-paste them out all at once, though we don't know when exactly that feature will be ready.

 

[sburkle]

In a future release we plan to integrate the still-kind-of-experimental built-in text editor function with dictionary lookups to allow you to compose entire Chinese texts in Pleco (with quick inserts from dictionary lookups) and copy-and-paste them out all at once, though we don't know when exactly that feature will be ready.

I really would like to see this function! Due to the whole "uni-tasking" nature of the iPhone, this would really enable me to compose an SMS without having to go back and forth between Pleco and the SMS app. In fact, while doing this now, I frequently jump back and forth between Dianhua Dictionary and the SMS app because Pleco takes so much more time to load to look up just one simple word.

 

[mikelove]

That should be fixed by multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0 this summer - Pleco's memory footprint for the low-level stuff like that is pretty modest and it's unlikely to be booted out of the background after a quick switch into SMS - though we'd certainly like to improve startup time too; it's just kind of tricky since we've got so many more database files to load than those other guys.

 

[sburkle]

That should be fixed by multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0 this summer - Pleco's memory footprint for the low-level stuff like that is pretty modest and it's unlikely to be booted out of the background after a quick switch into SMS - though we'd certainly like to improve startup time too; it's just kind of tricky since we've got so many more database files to load than those other guys.

I only have an iPhone 2G so I guess that's kinda my own problem, and the reason why everything loads so slowly. Pleco is definitely a better product in every regard, but for something quick, sometimes Dianhua will do the trick. You're probably right about the os 4 multitasking fixing the problem, however, I still think that a simple text pad within pleco that can be quickly read with the reader (sometimes I need to check that I picked the right character) OR an even fancier split screen dictionary and text pad (probably messy and unnecessary)

 

[gato]

sburkle, have you tried to enabling this quasi-"instant access" on your Pleco iPhone? See my post from another thread below. This way you can copy your SMS message onto the pasteboard and fine tune your message by switching back and forth between SMS and Pleco.

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2280#p17764
going directly into the reader whenever the user has copied some text into the pasteboard and then opened up Pleco. This option is currently under General Settings->Insert Pasteboard and roughly mimic the "instant access" feature available in WM and Palm. I think many users would be interested in using this for looking up text in SMS or whatnot, but don't know how to set it up (toggling on these features should be obvious; one shouldn't have to read the 200 pages of the manual or follow every thread on this forum religiously like some of us do). Again, you could combine the three settings into one toggle (could be called "Pasteboard Lookup") and use something sensible for the other two related but currently separate settings. I use "only if changed = on" and "use reader if length > 0".

 

[mikelove]

sburkle - you can actually get something like that text pad even in the current version if you enable document editing via Settings / Reader - not perfect, you have to create a new text file, open it, switch it into "Edit" mode, write your text, switch back into "Read" mode to check what you've written, then switch into "Edit" again to highlight / copy it to the pasteboard - but it's a start; we plan to improve on this function considerably in future releases.