Some flashcards not showing when using custom dictionary

Eddy

举人
Hi all,

Some of my cards are not showing up for review when mapped to a custom dictionary. I do not know how to solve this issue. Perhaps some of you have encountered this issue also - would you have any suggestions on how to check for no show cards and solve this? I love using Pleco for my exam preparations, hope to solve this one soon :)

I've been going through my vocab flashcards every day and notice that some cards in the deck are not showing up for review. I am using spaced repetition test profile and at first thought that these cards were simply not up for review yet. But after a while I started suspecting something else was going on since other new cards that I entered into the flashcard deck more recently did show up for review.

Also, I notice that in the top bar of the flashcard testing screen the second indicator (card count) would for example show 2/58 at the second card. However, before reaching the last 58th card the review session would end (today at the 46th card for instance). So it seems something is stopping the review session reaching the intended full 58 cards.

I have my cards remapped to a single custom HSK dictionary. I thought that perhaps some of the cards in my deck did not have a matching custom dictionary definition. I checked this but that is not the case. To double check I added the Tuttle dictionary as the 2nd active dictionary for the test profile.

Now the cards that were not showing up before are showing up. And they are showing the Tuttle definition instead of the custom dictionary definition. When going into the "Card info" field at the Triangle tab and using the "Change dictionary/entry" option I can toggle to my custom dictionary entry for that card and use "Set New Entry" to match the two.

The thing that puzzles me is that there are custom dictionary entries for the cards that are not showing but for some reason it seems they are not being picked up. Is this a user error? Incorrect settings? A bug perhaps?

About how I use decks: I add 50-100 new cards a week. Every time I add new cards I also delete the custom dictionary and then reload the dictionary again with the definitions to the new words included. Afterwards I remap to the custom dictionary in the test profiles. I use spaced repetition and a cram profile mostly. The "Limit # of unlearned" is switched off. Excel sheets are used for both the cards and the dictionary.

Thanks for any suggestions!
cheers
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Eddy said:
I've been going through my vocab flashcards every day and notice that some cards in the deck are not showing up for review. I am using spaced repetition test profile and at first thought that these cards were simply not up for review yet. But after a while I started suspecting something else was going on since other new cards that I entered into the flashcard deck more recently did show up for review.

Also, I notice that in the top bar of the flashcard testing screen the second indicator (card count) would for example show 2/58 at the second card. However, before reaching the last 58th card the review session would end (today at the 46th card for instance). So it seems something is stopping the review session reaching the intended full 58 cards.

It sounds like some of your cards are incomplete, i.e., they're missing some section (headword / pinyin / definition) that the flashcard system thinks it needs for the type of test you want to do. If you turn on "Allow missing parts" in "Test Settings," that should enable those cards to show (so that you can then flag / edit / deal with them appropriately).

Eddy said:
The thing that puzzles me is that there are custom dictionary entries for the cards that are not showing but for some reason it seems they are not being picked up. Is this a user error? Incorrect settings? A bug perhaps?

Are the cards actually configured to use those dictionary entries?
 

Eddy

举人
Thanks for the fast reply!

It sounds like some of your cards are incomplete, i.e., they're missing some section (headword / pinyin / definition) that the flashcard system thinks it needs for the type of test you want to do. If you turn on "Allow missing parts" in "Test Settings," that should enable those cards to show (so that you can then flag / edit / deal with them appropriately).
Cards with incomplete information was my thought also. I checked the "Allow missing parts" settings and saw that it is already in the "on" position.

Next I checked my custom dictionary entries in excel and do not see a difference between the cards that are showing up and the cards that are not showing up. I do see that I am not consistent in my tonemark use in the pinyin section, ie with some dictionary entries I use "shí" type tonemarks and in others I use "shi2" type tonemarks. Do the pinyin entries need to be consistently one or the other?

Further, when I upload a new list of vocab for a flashcard category I only upload a row of characters. So the pinyin and definition sections are omitted. Afterwards I upload an updated custom dictionary with headword / pinyin / definition sections and map that to the test profile and flashcard category I use. To test if that is an issue I today uploaded an updated list of vocab for a flashcard category with full headword / pinyin / definition sections. After running the test profile with only my custom dictionary as the active dictionary I don't see any missing cards anymore (yay!). As a second test I mapped the cards to only the Tuttle dictionary. Now only the Tuttle definitions are showing. So the issue seems to have been using a character list only in the uploaded flashcards lists.

I was assuming that the pinyin and definition from an active dictionary will be mapped on to the flashcard character only entries when it is set that way (ie it is ok to use only a list of characters as a flashcard list as long as you map it to your preferred active dictionary). Is that assumption valid?


Are the cards actually configured to use those dictionary entries?
I'm not sure - I believe so. In the test profiles under "Display / Card text" I have "Remap card to dicts" in the "yes" position. And in the "Dicts" section I have one active dictionary selected which is the custom dictionary. When I add another active dictionary, such as Tuttle, I start seeing some cards with Tuttle definitions iso the custom definitions. These cards do not show up when only the custom dictionary is active. Should I change the configurations (this was before the issue was solved)?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Eddy said:
Next I checked my custom dictionary entries in excel and do not see a difference between the cards that are showing up and the cards that are not showing up. I do see that I am not consistent in my tonemark use in the pinyin section, ie with some dictionary entries I use "shí" type tonemarks and in others I use "shi2" type tonemarks. Do the pinyin entries need to be consistently one or the other?

Are the tone marks encoded using Unicode Combining Diacritical Marks or character-codes-that-have-tones-attached? We currently only support the latter, but the former would generally just come through as toneless Pinyin, which should generally still be matched up with the cards on a remap.

Eddy said:
Further, when I upload a new list of vocab for a flashcard category I only upload a row of characters. So the pinyin and definition sections are omitted. Afterwards I upload an updated custom dictionary with headword / pinyin / definition sections and map that to the test profile and flashcard category I use. To test if that is an issue I today uploaded an updated list of vocab for a flashcard category with full headword / pinyin / definition sections. After running the test profile with only my custom dictionary as the active dictionary I don't see any missing cards anymore (yay!). As a second test I mapped the cards to only the Tuttle dictionary. Now only the Tuttle definitions are showing. So the issue seems to have been using a character list only in the uploaded flashcards lists.

That would explain the problem, actually - with a during-the-test-only "remap cards to dicts" the test skips any cards that it can't successfully remap. To avoid this, you'd want to make sure that all of your dictionaries are available as options (that way it'll eventually "fall back" on whatever dictionary the card currently links to if it doesn't find it elsewhere), and instead of "yes" you'd want to select "custom last" so that custom definitions on the cards will be used too.

Eddy said:
I was assuming that the pinyin and definition from an active dictionary will be mapped on to the flashcard character only entries when it is set that way (ie it is ok to use only a list of characters as a flashcard list as long as you map it to your preferred active dictionary). Is that assumption valid?

Yes, the importer will fill in the Pinyin from whichever dictionary it first matches the card to on import.
 

Eddy

举人
mikelove said:
Are the tone marks encoded using Unicode Combining Diacritical Marks or character-codes-that-have-tones-attached? We currently only support the latter, but the former would generally just come through as toneless Pinyin, which should generally still be matched up with the cards on a remap.
Sorry, I'm not sure what these two terms mean. Some tone marks in the custom cards and custom dictionary are made by regular Mac keyboard input (eg shi2), some were made when Unicode Hex Input keyboad was still on (eg shi2), some are made with Pinyin keyboard input (eg shí with IMKQIM) and some are copy-pasted from eg (online) dictionaries.

Would you recommend having consistent "character-codes-that-have-tones-attached" as tone marks in cards and dictionaries? And if yes, how would you recommend checking for that and correcting non-"character-codes-that-have-tones-attached" to "character-codes-that-have-tones-attached" tone marks?

mikelove said:
That would explain the problem, actually - with a during-the-test-only "remap cards to dicts" the test skips any cards that it can't successfully remap. To avoid this, you'd want to make sure that all of your dictionaries are available as options (that way it'll eventually "fall back" on whatever dictionary the card currently links to if it doesn't find it elsewhere), and instead of "yes" you'd want to select "custom last" so that custom definitions on the cards will be used too.
mikelove said:
Yes, the importer will fill in the Pinyin from whichever dictionary it first matches the card to on import.
Yes it does seem that the problem is in that area. But it still leaves me somewhat puzzled.

You mention a "during-the-test-only "remap cards to dicts"" - does that mean there is also a non-"during-the-test-only "remap cards to dicts""? Are there multiple ways to remap or link cards to a dictionary? I thought it could only be done in test profile settings.

Also, if you have all your dictionaries as available active dictionaries then naturally it will "fall back" to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc dictionary until it finds a dictionary definition that matches the card I would say. But to me it still doesn't explain why a card headword does not fill with the Pinyin and definition from an existing custom dictionary marked as the first active dictionary - especially if, as I understand, the importer fills in the Pinyin and definition when it finds a matching headword ... why is the match not made? Am I missing something?

To be clear, "custom last" refers to the custom definitions on the cards and not to the definitions of a custom dictionary, right? I was under the impression the "custom" in "custom last" referred to a custom dictionary definition.

Anyway, I think I'm being overly fussy now. Now that I am using full headword / pinyin / definition for my flashcard imports all seems to be working fine. Pleco works brilliantly for me, I just get lost in the many options and settings sometimes :)
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Eddy said:
Sorry, I'm not sure what these two terms mean. Some tone marks in the custom cards and custom dictionary are made by regular Mac keyboard input (eg shi2), some were made when Unicode Hex Input keyboad was still on (eg shi2), some are made with Pinyin keyboard input (eg shí with IMKQIM) and some are copy-pasted from eg (online) dictionaries.

Two different ways of expressing Pinyin tones in text, basically - you either have a single character code that represents an a-with-a-line-over-it, or you have a regular a followed by a character that essentially means "put a line over the previous character." For a variety of legacy reasons we currently only support the former, though at some point we'll get our text engine updated with Unicode Normalization support so that we can easily cover both.

Eddy said:
Would you recommend having consistent "character-codes-that-have-tones-attached" as tone marks in cards and dictionaries? And if yes, how would you recommend checking for that and correcting non-"character-codes-that-have-tones-attached" to "character-codes-that-have-tones-attached" tone marks?

Yes, though tone numbers are even better. The best way to fix this is to find a text converter utility that will put the whole file in what's called "Unicode Normalization Form C," or run it through a program like Wenlin that can automatically convert tone marks to tone numbers.

Eddy said:
You mention a "during-the-test-only "remap cards to dicts"" - does that mean there is also a non-"during-the-test-only "remap cards to dicts""? Are there multiple ways to remap or link cards to a dictionary? I thought it could only be done in test profile settings.

You can do it permanently via the "Remap to dict" command in the Batch Commands screen - get to that from any category card list (in Organize Cards) or list of search results (in Search Cards) by tapping "Edit," then "Batch."

Eddy said:
Also, if you have all your dictionaries as available active dictionaries then naturally it will "fall back" to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc dictionary until it finds a dictionary definition that matches the card I would say. But to me it still doesn't explain why a card headword does not fill with the Pinyin and definition from an existing custom dictionary marked as the first active dictionary - especially if, as I understand, the importer fills in the Pinyin and definition when it finds a matching headword ... why is the match not made? Am I missing something?

Most likely it's because the custom dictionary doesn't actually match the cards for some reason - any chance the Pinyin for that might have been done differently than the Pinyin in the cards? Or that the cards might include traditional characters but the custom dictionary doesn't? (or vice versa)

Eddy said:
To be clear, "custom last" refers to the custom definitions on the cards and not to the definitions of a custom dictionary, right? I was under the impression the "custom" in "custom last" referred to a custom dictionary definition.

No, those "custom" options both refer to custom definitions on the cards themselves.

Eddy said:
Anyway, I think I'm being overly fussy now. Now that I am using full headword / pinyin / definition for my flashcard imports all seems to be working fine. Pleco works brilliantly for me, I just get lost in the many options and settings sometimes

No problem, that happens a lot :) Hopefully soon our many efforts at streamlining things behind-the-scenes will start to bear fruit.
 

Eddy

举人
mikelove said:
Eddy said:
Would you recommend having consistent "character-codes-that-have-tones-attached" as tone marks in cards and dictionaries? And if yes, how would you recommend checking for that and correcting non-"character-codes-that-have-tones-attached" to "character-codes-that-have-tones-attached" tone marks?

Yes, though tone numbers are even better. The best way to fix this is to find a text converter utility that will put the whole file in what's called "Unicode Normalization Form C," or run it through a program like Wenlin that can automatically convert tone marks to tone numbers.

Thanks for the suggestions. I searched around a bit but did not find anything that seemed easily workable for a non-techie with no coding experience. As for Wenlin, I cannot justify putting down 150 dollars for the product for that purpose (plus I am already very happy with Pleco's ABC dictionary and superior UI). So for now I'll pass on converting the tone marks consistently into tone numbers.

mikelove said:
Eddy said:
Also, if you have all your dictionaries as available active dictionaries then naturally it will "fall back" to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc dictionary until it finds a dictionary definition that matches the card I would say. But to me it still doesn't explain why a card headword does not fill with the Pinyin and definition from an existing custom dictionary marked as the first active dictionary - especially if, as I understand, the importer fills in the Pinyin and definition when it finds a matching headword ... why is the match not made? Am I missing something?

Most likely it's because the custom dictionary doesn't actually match the cards for some reason - any chance the Pinyin for that might have been done differently than the Pinyin in the cards? Or that the cards might include traditional characters but the custom dictionary doesn't? (or vice versa)

There are no traditional characters in the cards. And the custom dictionary is a copy-paste of the custom cards out of excel (hence my confusion about cards not showing up). In the meantime in the Organize Cards section I've batch remapped all custom cards in the relevant categories to the custom dictionary. Then remapped those categories again to the custom dictionary in the test profile Display section. All cards are showing up now with their custom dictionary definition (iso eg a Tuttle definition). I'm still not entirely clear what the issue was but it's solved now and I'm happy I can continue studying with Pleco again :)
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Eddy said:
There are no traditional characters in the cards. And the custom dictionary is a copy-paste of the custom cards out of excel (hence my confusion about cards not showing up). In the meantime in the Organize Cards section I've batch remapped all custom cards in the relevant categories to the custom dictionary. Then remapped those categories again to the custom dictionary in the test profile Display section. All cards are showing up now with their custom dictionary definition (iso eg a Tuttle definition). I'm still not entirely clear what the issue was but it's solved now and I'm happy I can continue studying with Pleco again

Great! It may well have been the tone marks, but if remapping solves the problem then no need to worry about it - sorry for the hassle.
 

Eddy

举人
Not at all. Wish all companies were as dedicated and fast in their customer service as Pleco :D
 
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