Suggestions / BUGS PlecoDict
- Thread starter rapoto
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That font bug has already been fixed in our test versions - a glitch in our font conversion software which we hadn't bothered fixing since we knew we were switching to new fonts anyway.
And no comment on the next update, except to say that it's shaping up to be a big one: barring any unforseen difficulties, the flashcard system should finally be making an appearance again, among other things.
And no comment on the next update, except to say that it's shaping up to be a big one: barring any unforseen difficulties, the flashcard system should finally be making an appearance again, among other things.
I would enjoy to be able to mix CHINESE characters and PinYin in the input.
For example, I draw the character for a word... the in the explanation, it says for example... also see ping-an... the word for ping I wrote already, now 'an', I would be able to use the pin-yin to enter it. But it is not possible.
(...see also my following post...)
--Rapoto
For example, I draw the character for a word... the in the explanation, it says for example... also see ping-an... the word for ping I wrote already, now 'an', I would be able to use the pin-yin to enter it. But it is not possible.
(...see also my following post...)
--Rapoto
Bug or Missing entry?
I looked up the word 耒 (6lei3) in the ABC dictionary.
It says... lei3si4, lei3nou4.
Lei3si4, I am able to look up.
But lei3nou4, I am unable to find. What does it refer to?
In those cases (see also my previous post)... would it be possible to make those entries as HYPERLINKS? One just needs to click/tap on them, and they will pop-up, appear?
thanx,
--rapoto
I looked up the word 耒 (6lei3) in the ABC dictionary.
It says... lei3si4, lei3nou4.
Lei3si4, I am able to look up.
But lei3nou4, I am unable to find. What does it refer to?
In those cases (see also my previous post)... would it be possible to make those entries as HYPERLINKS? One just needs to click/tap on them, and they will pop-up, appear?
thanx,
--rapoto
lie3nou4
rapoto--
don't know if this helps, but by writing lei3nou4 (with ot without tone marks) I could not find that enty either, BUT I was still able to find it
耒耨 lěin?u till; plow; cultivate
How? I copied 耒 into my input line and searched on it. Browsing through the list of all compounds starting with 耒 was extra easy because there are only two.
This doesn't answer the question of why the search didnt work, but at least it will give you another option to find desired words. If an entry is mentioned in ABC, it should be there (it is a pretty accurate dictonary), so in my opinion, you can assume, since you are using a Beta version, that it is a bug and try to find a work around until the next version is available.
Cheers.
玫喜
rapoto--
don't know if this helps, but by writing lei3nou4 (with ot without tone marks) I could not find that enty either, BUT I was still able to find it
耒耨 lěin?u till; plow; cultivate
How? I copied 耒 into my input line and searched on it. Browsing through the list of all compounds starting with 耒 was extra easy because there are only two.
This doesn't answer the question of why the search didnt work, but at least it will give you another option to find desired words. If an entry is mentioned in ABC, it should be there (it is a pretty accurate dictonary), so in my opinion, you can assume, since you are using a Beta version, that it is a bug and try to find a work around until the next version is available.
Cheers.
玫喜
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Anonymous
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rapoto and MeiXi:
This is indeed a bug - actually it's not a problem with the PlecoDict viewer software at all, but rather with the ABC database file, or more specifically with the still-very-buggy software we use to convert it to Palm format. This is also why searches in the NWP English-to-Chinese dictionary sometimes refuse to locate words correctly.
This should be fixed in the next preview update, which also will include a number of other refinements to the databases (such as using Unicode circled numbers instead of (1)/(2)/(3) etc, superscripts for homonym numbers, and fixing a lot of the ??? or missing Chinese characters).
rapoto, re your suggestion about mixed character/Pinyin input, we've designed an algorithm to allow this kind of searching, and it shouldn't be too too complicated to implement, but I'm not sure if we'll manage to get coded and debugged in time for PlecoDict 1.0; it'll certainly be in there at some point, though.
This is indeed a bug - actually it's not a problem with the PlecoDict viewer software at all, but rather with the ABC database file, or more specifically with the still-very-buggy software we use to convert it to Palm format. This is also why searches in the NWP English-to-Chinese dictionary sometimes refuse to locate words correctly.
This should be fixed in the next preview update, which also will include a number of other refinements to the databases (such as using Unicode circled numbers instead of (1)/(2)/(3) etc, superscripts for homonym numbers, and fixing a lot of the ??? or missing Chinese characters).
rapoto, re your suggestion about mixed character/Pinyin input, we've designed an algorithm to allow this kind of searching, and it shouldn't be too too complicated to implement, but I'm not sure if we'll manage to get coded and debugged in time for PlecoDict 1.0; it'll certainly be in there at some point, though.
there is a wrong translation...
in the enty below, it should be "HE speaks out frankly... not SHE" accoding to the Chinese characters - just a small optical mistake :wink:
-- rapoto
shuang3kuai 爽快 (D) s.v. (1) refreshed; comfortable (2) frank; straight-forward; outright Ta1 shuo1hua4 ~. 他说话~ . She speaks frankly. * adv. with alacrity; readily
[ABC Compr.]
in the enty below, it should be "HE speaks out frankly... not SHE" accoding to the Chinese characters - just a small optical mistake :wink:
-- rapoto
shuang3kuai 爽快 (D) s.v. (1) refreshed; comfortable (2) frank; straight-forward; outright Ta1 shuo1hua4 ~. 他说话~ . She speaks frankly. * adv. with alacrity; readily
[ABC Compr.]
Hmm... well they're constantly updating the ABC database, so I'll check and see if this is fixed in the latest version when I get it and if not I'll send them a correction. Thanks. (I think when we release the finished PlecoDict we might put some kind of a form up for text corrections, though I'll need to check with the ABC developers first)
First, I am really annoyed about myself that I did not dare to install PlecoDict during the time I was in Beijing (you know: never change a running system 8)). Albeit some features are still missing in 0.82, the PlecoDict is so much more useful to me with the tone marks and small hires font. Now, if the remaining font issues will be ironed out until 1.0 this surely is a perfect thing.
As a sidenote: I had no luck installing the necessary files to a SD card in /PALM/PROGRAMS/Oxford. 0.82 complained about not finding font and dictionary files. I only succeeded with my hand installation after I moved everything to /PALM/LAUNCHER.
Will the configurable VFS card directory feature come back to PlecoDict? Currently I need to clobber my /PALM/LAUNCHER directory but would rather like to put it into /PALM/PROGRAMS/PLECODICT.
With the handwriting recognition and writing on the screen enabled (no special input box), how do I tell the software that I have finished writing the chinese character? (I'm not refering to the recognition dialog but instead to recognition as part of the main screen)
Do you plan to add support for anti-aliased fonts? In my personal oppinion this should give even better display quality. The plucker anti-alias font code is freely available as far as I understand (if I understood this correctly).
As a sidenote: I had no luck installing the necessary files to a SD card in /PALM/PROGRAMS/Oxford. 0.82 complained about not finding font and dictionary files. I only succeeded with my hand installation after I moved everything to /PALM/LAUNCHER.
Will the configurable VFS card directory feature come back to PlecoDict? Currently I need to clobber my /PALM/LAUNCHER directory but would rather like to put it into /PALM/PROGRAMS/PLECODICT.
With the handwriting recognition and writing on the screen enabled (no special input box), how do I tell the software that I have finished writing the chinese character? (I'm not refering to the recognition dialog but instead to recognition as part of the main screen)
Do you plan to add support for anti-aliased fonts? In my personal oppinion this should give even better display quality. The plucker anti-alias font code is freely available as far as I understand (if I understood this correctly).
Actually if you put the PlecoDict data files in /PALM/Programs/PlecoDict they should work - they won't work in /PALM/Programs/Oxford though.
To recognize a character on the main screen, tap on the "Recognize" button - it's at the top-left corner of cluster of handwriting-related buttons that show up when you're in that mode.
Anti-aliased fonts would be a nice touch but I don't they're likely to show up anytime before PlecoDict 2.0 - our current font file sizes are already a good deal larger than they probably should be (they've grown significantly since the last Preview Release), and a fast anti-aliasing system would make them several times larger than they are now. At some point post-1.0 we may add in a system to compress larger characters so that they take up less space (and possibly even use scalable outline fonts on faster Palms), but that's just speculation at this point.
To recognize a character on the main screen, tap on the "Recognize" button - it's at the top-left corner of cluster of handwriting-related buttons that show up when you're in that mode.
Anti-aliased fonts would be a nice touch but I don't they're likely to show up anytime before PlecoDict 2.0 - our current font file sizes are already a good deal larger than they probably should be (they've grown significantly since the last Preview Release), and a fast anti-aliasing system would make them several times larger than they are now. At some point post-1.0 we may add in a system to compress larger characters so that they take up less space (and possibly even use scalable outline fonts on faster Palms), but that's just speculation at this point.
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Mike, thank you for your answers. I appreciate your help very much, in fact this is the reason why I have been a steady customer of your company over time. What a beautiful contrast your insightful and helpful comments are to some other company whose software for documents come bundled and whose support has no clue about their own software (in fact, "to go" means that your documents and all other data is gone whenever you enter about 64k worth of characters due to a hard reset -- but that's another story).
The new handwriting recognition within the main screen is just sooo useful. However, I only found one thing a little bit annoying: since I use GraffitiAnywhere I have come to expect that I can scribble almost anywhere on the screen. With PlecoDict's current handwriting recognition I am only allowed to scribble within the region formed by the dictionary text. Thus, I can't scribble over the region of the word list (which I like to keep open all the time). Will it be possible in a future release of PlecoDict to be able to start scribbling almost anywhere on the screen? Like GraffitiAnywhere you could use the tip and hold for a short moment to distinguish an ordinary tip from starting a writing gesture.
Another bug: I have not installed any Chinese OS extension. When I accidently tip the paste button then my Tungsten T just plainly resets; luckily, it is just a warm reset, so nothing is lost.
Thank you for the help.
Ah, thanks for the tip. I will try this in order to clean up my launcher directory. If I remember correctly, the current documentation only mentions the old Oxford directory.mikelove said:
I've found that out by trial and error (well, starting with the first button of a bunch of buttons is not so much trial and error after all). Also, this is not mentioned so far in the current documentation that is available from your web site.mikelove said:
The new handwriting recognition within the main screen is just sooo useful. However, I only found one thing a little bit annoying: since I use GraffitiAnywhere I have come to expect that I can scribble almost anywhere on the screen. With PlecoDict's current handwriting recognition I am only allowed to scribble within the region formed by the dictionary text. Thus, I can't scribble over the region of the word list (which I like to keep open all the time). Will it be possible in a future release of PlecoDict to be able to start scribbling almost anywhere on the screen? Like GraffitiAnywhere you could use the tip and hold for a short moment to distinguish an ordinary tip from starting a writing gesture.
Another bug: I have not installed any Chinese OS extension. When I accidently tip the paste button then my Tungsten T just plainly resets; luckily, it is just a warm reset, so nothing is lost.
Thank you for the help.
Heh, well in fairness to that unnamed company we're somewhat more of a specialty business than most Palm OS software firms are - our market is smaller and our product more expensive, our support would be pretty terrible too if our software was bundled on hundreds of thousands of Palm's and we were only getting a dollar or two per copy in royalties. (then again, that particular company's standalone products cost just as much as ours...)
If I remember correctly the first Preview Release manual only mentioned Launcher, but the newer one on our website now mentions the PlecoDict directory too.
And yes, there's really no reason why you shouldn't be able to write on top of the word list in PlecoDict so this should definitely be fixed at some point. Same goes for the paste button, though we really should have caught that one earlier.
If I remember correctly the first Preview Release manual only mentioned Launcher, but the newer one on our website now mentions the PlecoDict directory too.
And yes, there's really no reason why you shouldn't be able to write on top of the word list in PlecoDict so this should definitely be fixed at some point. Same goes for the paste button, though we really should have caught that one earlier.
cursor blinking when it shouldn't...
I realized that quite often the cursor is there and blinking when it shouldn't...
for example, start up PLECO dict, then select ABOUT PLECODICT from the menu... and the cursor keeps blinking at the beautiful fish's tail...
similar when entering some chinese characters, and then placing the cursor inbetween them to erase or add a chr...
--rapoto
P.S. any updated release in sight? 8)
I realized that quite often the cursor is there and blinking when it shouldn't...
for example, start up PLECO dict, then select ABOUT PLECODICT from the menu... and the cursor keeps blinking at the beautiful fish's tail...
similar when entering some chinese characters, and then placing the cursor inbetween them to erase or add a chr...
--rapoto
P.S. any updated release in sight? 8)
This is already fixed in our current builds, actually. We had written our very own system for drawing the insertion point because in Palm OS 6 / Cobalt they've taken away the ability for programs to move or resize the built-in Palm OS one; however, since Cobalt-based devices are still quite a few months away we've gone back to using the built-in one for now. (we'll get our own working properly in a later release)
And the next release is slowly edging towards completion; there were a number of problems along the way the details of which I'm not going to bother relating, but basically the flashcards / custom dict entries / etc are starting to come together and it shouldn't be too too much longer now. I'm afraid there isn't going to be a tremendous advance in stability / polish in this release, though; that will have to wait for the one after it, which will be our first official "beta" version. But the fonts at least are vastly improved now
And the next release is slowly edging towards completion; there were a number of problems along the way the details of which I'm not going to bother relating, but basically the flashcards / custom dict entries / etc are starting to come together and it shouldn't be too too much longer now. I'm afraid there isn't going to be a tremendous advance in stability / polish in this release, though; that will have to wait for the one after it, which will be our first official "beta" version. But the fonts at least are vastly improved now