For those of you who aren't on the mailing list:
Dear Pleco Customers,
We've got a couple of exciting announcements to share with you today.
1. Pleco 2.0.2 Update
First off, we've just released a new update to our Pleco 2.0 software which along with many, many bug fixes includes some very useful new features and other improvements. Some highlights:
-- Added a new "Organize Flashcards" screen, which brings back the old copy-cards-between-lists interface that a lot of people missed from 1.0.
-- Added support for interrupting audio in mid-playback; now, if you hit the audio button when audio is already playing it'll stop and start playing the new audio instead.
-- Made the Input dialog on Windows Mobile automatically resize to fit the available screen area, so the handwriting input box will be much larger than it was before on nearly all Windows Mobile devices (anything with a rectangular screen, basically).
-- Made "Instant" handwriting recognition the default setting on Windows Mobile. If you haven't tried this yet, go into the "Input" panel of "Preferences" and set "HWR auto-rec after" to "Instant" - this will run the recognizer after you draw each stroke, saving you the trouble of hitting the Recognize button.
-- Added the ability to switch dictionaries in the Char Info Compounds screen.
-- Made significant performance improvements in flashcards on Windows Mobile and in long dictionary entry rendering on Palm OS.
The update is available at http://www.pleco.com/wmdownload.html for Windows Mobile or http://www.pleco.com/palmdownload.html for Palm OS. Installation instructions are at http://www.pleco.com/manual/wminst.html#minorupgrade for Windows Mobile and http://www.pleco.com/manual/palminst.html#minorupgrade for Palm OS. A complete list of changes is available at http://www.pleco.com/manual/vershist.html.
Note that, as with 2.0.1, this update is only for people already running Pleco 2.0. If you're still using the older version 1.0 (blue circle icon), see http://www.pleco.com/manual/upgradeguide.html for instructions on how to upgrade to that; it's free for most people who own 1.0. 2.0 incorporates hundreds of wonderful new features and is well worth the effort to upgrade, especially on Windows Mobile (where along with the new features we've managed to significantly improve the software's stability and performance over 1.0).
And a reminder / warning for people using Pleco 2.0 on Palm OS which we're including in every announcement e-mail: unlike in 1.0, your flashcard database is NOT automatically backed up whenever you sync your Palm with your computer; you have to back it up manually. See http://www.pleco.com/manual/palminst.html#backrest for instructions on how to do that. Flashcard databases have never been automatically backed up on Windows Mobile, but if you haven't been backing up yours regularly see http://www.pleco.com/manual/wminst.html#backrest for instructions on how to do so.
2. New Chinese-English Dictionary Release
Along with 2.0.2, we're also releasing a brand new Chinese-English dictionary database for Pleco 2.0, based on "A Chinese-English Dictionary" edited by Wei Dongya. It's a classic old title (last revised in 1995) with fewer entries than ABC (about 80,000, versus 200,000 in ABC or 24,000 in Oxford) but much more detailed definitions; even gets into Classical Chinese meanings for many single characters. It also has *tons* of examples, around 60,000 of them (versus 10,000 in ABC) - some of them are a bit dated, but the fact that a sentence contains some 1970s-esque references doesn't make it any less grammatically correct
A particularly interesting feature of this license is that, unlike in most of the other licenses we've signed, we have total editorial control over our version of the dictionary; this means that we can add / delete / revise entries however we like. We've already improved the dictionary in one key area by adding Pinyin to all of its example sentences (a feature missing in the original print edition); in the future we're also planning to add entries for missing words (possibly combining in data from freely-licensed sources like CEDICT), delete / revise those archaic-sounding example sentences, and generally turn it into a nice modern dictionary that's as good as anything else out there. We're even considering a number of interesting ways to involve our users in this process (possibly in a paid capacity, a la Amazon's mturk.com) - more on that to follow.
The new "ACE" dictionary database is included in the 2.0.2 update installer, so you'll be able to install the demo version for it when you update to 2.0.2. (It should not be installed with previous versions, since it'll render a little quirkily in those.) If you'd like to purchase it, you can do so from the "My Orders" page on our website (http://www.pleco.com/orders.html) - the price is US$29.95.
3. New "Complete" Bundle
Thanks to an amendment to another one of our dictionary licenses, we're now able to offer every single 2.0 dictionary together in a single bundle, something that a restriction in that license prevented us from doing before now. This new "Complete" bundle costs $199.95 and includes all 8 of our current dictionaries, and it's available along with the other bundles in our online store. It does not automatically entitle you to any new dictionaries we might release in the future, however.
If you've recently purchased a brand new copy of Pleco 2.0 with another bundle and wish you'd bought this one instead, send us a note and we'll be happy to try to work something out to let you switch. We've also just lowered the price of the Basic bundle from $70 to $60, and added the NWP dictionary to the Linguist bundle, so if you've purchased either of those bundles recently and would like a credit for the price difference / additional dictionary, let us know; we've already done this automatically for all Basic / Linguist orders placed in June.
4. Palm OS / Palm Pre Status
We also have some very good news for Palm OS users, or people who are interested in next-generation smartphone platforms other than iPhone. Palm has reversed their previously-announced policy and decided to allow their new Palm Pre smartphone / webOS operating system to run old Palm OS software after all, through a third-party but Palm-approved emulator program called MotionApps Classic (which basically simulates a Palm Centro on the Pre) (http://www.motionapps.com). And after testing it, we can now confirm that Pleco 2.0 is compatible with and runs smoothly on the Palm Pre.
However, MotionApps Classic is a version 1.0 product and appears to be kind of buggy at the moment, so after a few days of testing we've concluded it's a bit too unstable / crash-prone to recommend to our customers right now. We're optimistic that they'll improve matters considerably after a few bug-fix updates, though.
In general, the fact that the Pre uses a finger- rather than a stylus-driven touchscreen creates a few rough spots in our software: some control / settings panels are a bit difficult to navigate, text selection is rather iffy, and handwriting recognition loses some accuracy when done with a finger instead of a stylus (along with requiring you to draw strokes a bit more slowly than you might be accustomed to). But the only major feature we've found that doesn't work at all on the Pre yet is audio, and that's because MotionApps doesn't support it yet (but have promised that audio support is coming in a soon-to-be-released update).
Thanks to the possibility of webOS compatibility, it seems like the Palm OS version of Pleco will probably enjoy a temporary stay of execution; version 3.0 of Pleco may not come out on Palm, but it's increasingly likely that version 2.1 at least will, assuming MotionApps does indeed improve matters on the stability front. We plan to release Pre-specific installation instructions and a version of Pleco with updated / more finger-friendly control panel layouts in a few months, once the bugs in the emulator have been worked out.
Incidentally, a similar Palm OS emulator called StyleTap (http://www.styletap.com) is available for the much-talked-about Nokia 5800 and N97 phones, and while we haven't had a chance to try out Pleco on them ourselves, we've had a few customer reports of it working successfully, so that might be another possibility for some people. The Nokias, unlike the Pre, use resistive (stylus-friendly) touchscreens, so the handwriting recognition / text highlighting issues on the Pre wouldn't be a problem on those.
5. iPhone Status / Beta-Testing
The much-anticipated iPhone / iPod Touch version of Pleco is coming along nicely, though as previously announced the first version of it won't include flashcards (those will be coming in a later version). We still aren't ready to make any predictions about the release date, partly because Apple can sometimes hold up the release of a new application for several months (waiting for approval / demanding design changes / etc), but also because we have a horrendously bad track record at predicting release dates.
That being said, though, most of the big pieces are already done / nearly-done, and from our end at least it's mostly a matter of tying up loose ends at this point. While flashcards are not included, we're fairly confident that the first release of Pleco for iPhone will include fullscreen handwriting input, a built-in document reader (though actually getting documents into it is a bit tricky at the moment), audio, and stroke order diagrams, and we think there are only two of our current dictionaries that we won't be able to include in the initial iPhone release.
Because there are a couple of parts of the iPhone version of Pleco that would benefit from some outside testing with different cell carriers / network configurations / etc, we've decided to do a short external beta test, and let some of our customers try it out and send us bug reports / feedback. Apple limits the distribution of applications they haven't approved yet to just 200 copies, but due to some other restrictions we're only going to be able to accept about 70 people into the initial beta-testing pool.
The beta is limited to current Pleco customers (specifically, people who bought Pleco before this announcement went out), and only to those who bought / received a free upgrade to version 2.0. We won't, however, require that you already own an iPhone / iPod Touch, as long as you're willing to purchase one if you're accepted into the test. You're also going to need to update your iPhone / iPod to iPhone OS 3.0, since that's the only version Pleco will run on - that new OS should be released officially worldwide on June 17th, according to Apple.
If you're interested in beta-testing, visit http://www.pleco.com/iphonebeta.html and fill out / submit the form on that page. We will stop accepting signups at midnight GMT on June 23rd (no exceptions) - we'll notify people about whether or not they were accepted within about a week after that, and hopefully send out the beta-test version soon after. We'll distribute the tester slots semi-randomly, but will give at least some extra priority to people who've helped us out with bug reports / feedback in the past.
We're not planning to require testers to sign an non-disclosure agreement (it would be nearly impossible to enforce, anyway, given how many different countries our customers are located in), so those of you who aren't accepted into the beta-test should at least get some screenshots / early reviews / preview videos / etc soon after the testers get their hands on it. (we may do an official preview of some sort as well)
---
Thanks for being our customer, and as always we're eager to hear your feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions - you can send them to me at mikelove@pleco.com.
Best wishes,
Michael Love
Founder & President
Pleco Software
http://www.pleco.com
Dear Pleco Customers,
We've got a couple of exciting announcements to share with you today.
1. Pleco 2.0.2 Update
First off, we've just released a new update to our Pleco 2.0 software which along with many, many bug fixes includes some very useful new features and other improvements. Some highlights:
-- Added a new "Organize Flashcards" screen, which brings back the old copy-cards-between-lists interface that a lot of people missed from 1.0.
-- Added support for interrupting audio in mid-playback; now, if you hit the audio button when audio is already playing it'll stop and start playing the new audio instead.
-- Made the Input dialog on Windows Mobile automatically resize to fit the available screen area, so the handwriting input box will be much larger than it was before on nearly all Windows Mobile devices (anything with a rectangular screen, basically).
-- Made "Instant" handwriting recognition the default setting on Windows Mobile. If you haven't tried this yet, go into the "Input" panel of "Preferences" and set "HWR auto-rec after" to "Instant" - this will run the recognizer after you draw each stroke, saving you the trouble of hitting the Recognize button.
-- Added the ability to switch dictionaries in the Char Info Compounds screen.
-- Made significant performance improvements in flashcards on Windows Mobile and in long dictionary entry rendering on Palm OS.
The update is available at http://www.pleco.com/wmdownload.html for Windows Mobile or http://www.pleco.com/palmdownload.html for Palm OS. Installation instructions are at http://www.pleco.com/manual/wminst.html#minorupgrade for Windows Mobile and http://www.pleco.com/manual/palminst.html#minorupgrade for Palm OS. A complete list of changes is available at http://www.pleco.com/manual/vershist.html.
Note that, as with 2.0.1, this update is only for people already running Pleco 2.0. If you're still using the older version 1.0 (blue circle icon), see http://www.pleco.com/manual/upgradeguide.html for instructions on how to upgrade to that; it's free for most people who own 1.0. 2.0 incorporates hundreds of wonderful new features and is well worth the effort to upgrade, especially on Windows Mobile (where along with the new features we've managed to significantly improve the software's stability and performance over 1.0).
And a reminder / warning for people using Pleco 2.0 on Palm OS which we're including in every announcement e-mail: unlike in 1.0, your flashcard database is NOT automatically backed up whenever you sync your Palm with your computer; you have to back it up manually. See http://www.pleco.com/manual/palminst.html#backrest for instructions on how to do that. Flashcard databases have never been automatically backed up on Windows Mobile, but if you haven't been backing up yours regularly see http://www.pleco.com/manual/wminst.html#backrest for instructions on how to do so.
2. New Chinese-English Dictionary Release
Along with 2.0.2, we're also releasing a brand new Chinese-English dictionary database for Pleco 2.0, based on "A Chinese-English Dictionary" edited by Wei Dongya. It's a classic old title (last revised in 1995) with fewer entries than ABC (about 80,000, versus 200,000 in ABC or 24,000 in Oxford) but much more detailed definitions; even gets into Classical Chinese meanings for many single characters. It also has *tons* of examples, around 60,000 of them (versus 10,000 in ABC) - some of them are a bit dated, but the fact that a sentence contains some 1970s-esque references doesn't make it any less grammatically correct
A particularly interesting feature of this license is that, unlike in most of the other licenses we've signed, we have total editorial control over our version of the dictionary; this means that we can add / delete / revise entries however we like. We've already improved the dictionary in one key area by adding Pinyin to all of its example sentences (a feature missing in the original print edition); in the future we're also planning to add entries for missing words (possibly combining in data from freely-licensed sources like CEDICT), delete / revise those archaic-sounding example sentences, and generally turn it into a nice modern dictionary that's as good as anything else out there. We're even considering a number of interesting ways to involve our users in this process (possibly in a paid capacity, a la Amazon's mturk.com) - more on that to follow.
The new "ACE" dictionary database is included in the 2.0.2 update installer, so you'll be able to install the demo version for it when you update to 2.0.2. (It should not be installed with previous versions, since it'll render a little quirkily in those.) If you'd like to purchase it, you can do so from the "My Orders" page on our website (http://www.pleco.com/orders.html) - the price is US$29.95.
3. New "Complete" Bundle
Thanks to an amendment to another one of our dictionary licenses, we're now able to offer every single 2.0 dictionary together in a single bundle, something that a restriction in that license prevented us from doing before now. This new "Complete" bundle costs $199.95 and includes all 8 of our current dictionaries, and it's available along with the other bundles in our online store. It does not automatically entitle you to any new dictionaries we might release in the future, however.
If you've recently purchased a brand new copy of Pleco 2.0 with another bundle and wish you'd bought this one instead, send us a note and we'll be happy to try to work something out to let you switch. We've also just lowered the price of the Basic bundle from $70 to $60, and added the NWP dictionary to the Linguist bundle, so if you've purchased either of those bundles recently and would like a credit for the price difference / additional dictionary, let us know; we've already done this automatically for all Basic / Linguist orders placed in June.
4. Palm OS / Palm Pre Status
We also have some very good news for Palm OS users, or people who are interested in next-generation smartphone platforms other than iPhone. Palm has reversed their previously-announced policy and decided to allow their new Palm Pre smartphone / webOS operating system to run old Palm OS software after all, through a third-party but Palm-approved emulator program called MotionApps Classic (which basically simulates a Palm Centro on the Pre) (http://www.motionapps.com). And after testing it, we can now confirm that Pleco 2.0 is compatible with and runs smoothly on the Palm Pre.
However, MotionApps Classic is a version 1.0 product and appears to be kind of buggy at the moment, so after a few days of testing we've concluded it's a bit too unstable / crash-prone to recommend to our customers right now. We're optimistic that they'll improve matters considerably after a few bug-fix updates, though.
In general, the fact that the Pre uses a finger- rather than a stylus-driven touchscreen creates a few rough spots in our software: some control / settings panels are a bit difficult to navigate, text selection is rather iffy, and handwriting recognition loses some accuracy when done with a finger instead of a stylus (along with requiring you to draw strokes a bit more slowly than you might be accustomed to). But the only major feature we've found that doesn't work at all on the Pre yet is audio, and that's because MotionApps doesn't support it yet (but have promised that audio support is coming in a soon-to-be-released update).
Thanks to the possibility of webOS compatibility, it seems like the Palm OS version of Pleco will probably enjoy a temporary stay of execution; version 3.0 of Pleco may not come out on Palm, but it's increasingly likely that version 2.1 at least will, assuming MotionApps does indeed improve matters on the stability front. We plan to release Pre-specific installation instructions and a version of Pleco with updated / more finger-friendly control panel layouts in a few months, once the bugs in the emulator have been worked out.
Incidentally, a similar Palm OS emulator called StyleTap (http://www.styletap.com) is available for the much-talked-about Nokia 5800 and N97 phones, and while we haven't had a chance to try out Pleco on them ourselves, we've had a few customer reports of it working successfully, so that might be another possibility for some people. The Nokias, unlike the Pre, use resistive (stylus-friendly) touchscreens, so the handwriting recognition / text highlighting issues on the Pre wouldn't be a problem on those.
5. iPhone Status / Beta-Testing
The much-anticipated iPhone / iPod Touch version of Pleco is coming along nicely, though as previously announced the first version of it won't include flashcards (those will be coming in a later version). We still aren't ready to make any predictions about the release date, partly because Apple can sometimes hold up the release of a new application for several months (waiting for approval / demanding design changes / etc), but also because we have a horrendously bad track record at predicting release dates.
That being said, though, most of the big pieces are already done / nearly-done, and from our end at least it's mostly a matter of tying up loose ends at this point. While flashcards are not included, we're fairly confident that the first release of Pleco for iPhone will include fullscreen handwriting input, a built-in document reader (though actually getting documents into it is a bit tricky at the moment), audio, and stroke order diagrams, and we think there are only two of our current dictionaries that we won't be able to include in the initial iPhone release.
Because there are a couple of parts of the iPhone version of Pleco that would benefit from some outside testing with different cell carriers / network configurations / etc, we've decided to do a short external beta test, and let some of our customers try it out and send us bug reports / feedback. Apple limits the distribution of applications they haven't approved yet to just 200 copies, but due to some other restrictions we're only going to be able to accept about 70 people into the initial beta-testing pool.
The beta is limited to current Pleco customers (specifically, people who bought Pleco before this announcement went out), and only to those who bought / received a free upgrade to version 2.0. We won't, however, require that you already own an iPhone / iPod Touch, as long as you're willing to purchase one if you're accepted into the test. You're also going to need to update your iPhone / iPod to iPhone OS 3.0, since that's the only version Pleco will run on - that new OS should be released officially worldwide on June 17th, according to Apple.
If you're interested in beta-testing, visit http://www.pleco.com/iphonebeta.html and fill out / submit the form on that page. We will stop accepting signups at midnight GMT on June 23rd (no exceptions) - we'll notify people about whether or not they were accepted within about a week after that, and hopefully send out the beta-test version soon after. We'll distribute the tester slots semi-randomly, but will give at least some extra priority to people who've helped us out with bug reports / feedback in the past.
We're not planning to require testers to sign an non-disclosure agreement (it would be nearly impossible to enforce, anyway, given how many different countries our customers are located in), so those of you who aren't accepted into the beta-test should at least get some screenshots / early reviews / preview videos / etc soon after the testers get their hands on it. (we may do an official preview of some sort as well)
---
Thanks for being our customer, and as always we're eager to hear your feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions - you can send them to me at mikelove@pleco.com.
Best wishes,
Michael Love
Founder & President
Pleco Software
http://www.pleco.com