Use "copy" from CJKOS to PlecoDict

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I am still wondering if I should get a licence of this software. It looks wonderful but I need a little bit time to decide.
And I have a question.

I am using a Palm T/X. English OS. I installed CJKOS to have the chinese characters.

I try to do the following thing. Copy a chinese character or phrase from the memo application and paste it in the dictionnary. The copy part is working as I can paste in any other application. But if I try to paste the character in PlecoDict the character is converted in something else (a kind of "-n", or "é?") depending on the character used.

How can I copy a chinese character or a phrase from any application to the PlecoDict?

Thank for helping.
Alex

 

[mikelove]

Sounds like the "External Text Encoding" setting in PlecoDict's preferences screen doesn't match the text encoding that CJKOS is using - check to see whether CJKOS is using GB or Big5 encoding, then go into the Characters section of PlecoDict's preferences and make sure that it's set to use the same encoding. After that, copy-and-paste should work correctly.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the swift reply.
I tried to change the parameters of the text encoding. Here are the results.

If CJKOS is set to Simplified characters GB and Pleco also. It work perfectly well.

If CJKOS is set to Simplified characters GB and Pleco to Traditional characters, the past command works alos. But of course pasting is made with GB characters (no conversion made whish is normal I guess)

If CJKOS is set to traditional characters (BIG5) and Pleco to Traditional Pasting is not working (it converts the characters to an equivalent Westers font, same as if CJKOS is disabled)

If CJKOS is set to traditional characters (BIG5) and pleco to simplified, pasting is not working.

I am a user of traditional charcters and this past function is useful. Nevertheless, I must admit that your dictionary is the best I have seen so far (even for Big5 characters).

Do you see any parameter I need to change weither in CJKOS or Pleco to make this function work?

Or if you think it is a bug, can you fix it?

Thanks.
Alexandre

 

[mikelove]

You have to change PlecoDict's text encoding setting, not just whether it's using traditional or simplified characters. PlecoDict itself actually uses Unicode, so any characters you copy-and-paste into it will be converted to Unicode, but it has no way of knowing whether those characters are in Big5 or GB unless you tell it which encoding to use.

Go into PlecoDict's "Preferences" screen (open PlecoDict, tap on the menu button [leftmost button on the bar at the bottom of your TX's screen] and choose "Preferences" from the "Dict" menu), choose the "Characters" section from the tab at the bottom left corner of that screen, and change "External Text Encoding" to Big5. After that, you should be able to paste in Big5 Traditional characters from CJKOS.

 

[chao-ren]

Mike, since PlecoDict always convert the incoming chinese characters into Unicode but needs to be "reminded" that they are either Big5 (Traditional) or GB (Simplified), why is this by Ajo possible?

Ajo: If CJKOS is set to Simplified characters (GB) and Pleco to Traditional characters, the past command works alos.

CJKOS can only write/produce Big5/GB characters.
The other source of Unicode characters is maybe from an external email etc... or other input method editors which can handle or deliver Unicode characters. I mean, is reminding Plecodict of conversion from GB>> to Unicode not needed?

My guess is that PlecoDict has a "default" internal setting that assumes the incoming is GB. And if the incoming is otherwise (Big5/Unicode) it needs reminding of conversion in the Big5 case. No conversion takes place if incoming is Unicode.

In the Plecodict for Pocket Pcs i.e. Windows mobile etc... the characters or inputs are usually unicode so no conversion is needed or such problems don't exist. Correct?

Anyway for the Palm platform I wish CJKOS could produce/write Unicode characters, that would simplify matters alot. i.e. there should be a preference menu setting on CJKOS which allow you to select either GB/Big5 or Unicode. With Unicode you could then write both simplified and traditional characters on the same page. Even maybe input pinyin and bofomofo characters like on a PC.

Does anyone know of any input editor on Palm OS that can deliver Unicode? :?:

Thanks....

 

[mikelove]

PlecoDict on Palm does indeed default to GB encoding, since our simplified-using customers still greatly outnumber our traditional-using ones. There's not really any mechanism for copy-and-pasting Unicode text on Palm, so we actually use our own Pleco-specific Unicode clipboard while PlecoDict is running; we translate whatever's in the clipboard on startup into Unicode, and translate whatever's in the clipboard on exit back to the system text encoding. And yes, on Pocket PC everything's in Unicode anyway so we don't bother with it on those.

I believe ChOS actually has a UTF-8 mode, though I don't think it's very well supported. And newer versions of CJKOS support GBK, which supports traditional and simplified characters like Unicode (but unlike Unicode is backwards-compatible with GB, which makes it very useful if you already have a lot of data in GB format). I haven't tried to mix simplified and traditional input on the same page with that, but it should at least be possible to display them both at the same time.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi,
Thank you mikelove for your prompt answers.
I can say that the product you sell is great but also that you provide a good service to the buyers.
Today I buy PlecoDict for my PDA (and for my use of course).
Thank you again. I may come back with more questions. Hopefuly not too much.
Alexandre