Using pleco across iPhone and iPad

Raesu

Raesu

秀才
I'm considering getting an iPad so I can read in Pleco. I assume I'll be able to download all my purchased dictionaries and TCB readings, but what about flashcard decks? Will those sync between devices? In my documents i see weekly iCloud backups A and B. Can I force this backup and sync so I can quickly go from ipad to iphone? Thanks.
 
They should if iCloud sync is turned on, but they can't be forced - iOS literally doesn't expose an API for that, we write the data to a shared directory and iOS syncs it when it feels like doing so.
 
Sounds good enough for me. Please add those graded readers in traditional and open the book store! Kindle has really let me down with books in traditional Chinese.
 
We're trying to figure out better sourcing on that - would certainly like to expand our traditional collection, but before we do we need to figure out where the next 100 Pleco e-books are going to be licensed from :-)
 
Have loved using Pleco on my iPad. My only inconvenience is I can only really add and review flashcards on one device since they don't sync very often. Seems it only syncs weekly. Not a huge inconvenience and I don't many people jump between iPad and iPhone like I do, but getting off iCloud and implementing your own sync would be a great improvement.
 
It seems there is a way to sync new categories between an iPad and an iPhone using airdrop, but I didn’t have much success. Is there a step by step guide on what to do on each device?
 
With AirDrop, you'd want to:

1) Export the cards to a file (via Import/Export / Export Cards).
2) Go into File Manager in the sidebar menu.
3) Tap on the (i) button next to the exported file.
4) Tap "Open In..."
5) Choose your other device to AirDrop to.
6) Select Pleco on that device as the app to receive the AirDropped file.
7) Go into Import/Export / Import Cards on that device and import the file (should be in the "Inbox" folder).
 
Thanks Mike. I actually got that far, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the purpose. On the iPhone I created a new category. I exported only that category to the iPad using the technique you outlined above. However, when I went back to my flashcard categories in the iPad, I didn't see it.
 
@mikelove I’m sure you’ve thought about this problem a lot more than I have, but it seems like even given the poor syncing APIs, you could potentially implement a merge that took the latest update from each device when they don’t agree? It really would be nice to solve this problem. I hit it pretty frequently.
 
Or, you could potentially take ANKI’s approach and host the files on your own servers. That would obviously have some storage cost implications for you though...
 
The current flashcard format - which was designed around the storage capabilities of mid-'00s Palm Pilots! - doesn't really track enough data to make merges viable; for example, flashcard histories are not logged with dates (so no way to combine them), objects aren't assigned any sort of GUID that would make it possible to determine whether two objects were actually the same or were simply newly created objects in each database with overlapping rowids, not all objects have independent modification dates to detect changes for a sync, and deletions are not logged at all. We've addressed all those problems in the new format for 4.0, but there's not really an effective way for us to do database merging with the old format.

I do think we would host this on our own servers, yes - even ignoring iCloud, we need something cross-platform both for dual-platform users and for the (quite common) scenario of people who replace a broken iPhone with a new Android phone and no longer have any iOS device from which they can restore the data from their iCloud account. (we would probably charge a nominal fee for online sync/backup, though)
 
Makes sense. Probably best to just wait for 4.0 in that case rather than distract you from your current efforts. Thanks for the quick reply, Mike :-)
 
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