What could be better with Plecodict

[teachinator]

Echoing a request from yonitabonita -- I'd really like it if I could click on any Chinese character and either have a definition appear in a pop-up or even just have the page replaced by that character's definition page, as long as I could use the Back button to go back to where I was. So often I'm reading the example sentences and I don't recognize one of the characters and I wish I could just grab the definition on the fly.

I'd also like it if I could pause a flashcard session and go back to it later. And I'd like to be able to manage the flashcards during a flashcard session, like deleting them or moving them to another list, or clicking "ask me about this one again during this session" or "got this one, don't ask me about it again." I suppose I can accomplish something like that with flags and ranks, but I haven't figured those out yet.

[stephanhodges]

I hope the next version allows randomization of the entries each sesson. It's a bit boring to spend two hours just on the "a" and "b" items in the HSK list, for example.

Also, it's been shown in studies that randomization improves memory recall by 30% or more (reduces time to recall).

[Shadowdh]

Stephan.. do you mean random flash card view... sort of like shuffle..?? I thought you could do that already if thats what you mean. At least in the ppc anyway... new flashcard session, cards and then select view by random... if you didnt mean that disregard what I said... cheers

[roddy]

Yeah, you can definitely randomize the cards. Don't have my PDA with me so can't quote you the exact setting, but it's in there.

[stephanhodges]

OK, I found it under "card settings" on the palm version. Seems pretty fast even with HSK word lists.

Thanks. I had looked under testing menus, etc. Didn't look at card setup.

[mikelove]

teachinator - thanks for the feedback, we get a lot lot lot of requests for pop-up definitions, so it's definitely something we're working on. Same goes for pausing flashcard sessions - it presents some technical problems with our current system but these should be resolved in 2.0. A simple way of promoting/demoting cards within a session is an interesting idea - it is indeed already possible with some difficulty in the current system, but it needs to be more readily accessible.

Everyone else - same goes with the randomization function, it's there but it needs to be a little more transparently accessible.

[roddy]

Question: What does Plecodict do when both it's own handwriting recognizer and PenPower are enabled? I usually have PenPower off, but I had it activated recently and when I tried to input to Plecodict it seemed to be using PenPower sometimes (which resulted in garbled input, presumably due to a dodgy setting somewhere) and and Plecodict's built-in recognition the rest of the time.

Minor issue, not even sure if it's worth looking at, or if it's something you could do anything about - PenPower presumably works over the top of, rather than within, other apps.

[mikelove]

Sorry, didn't notice this before now for some reason...

We really can't control what PenPower does, they don't provide any sort of an external API for us to enable / disable it, so it's probably best to either manually disable PenPower when using PlecoDict or turn on "Input Field Compatibility" mode and use PenPower in place of our recognizer.

[kalvin]

I'm a new member here-- I just wanted to say that this thread was incredibly helpful in helping me determine that I want to buy a Treo in order to use PlecoDict. There's no comprehensive independent review of PlecoDict anywhere, so this was the next best thing.

Keep posting!