Preserving Pleco flashcards when you change a custom dictionary

[onebir]

I've been trying to use Pleco flashcards to learn new characters, but find it frustrating. I think part of the problem is that the inbuilt dictionaries simply contain too much information. So I've experimented with making custom, pared-down, dictionary specifically for learning characters (based on the McNaughton book).

The MakePlecoDict app works fine (an app for going from .pdbs to .txt files would be good though). But even if I don't change the name of the dictionary, sometimes my existing flashcards refuse to recognise the updated version after an update.

Does anyone know either:

- what you have to avoid changing to ensure existing flashcards go on working after a custom dictionary is updated?

or

- an easy way to edit the flashcards en masse to work after edits to custom dictionaries?

(I checked on the Pleco forums. This should probably be posted there, but I figured the overlap's massive anyway...)

[ipsi()]

As far as I'm aware, it's not possible to do either of those with 1.0. In 2.0, it's perfectly possible to edit your flashcards and such, and I suspect you'll find that a lot better. It should be out soonish (month or two, maybe?), or if you're feeling brave you can download the Beta and have a play around right now.

I do basically the same thing (with the New Practical Chinese Reader series), and I found it similarly frustrating. However, with 2.0, the flashcard definitions are stored in their own separate area (not the User Dictionary! Unless you specifically say so), and they can be edited very easily, or remapped to any dictionary you so choose. I've been using 2.0 for a while now, and yeah. Flashcards are much improved. In 1.0 about all I could do was live with any errors or omissions, or go back to square one, sadly.

Also, it would probably be better posting to the PlecoDict forums. While there's a large overlap, I'm not sure how often Mike Love (the head of Pleco) checks these forums, whereas you're likely to get a response in a day or two if you post in the Pleco Forums.

[kudra]

not sure this is what you want, but when I put together the flashcards for David and Helen in China, I included character, pronunciation, and definition in the flash card file to match the vocabulary pages in the texts. (plural, I generated simplified and traditional files separately.)

As far as I can tell I haven't seen any conflict with other flashcard lists. What I do notice is that if I try to look up a multi-character word that is only in the flashcard list, it pops up as coming from the user dictionary.

Download the files to look at the format for the David and Helen cards.