Electronic Dictionary

[daofeishi]

How much does it cost(or other comparable models)? I couldn't find anything on amazon.cn ..

If I remember correctly, I paid around ~1000 RMB for mine. Here I found it for 750.

[character]

Where are the animation/delay settings found?

In Dictionary | Search Results | Results there's a "Delay before search" option. In Panels | Stroke Order there's an "Animate on Next" option. In Panels | Handwriting Recognition there's a "Recognition delay" option. I think there are a few more options as well.

Also, landscape mode doesn't help. What I really miss is being able to write a character and have both the definition and the list of results all there on the same screen underneath what I'd been writing. I asked about it on Pleco forums and Mike says basically having that would make things too laggy on the iPhone.

Setting the Panels | Handwriting Interface "Background" option to Transparent is probably as close as you can get to what you want. If Mike says there's a performance problem doing it some other way, I believe him.

There are others, and whatever way you look at it, 3-4 seconds startup time just can't compete with instant - which is what I had with the Palm version, because I only used the Palm for Pleco so it was there as soon as I turned it on.

A number of people are running Pleco on jailbroken iPhones, which allows for quicker task switching.

[gato]

Setting the Panels | Handwriting Interface "Background" option to Transparent is probably as close as you can get to what you want.

That's brilliant. I didn't even know this setting existed, though of course I haven't read the manual. The background for handwriting interface should be transparent by default. I think most people would want to see the search results as they are entering each character. That's what I mean by better default settings. There are also way too many user-configurable options (must be close to 100 of them altogether). Need to separate the options that most likely to be changed from those almost nobody would want to change. Most people just want a dictionary, not a "programmable" dictionary.

[mikelove]

Just noticed this thread:

-- Certainly happy to get more detailed feedback / suggestions either here or on PlecoForums, though the latter is more likely to attract follow-up from other Pleco users.

-- The transparent handwriting background is disabled by default because at the moment it's kind of slow / laggy, at least on non-3GS iPhones. Basically, the graphics compositing system on iPhone works in such a way that a lot of the screen has to be re-drawn every time additional points are added to a stroke (unlike on Palm/WM, where we simply draw the new line segments on top of what's already there), and with a transparent background that tends to take a while. We think we've got a workaround for this, but it's rather tricky to implement so we're waiting to do it until after the flashcard-equipped version is ready. (that same workaround might also allow for leaving both the definition and the Entry List visible in the background, though we'd have to do some more testing on that)

-- We certainly do need to do a better job of managing options, yes - bury a bunch of them in an "expert mode" or somesuch. This is another post-flashcard improvement. (part of me wishes we'd originally released the iPhone version without even promising we'd offer flashcards on it, they're a great feature but it's extremely labor-intensive to get all of the darn dialogs / management functions / etc ported over; if we expand to another new mobile platform in the future we may make Pleco on that platform officially flashcard-less, at least for a while)

-- I remain optimistic that iPhone OS 4.0 will include some sort of official mechanism for multitasking, but yes, even the current version can multitask if it's jailbroken, and we've got a number of people using Pleco successfully on jailbroken phones. (though that does complicate the process of buying add-ons a bit; we're trying to get Apple to sign off on letting us officially sell iPhone add-ons through our own online store as well as iTunes to make it easier to work around this)

[imron]

Setting the Panels | Handwriting Interface "Background" option to Transparent is probably as close as you can get to what you want

This was one of the first things I did when I got it

In Dictionary | Search Results | Results there's a "Delay before search" option. In Panels | Stroke Order there's an "Animate on Next" option. In Panels | Handwriting Recognition there's a "Recognition delay" option. I think there are a few more options as well

Yeah I'd already checked those out, and none of them do what I want.

Basically what I want is a) part of the screen to show the whole dictionary entry (i.e. not a list of entries showing just one or two lines of each one) with then another part of the screen showing the list of all matching results, and B) to be able to write characters transparently over the top of that and have it be updated as I go.

I can get a) working no problem, unfortunately option B) doesn't work with option a) enabled for performance reasons, which means that everytime you click on the keyword entry box there is half a second of iphone zooming and swiping animation as it moves on to a different page (and another half second when switching back) . To be honest, I could live with a little lag on the interface, and I could also live with not automatically searching for characters until I hit a 'complete' button. I really don't like 1 second lost to page-swapping animation each time I want to enter a new word though.

[mikelove]

Understood. I think I remember our earlier discussion on this... once we implement our solution for making transparent handwriting less laggy in general, which is high on our priority list for improvements to make after we get this darn flashcard system finished, we will certainly do some more experiments with not hiding the definition area and see if the performance becomes acceptable, but if we did it now you'd actually end up with about as much lag as you get from the page-swap.

[Caidanbi]

I have been using Besta electronic dictionaries since 2001, and I really like them. I see they weren't quite working out for you, so I hope you can find something else you like, but to me they are great!

[andrewreis]

http://i50.tinypic.com/2iivrm8.jpg

http://i45.tinypic.com/2iueq04.jpg

this is the dictionary i used and i firmly believe it is one of the best Chinese dictionaries for English users.

one thing to make sure of is that your electronic dictionary can type in consecutive pinyin

eg: "tushuguan" not tu ... shu .... guan. extremely inefficient and unhelpful.

you should be able to purchase this model for 800RMB in Shanghai at least.

just be firm and convinced you KNOW this is the price and mention you've bought it before.

takes the haggling process down to 20 seconds.

dictionary is pronounced "kuai[4] yi[4] dian[3]"

[tooironic]

What is the quality of the dictionary like?

[andrewreis]

its everything you need.

input is pinyin, written (with stylus) for Chinese and of course use the keyboard for English input.

definitions are very good, you can highlight a word (English or Chinese) that you don't understand in the definition (definition is in both Chinese and English) and it will take you to the relevant dictionary.

its fast, no silly load up time.

seriously, being at an international school learning Chinese everyone has a electronic dictionary and i found mine to be one of the best. the Koreans have awesome ones but that's because the market demand is so high for them in chorea.

i found the besta ones to be pretty HORRIBLE as some of them you couldn't enter multiple pinyin (see prev post) ~~ which for any chinese learner is a MAJOR flaw and one you will not be able to live with.. thats basically the most important thing looking through the electronic dictionaries.

oh the definitions have example sentences too and basic grammar patterns are included (for example if you search 除了 [chule] it will indicate what is commonly follow afterwards along with a clear definition of how to use it)

excuse the 乱 nature of this post.

[chrix]

How many 字 and 詞 does it have?

[andrewreis]

honestly wouldn't be able to tell you and cbb atm baidu'ing it.

快易典

博彩V660

im sure something will come up.

[chrix]

I'm just asking because for me due to their size limitations most electronic dictionaries are far from "everything you need".

I wouldn't do it below the ABC Dictionary and its 197K entries...

[andrewreis]

http://youa.baidu.com/item/55c56ea52ca9bd608ffba089

http://detail.china.alibaba.com/buyer/offerdetail/620702391.html

if you have the time translate your way down the page...

197k Chinese characters or English?

if its English I believe I quickly saw a number of 133k in English.

good luck on your hunt i'm off to fail a subject

[chrix]

I don't remember how ABC arrives at the 197K figure, I believe it's a combination of characters and words. My favourite printed dictionary, the 21st century Great Chinese-English dictionary, has 10K characters, and 180K words, and that's more than enough.

If I should ever need to buy an electronic dictionary, I'll probably go with the ABC dictionary and buy it for my mobile phone...

[arzinger]

Soo.

It's been almost two months now and I have made a decision. I met a guy in the dormitory here with a Samsung Omnia i900 mobile phone with PlecoDict installed on it. Borrowing and working with it for two days completely convinced me. I used it during class, while sitting on the bus or reading a book. It has basically everything I wanted. Great recognition, a lot of results(especially the ABC dictionary ..), the Guifan dictionary provides some examples and the flashcard thing seems to be nice. The only thing I could wish more for are even more examples. Besides that, very nice.

[JenniferW]

It's been a while since people posted edictionary recommendations. What would anyone recommend out of what's available now?

I don't want to use a phone or online dictionary - or I want an alternative to those. I live in the UK, and here, use online dictionaries all the time. I have trips to China - but with no phone! So I want an edictionary for no-phone and no-computer situations.

[imron]

In my opinion, the situation still hasn't changed. If you don't have Pleco, get Pleco.

[gato]

Your UK phone should work in China.

[imron]

And even if you didn't have calls (i.e. you didn't enable roaming or get a local SIM-card) other applications on the phone would still work.