Pleco 3.0

[muyongshi]

I just downloaded the update this morning and after only 5 minutes of playing around, am completely in love with what Mike Love and the team has done!

 

I think my favorite feature is when you are viewing a word, they list all of the different dictionaries definitions in one place and how you can in addition view the chars, words and example sentences all right there.

 

Also the look and feel in my opinion overall is simply stellar! I love the new placement of the OCR, flashcards and settings-before I felt they were kind of hidden and unnatural to get at. Apparently this update focuses a lot on the OCR which I haven't had a chance to try out (so no comment there).

 

I have used Pleco since 2003 and I have always thought it was the best dictionary out there and this update has simply blown me away.

 

Anyway, has anyone else updated and what are you liking/finding useful?

 

 

(**edit: update was on my iPhone)

[Touchstone57]

I haven't yet but I will look forward to doing so. I assume it is available for Android too?

[mikelove]

muyongshi - Thanks! But actually OCR was specifically *not* a big focus, we're holding off on that until 2014 when we can start building around the iPhone 5/5C as a baseline and 5S as a reach - the 64-bit processor in the latter is going to really let us do some cool things with text detection / tracking. (we did add a few cool things, though - a temperamental but cool-when-it-works crosshairs mode and support for OCRing PDF files)

 

The area of the heaviest improvement other than the main dictionary / search was actually the document reader, which now supports pretty much any document you can throw at it (even EPUB and PDFs-with-embedded-text) along with some other popular features like pagination and search.

 

Touchstone57 - no, Android update is coming later - actually Android is already running something with about 70% of the new functionality of 3.0, we've been introducing that stuff more gradually on Android but did it all at once on iOS.

[muyongshi]

Thanks Mike! I must have misread the blurb on the App stores description.

[ChTTay]

Updating now... Looking forward to the PDF functionality in document reader!

[Eranee]

Absolutely agree with muyongshi, the new update is absolutely brilliant!

[muyongshi]

Doing more playing: there is a synonym/antonym add-on available for free that appears under the "words" section in a definition when downloaded. Fairly basic but this is something I have wanted for ages and it is a great addition.

I'm also really liking being able to specify which dictionaries to include and which to use only as a backup.

Lots of other little things too but I'll reserve those for later as I discover more about each one

I've always completely without hesitation recommended Pleco so I'm not sure how but this new version quadruples my desire to unequivacobly recommend it (not that I can recommend something stronger than I already do…).

[roddy]

Oooh, pretty. Haven't used it much yet, but it looks great!

[GotJack]

Should my iphone app have automatically updated itself? or do I have to go into Pleco and update it? (reason being, Im not seeing the changes you guys are!)

[gato]

Go to iOS App Store and tap on the update tab. Do you see an update for Pleco available there?

After you've updated the app, you'll need to update the dictionaries within Pleco's add-on tab.

[PBolchover]

One slight niggle, is that I wish that the "Pasteboard Reader" were easier to access on the iPhone, as this is one the features that I use the most (to translate posts on Wechat).

 

From memory, the old Pleco would remember which of the options under the "Readers" section I had last selected, which meant that as soon as I clicked the link on the bottom, I would go straight to the Pasteboard Reader.  No, I need to use more clicks to get to the same functionality.

[mikelove]

Actually it still remembers that - if you simply cold reopen Pleco it'll take you right back to whichever reader you were in before, if you switch to another section with Pleco still open then you'll see the clipboard reader listed right in the sidebar in the expandable 'recent documents' list.

[PBolchover]

Thanks - I hadn't noticed the "Recent Documents" section.

[ChTTay]

So i've been playing around for a bit and really like the update on my iPad. Especially like the ability to upload a document to dropbox and then read it using pleco reader. I've mentioned the update to friends and they are also very pleased by the changes. Good work overall.

Saying that... I was just doing a flashcard test and had pleco "crash" though. At least, I was in the middle of a test then the app closed down... I opened it and the test hadn't been saved. I just had to start again.

[GotJack]

Another question. When using flashcards, and using the definitions as the clue, the definitions seem to be taken from the PLC dictionary. Is there a war I can change what comes up to be from CC dictionary (or others)

Obviously once the card is revealed you can click on the hanzi and see definitions from both, but I am referring to the point before this. Before you reveal the answer

[mikelove]

CHTTay - could you please email us the logs from that crash? See this page for instructions on how to obtain them. (some apps build in libraries that collect / send those back automatically, but given the large # of extremely privacy-sensitive people among our customer base we try very hard to avoid doing stuff like that)

 

GotJack - yes; you can do it temporarily with the "remap cards to dicts" option in the Display configuration panel of your flashcard test, or permanently remap cards to a new dictionary via Organize Cards / Edit / Batch.

[ChTTay]

Hi Mike,

I don't use a windows or Mac laptop/PC. I only have a iPad and a Linux Ubuntu netbook. It looks like those instructions are only for Mac/Windows.

Anyway I can get the report directly from my iPad?

[mikelove]

Cool, not a lot of people taking that leap yet (though I expect many more to do so over the next year or two).

 

Anyway, if you go into the iPad "Settings" app, "General," "About," "Diagnostics & Usage," "Diagnostic & Usage Data," you can see all of your logs in there - scroll down the most recent Pleco one and you can copy-and-paste the contents of that into an email.

[muyongshi]

"Finally" found something that is not so great...the flashcards have stopped working for me after rebooting my phone. The solution offered is to restart your phone again, but some how with my tethered jailbreak, my phone "broke" my beautiful pleco. I'm definitely more annoyed at my jailbreak than anything. Just posted over at Pleco's 3.0 Bug reporting thread, so hopefully there will be a work around...

[mikelove]

Responded to there - need a little more information but hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this soon.