Pleco 3.0

[muyongshi]

Mike was able to solve the problem for me. For future reference iCloud sync and the jailbreak don't play nice so don't enable iCloud sync. If you do and encounter my issue you need to erase the database and turn off iCloud sync. Then you're good to go!

[icebear]

Hi Mike,

Quick suggestion: automatic scrolling in the reader app.

I've gotten in the habit of using this feature in the 财经 iPad app and find it great (give it a try, sample issues can be viewed for free). Speed can be adjusted by slider. It helps maintain a minimum pace (for those training skimming) and most importantly, makes reading while running in the gym convenient (hands free). In that app the function only works in one orientation, while in the other pagination is as in a ebook reader. My view is that this type of functionality would be great in Pleco, with the Pleco specific mod of pause-lookup on tap.

[GotJack]

Hi Mikelove,

 

If I can ask another question. Is there any way to edit dictionary cards? for example the entry xian salty (ps sorry currently cant use charachters) the CC entry doesnt list salty, it has 1)all 2)everyone 3)each 4widespread 5)harmonius

 

I would like to add a 6th as salty

 

Is there a way to edit to card? i thought it might be through card info but cant seem to do it?

 

Cheers

[Botterli]

Hi, at the definition page, click the little triangular arrow to select between different meanings of the character, and you will find salty. At least it's like that in the Android version.

Not sure why there are multiple pages, though. Many other characters seem to have different meanings on the same page.

[mikelove]

icebear - sorry I didn't see this post before. Anyway, this is a little dicey at the moment because continuous vertical scrolling isn't yet supported in EPUB or PDF files, but it might be possible once we get that fixed.

 

You could actually get something very close to it now with the TTS reader function, though; tap on the start of the passage you want to read, then tap on the megaphone icon and it will start reading it to you. You can adjust the speed with the speed slider, can turn the volume of the device down to zero so you don't have to actually hear the audio read, and can even hide the definition bubble so that you're left with just a cursor gliding along through the text, and can stop at any time with the pause button.

 

GotJack - use the 'convert to custom card' command in Card Info and you can edit the text however you like.

 

Botterli - the multiple pages generally mean that a character has more than one pronunciation - we separate each pronunciation into a different entry in that case.

[GotJack]

Mike, when I convert to custom card and attempt to the edit CC dictionary entry it never saves.

 

From the edit page, I click save, and it takes me back to the card info page. Now I can see the CC entry updated as I would like it, if I click done then the card just reverts to as before (without edit)

 

SO im left with two options back on the card info instead of clicking done, 1)convert to dict-based card, which again changes it back to the default entry and deletes my changes

 

Or 2) convert to user dictionary entry. Which  I don't want to do, as this doesnt appear when Im testing myself on flaschards (only CC appears)

 

Is there no way to edit the actually CC entry and it be permanent?

 

P.S If you don't really understand my waffle basically if you could give me a step by step on what to click to permenantly edit a CC entry

[icebear]

icebear - sorry I didn't see this post before. Anyway, this is a little dicey at the moment because continuous vertical scrolling isn't yet supported in EPUB or PDF files, but it might be possible once we get that fixed.

You could actually get something very close to it now with the TTS reader function, though; tap on the start of the passage you want to read, then tap on the megaphone icon and it will start reading it to you. You can adjust the speed with the speed slider, can turn the volume of the device down to zero so you don't have to actually hear the audio read, and can even hide the definition bubble so that you're left with just a cursor gliding along through the text, and can stop at any time with the pause button.

This is a good suggestion - thanks! I actually like this even better, with the moving highlight (not definition) to help keep pace.

[mikelove]

GotJack - sorry, what's reverting? The actual card or the original dictionary entry? If you go back to Card Info again is the text still updated or has it reverted in there too?

 

It's not possible to edit a built-in dictionary entry - you can edit a card based on it, or you can turn it into a user dictionary entry, but you can't edit a Pleco-supplied dictionary. (supporting that would be challenging, especially in CC which we update regularly based on their website - we'd have to have some way to merge your edits with theirs, which we have enough trouble doing even with our own edits to CC) But since we do update it regularly, you could submit this change to CC-CEDICT's editors at http://cc-cedict.org/editor/editor.php and assuming they accept it it'll make its way into our version soon enough (and also be available to any other website or app using CC-CEDICT).

 

Sorry for the confusion.

 

icebear - great!

[GotJack]

Hi Mike, I sort of gave up on trying to edit the dictionary entries, it seemed to complicated:

 

So a suggestion of mine, is if when your learning a flashcard, you can specify which entry your prompted to learn. For example at the moment, I would like to learn the character 接 。 Obviously this character has many meanings, and currently CC dictionary lists 1) to receive 2)to answer 3)to meet or welcome sb 4)to connect 5) to catch 6) to join 7) to extend to take ones turn on duty 9)to take over for sb. 

 

At the moment I am wanting to simply learn the 3rd definition, 3)to meet or welcome sb , as in 我来接你，好吗？(i'll come meet you/pick you up) as im trying to lodge that particular meaning and context in my head. 

 

It would be amazing, if I could when entering a card into a flashcard category, select for this category only , please prompt me on definition 3)

 

 

I hope you understand what I mean mike, or perhaps I can already do this or something similar? to highlight one particular definition when using it on flashcards for recall?

 

The reason I suggest this: Is im finding, depending on which definition I know best, i tend to recall that. As such when my teacher uses 接 in the context of picking me up from airport ot whatever, All I can think of is the context of answering the phone. By isolating the definition, I believe it would assist recall a lot! This issue is particularly difficult considering the number of definitions for 接， 

[China_Checker]

Iy would be really cool if there was an app where you can photograph something in Chinese with your phone and then have the app translate it into English or Spanish the othe two "big" languages. How far off is something like this?

[imron]

How far off is something like this?

A few years ago.

 

See pleco's OCR module.

[mikelove]

@Gotjack - sorry I didn't see this post earlier. Anyway, at the moment the best way to do this would probably be to create multiple cards for the same word, then convert them to custom cards / edit their definitions to only highlight the section you want.

 

Handling sub-definitions is definitely something we'd like to do better in the future but we're still trying to decide how - it feels like each definition is a separate 'fact' and hence ought to constitute a separate card in some sense, but database-wise it makes more sense to have a single card for a given word and handle definitions separately in the card's scoring instead.

[GotJack]

Hi Mike,

 

I have a feeling I may have asked this before, so if so apologies for repetition ( i couldn't find it on a quick search of the thread)

 

When I conduct a flashcard test, and chose to show definitions, on being tested I am only shown a single dictionary enteries definitions. On reveal I can however flip through all the dictionary enteries.

 

My question is, can I change a setting to show all the different dictionaries before the reveal (whilst being tested), or if not, am I amble to manually change what comes up (currently its CC)

 

Thanks

[mikelove]

Not something we support at the moment, no. We actually are in the process of adding a one-button shortcut to get to the definition screen from a revealed flashcard, but we haven't really had many requests for this sort of functionality before a card is revealed - could you explain what you'd be using this feature for? Are you finding yourself with a lot of cards that were mapped to the wrong dictionary on import?

[GotJack]

The problem I'm facing is lets say for example I am learning a word, often one dictionary will have what I consider to be the most appropriate translation. So when i come to search the word its absolutely no problem, i am able to see all the different dictionary versions (plecos own, ADS , CC etc)

 

When i come to test that however, on the flashcard it will only give me the CC dictionary definition entry (this is when im learning vocab, and have selected definition to show). There is no way to switch to the other dictionaries. Obviously if the other dictionaries enteries vary slightly and sometimes this helps jog the memory.

 

On the reveal page however, its really simple, i can easily switch between all the different dictionaries.

 

What im saying is it would be great to have this functionality before the reveal? I hope ive explained this clearly?

[Yorin]

I have a question too:

I'm using Pleco on Android. I've configured it so that the entries in the lists "Words beginning" and "Words containing" are sorted by frequency. However, this only ever seems to work if I search for a single character. A search for a word consisting of two characters will sort the found expressions in those lists alphabetically instead.

I find that "sort by frequency" feature very handy to identify frequently used words or word combinations consisting of characters which I already know. The way things are right now, it's use is limited though.

E.g. I would imagine that a search for "安全" should bring up some often used expressions like "安全带"，"安全帽"，"交通安全" etc. near the top of the lists, if they were sorted by frequency. That would really be useful.

Do you think some improvements could be made in that area?

[mikelove]

@GotJack - in that case, why aren't you changing the definition permanently? To do that, after the card has been revealed and you've switched to a different dictionary, tap on the button with a downward-pointing arrow in a box to save that as the permanent definition.

 

@Yorin - not supported at the moment, though it's a good idea - our biggest reasons for not doing it initially were that a) most of the time these lists are very short and b) frequency data for longer phrases tends to be spotty at best, but in a case like 安全 it probably would make sense.

[GotJack]

Oh didn't realise you could do that Mike. Thanks again for being so helpful. Really great service!

[Junso1]

When will we be able to OCR PDFs within Pleco?  Also, it seems like when the lighting is off even even a little, the android version can't handle it, however iPhone is able to process more text reliably. The android OCR app seems a lot more finicky.

[mikelove]

We're hoping to have PDF OCR on Android sometime this summer, along with PDF support in the document reader.

 

With OCR, what model of phone are you using, and what version of Android is it running? If you take a still image instead, and turn on the "advanced binarization" option in Settings / OCR / Still Image OCR, does it work better then? (we're working to get that running fast enough that we can use it in live OCR too)