Pleco 3.0

[Shelley]

Could you explain or point me in the right direction in the manual, what does changing the value of the points do? and actually what is the purpose of the points? sorry if this seems a dumb question.

 

I have an idea it has something to do with SRS but I am not sure.

 

Thanks

[mikelove]

Points are a proxy for SRS intervals - by default 100 points = one day. We'll probably do away with them when we get rid of our "frequency adjusted" review mode (where 200 point cards showed up half as often as 100 point cards).

[LiMo]

(Android user here)

 

I just wanted to say "nice work" for the handy little button that allows you to skip straight to the dictionary entry from the flashcard review. That's incredibly useful. I remember thinking how annoying it was that the flashcards had so little information and in order to find out more I'd have to go and look it up in the dictionary. Great fix.

 

Synonym antonym stuff would be amazing by the way.

[mikelove]

Thanks. (That's coming on iOS in our next bug fix update - in retrospect we should have done it years ago)

We do support synonyms and antonyms now through the free Thesaurus add-on, but better data is coming soon.

[GotJack]

Hi Mike,

 

With regards to your answer

 

"@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."

 

I cannot seem to get this to work. So can i clarify Im doing the correct thing? (Im using Iphone 4s by the way, )

 

- I will use the example of 甜蜜 tianmi

- Currently when I test it in the flashcards whilst being tested on definitions. 

- On testing the CC entry will flash up with the following information - 1. sweet 2. happy

- On pressing reveal, I can see the charachters and the pinyin and clarify whether i guessed correctly or not.

- Now here I can switch between the my dictionaries, CC, ADS and PLC which have slightly different definitions (for example the ADS entry is <ADJT> sweet )

- You are saying if i press the downwards entry whilst on this entry , it will save it as the definition so that the next time I test this flashcard, at step 3 the ADS entry should come up (rather than CC)?

 

Because at the moment that does not work for me, on pressing the downwards arrow, nothing changes next time

 

 

EDIT- Can i add as well by the way, anyone reading this thread considering whether to purchase Pleco, its comfortably been the best thing ive used during my 1.5 years of learning Chinese, and I think your at a real disadvantage if you dont use it! My posts here are simply a case of fine-tuning a great product, and are not complaints. Buy pleco!

[mikelove]

@GotJack - thank you very much!

 

Have you turned on the option to remap cards to different dictionaries (under Display) by any chance? This won't override that.

[GotJack]

Yes I had done that! Perfect all solved.

 

Out of interest by turning this off , what will I have done? Ill obvs keep it off as it has solved my issue, just curious as to what it is

[Junso1]

I turned on the advanced binarization. After playing around with it, it does seem better than before, however I still can't grab a full page of text. The text fails to OCR at all or characters explode all over the page if I try to capture too much text at once time. Sometimes I can get it to work if I edit the photo in the photos app to desaturate the image, then increase the contrast, sharpness and brightness.  On Iphone it just seems to work, even with much much worse images, although it takes much longer to load than on my android. Sometimes it's a matter of moving the box around for a few minutes before finding a position it recognizes.

 

Nexus 2013 FHD on Android 5.2, Feb 20 build of Pleco. Although, it has been like this since I purchased Pleco about 6 months ago.

 

Another question, I just want a simple flashcard setup where cards are repeated after 30 seconds or so if I get them wrong (figured this part out), and cards that I have gotten wrong should be reviewed again in 12 minutes or sent to the top of the stack to be reviewed before other cards. The closest thing I have found to this is setting repeat incorrect to 30 seconds, and only show cards that I have not gotten correct twice in a row. However, I don't want to filter out cards, rather I'd rather have poor performance cards automatically prioritized so I can cram cards more effectively because the cards end up randomized and in large or even medium sized decks this makes it very difficult to learn new words quickly. I don't want cards that I have gotten wrong before, and cards that I haven't seen or have gotten right once to be selected at the same right. I need to see cards that I don't know after 30 seconds until I get it right, then 12 minutes, and maybe 2-3 hours after that, but if I get it right on the second  time and have never gotten it wrong, I don't want to see it again for at least a week.

[mikelove]

@GotJack - that option was forcing cards to go into a particular dictionary (or set of dictionaries) regardless of which dictionary they were  set to use.

 

@Junso1 - Hmm... were these pictures taken with the Nexus or some other device? Could you possibly email me a few sample pictures (mikelove at pleco) to check here? Do the exact same images OCR correctly on the iPhone, or do they have the same problems? And what model of iPhone is this? (I believe the core OCR engines are more-or-less identical but if you have a 64-bit iPhone [5S/6/6+] then it would be running slightly different code on account of that)

 

With flashcards, you can get a second repeat with the "second repeat after" option - we don't support 12 minutes precisely, just 10 and 15, though I suppose we could add an option for more exact customization there. But if you can live with 10 or 15 minutes then just set that "second repeat after" option and you'll have both of your incorrect repeats.

 

As far as prioritization, if you're not using SRS then right now for something this precise I think I'd suggest two different profiles with different filters - one to capture your poor performance cards (which you run through first) and a second one to review your other cards. This is something we're working on in general, though, trying to come up with a way to offer the prioritization benefits of SRS without forcing you into a rigorous daily tick-off-my-SRS-cards regimen.

[GotJack]

Hi guys,

 

So I updated my iphone software, and all my pleco flashcards have been deleted Ive spent hours amassing all of these. Don't suppose theres gonna be anyway I can get them back?

[mikelove]

Sorry about that. Did you maybe move to China (or out of China) since the last time you updated your iPhone? Or make a change to your Apple ID, or maybe set up one with a new email address? Were your flashcards in iCloud before?

 

Anyway, if you didn't back it up any other way and your flashcards were *not* in iCloud, unfortunately the best fix is to reset your iPhone and then restore it from the last iCloud or iTunes backup made before the update; your flashcards should come back with that restore.

 

If your flashcards were in iCloud, the problem is most likely related to a change in your iCloud account login - have you used a different email address for iCloud in the past? Try this: go into the system Settings app / iCloud, log out of your account, reboot your iPhone, log back into the account that you were using before, then reopen Pleco.

[GotJack]

Yeah I never got those flashcards back by the way. Just made new sets of them. Anyhow not to worry! (Pleco is still awesome for anyone looking)

 

Mike I've possibly asked this before but it always occurs to me when i review flashcards on pleco. It would be amazing if you could build functionality in so that when reviewing a flashcard that has numerous meanings, you could highlight the one that is specific to what you are learning at that time. This setting could be link to what ever folder of flash cards they are in. For example as part of one of my textbooks chapters I am learning 白 with the meaning of in vain/to no purpose. However on revealing the card I am shown everything (all the other meanings). It kinds of becomes information overload!

 

Is there anyway you could isolate the meaning you want for that particular set, or highlight say in bold or italics? ie for next update

[mikelove]

Sorry about that.

 

That one's definitely in the works, the problem is coming up with how to represent it - do we make this meaning a separate 'child flashcard' of sorts, so that when the card comes up in this specific category it's represented this way but in other places it's not? And how is that reflected in statistics? And what do we do if you select a child flashcard and its parent in the same test?

 

Another idea is that one of the many 'custom fields' you can define for a flashcard would be a customized subset of its definition - you'd then simply set up a test so that it would draw on that field by default and fall back on the original definition if no custom definition subset is specified.

[imron]

I am learning 白 with the meaning of in vain/to no purpose. However on revealing the card I am shown everything (all the other meanings). It kinds of becomes information overload!

The way I avoid this is to try and find a multi-character word that incorporates/illustrates that particular meaning and add that word instead e.g. in this case you could use 白死 or 白做.

 

This neatly sidesteps the problem because such words are usually quite specific and typically don't have multiple meanings.  I've found it's only very rarely that you encounter characters where this is not possible.  The above approach also helps avoid problems when the front of the card only has pinyin, because multi-character words are far less likely to have homonyms than single character words.
 

[GotJack]

Hi Mike both options sound excellent. Thanks for working on it!

 

Imron, thanks for the suggestion. I will look into this!

[Laura Yuegui]

大家好！

 

I need to improve my dictionaries in order to study some medieval chinese (buddhist) texts.

 

I love Pleco, too.

 

I want to buy the Hanyu Da Cidian add-on, but it says EXPERIMENTAL under the dictionary name, so I would like to have some feedback about how stable is this version before betting my money on it...

 

Any hint?

 

Thanks 

[mikelove]

Are you using an old version of Pleco? We removed the "experimental" moniker a while ago - released a big free update to HYDCD in January with a lot of corrections plus around 10k new entries from the recently released "Supplement" volume.

[Laura Yuegui]

Thank you for your reply!

 

Found that very useful, I am going to upgrade and purchase the dictionary.

[Laura Yuegui]

Hi!
 

I have a new question for Plecostomus only.

 

The edition of the Hanyu da cidian for pleco is the one in 3 vols (chengdu) or the one in 13 vols (shanghai)? I have to quote it in a bibliography. 

 

Thank you!

[mikelove]

Sorry I didn't notice this before. It's the 13 volume version.