Pleco Reader - am I missing something?

[Balthazar]

I've recently bought two of the graded readers Pleco has on offer - the 1000 and 1500 word level graded readers from Sinolingua. The readers are great (content-wise I'd put them above any of the other graded reader series I've come across, ), but I'm finding some of the Pleco Reader functionality (or lack thereof?) slightly annoying. My previous experience with Pleco Reader is limited to importing txt-files. These are not paginated, you scroll downward as you read the text. With the graded readers, however, the pages are numbered and you swipe to the side to change page. Also, at the bottom of the screen there is a progress bar that can be used to quickly skip to the next or previous chapter. (See the attached screenshot)

 

Here's my gripes, which I am posting because I suspect there might be ways to get around them that I have not been able to find myself.

 

1. The progress bar at the bottom. Is it possible to turn this thing off? Or to require two taps rather than one before the chapter change is made? It might be because I'm clumsy, but I very frequently (every day) find myself touching this bar by accident, taking me to the next chapter of the reader. There is no way (that I have been able to find) to conveniently return to the page you were on prior to making the accidental chapter change, so unless you have a bookmark saved your will need return to the last chapter and swipe away for an annoying amount of time (if you can even remember what page you were on).

2. No "go to page" function. Related to the first point, if there was a function that would allow me to specify which page of which chapter I would like to go to, getting back to the page from which I made an accidental departure would be much faster.

3. Occasionally the reader forgets which page I was on when I last exited the Pleco app. I read through the whole 1000 word reader without this being an issue, Pleco would always remember where I left off when I chose "Reopen last file". With the 1500 word reader, it seems to forget where I left off most of the time (but only if I kill the app). "Reopen last file" then takes me to the first page of the chapter I am currently reading. I don't know if chapter size plays a role here, I am only in chapter 2 of the 1500 word reader and it contains 163 pages (whereas none of the chapters in the 1000 word reader were even half of that).

 

Currently, I'm coping with this by making bookmarks relatively frequent, but even if the process of doing this just takes a few seconds, I find this short breaks to take away some of my focus.

 

Any suggestions? @mikelove or anyone else? Have I missed something in the options department? My biggest issue is definitely with the progress bar.

 

[wibr]

Regarding 1., at least on iOS there is the option "Paginate", turn it off and you can scroll the text vertically. In iOS you also have to drag the slider to move it, at least when I tried it, but I have exactly the same problem when viewing pdfs with the thumbnails at the bottom.

[Balthazar]

"Paginate" is already turned off in my settings. I think it only applies to documents that are not formatted with pages, i.e. txt-files and the like. But thanks!

[ImIncognito]

The Graded Reader is a relatively new function in Pleco. Prior to this feature, I only copied relatively short text via clipboard, so these issues were irrelevant. Short stories / novels create a whole new set of problems that Pleco was never designed to deal with. Other than bookmarks, which are not ideal, I see no immediate workaround. But I bet if you contact Pleco directly this will be fixed in short order.

[Shelley]

@Balthazar I have looked for these readers and can't find them, could you post a link to them? Thank you, they look interesting?

[mikelove]

Thanks for this feedback. In general, our graded reader function is still in the early going, particularly on Android where we didn't even support rich-text e-books at all before we launched our graded readers, so there's certainly a lot of room for improvement here. (we've got a big expansion to our book catalog coming and will hopefully have a better design ready by the time that hits)

 

1) There should be a back arrow in the top toolbar after you make an accidental swipe like that (should also be one when you tap on a link); does that not appear? If not, that's a bug, which should hopefully be relatively easy to fix. Hide-able toolbars a la Kindle et al are problematic for us because we use that same tap-anywhere interaction to look up text - we've been playing with some ideas for how we might make them work anyway but haven't settled on one we like yet - but our intent was that the back button would at least minimize the damage until we did come up with a good way to hide toolbars.

 

2) That one's not supported yet - to be honest, aside from this returning-to-the-page-you-accidentally-left scenario which ought to be addressed by a back button I'm not quite sure how useful it would be.

 

3) That one's definitely a bug - are you using the latest version of Pleco? Does it happen only if you kill Pleco immediately after you exit or if you, say, switch back to the dictionary and play around there for a few minutes before exiting, does it work better then?

 

Regarding paginate: that's not supported for rich-text e-books on Android yet, basically because we don't have a way to present a rich-text book in a long continuously-scrolling box without it getting really slow.

[DavyJonesLocker]

Hi Balthazar, I too bought most of those graded readers and really enjoy them. I bought the hard copies many years ago but the inclusion of the Pinyin made it unusable in my view. I recently read the 1000 and the 1500 level and was surprised at how many new words I came across given my anki deck is around the 7000 mark.

 

The graded readers are of course just that " readers" and if one likes the NPCR series he/she would surely like these graded readers. 

 

As for your issues, I too had problems with the scroll bar like you say. I seemed to accidentally touch it every few pages. I went out and bought a 10in tablet purely for Chinese reading and found it to be an excellent solution. I just got a cheap Huawei honor . 

I found it too tiring to read the graded readers on a phone. Naturally with the size of a tablet the number of pages are fewer. Also the Kindle app allows me to read other Chinese readers like mandarin companion.

 

Another advantage with using a tablet is that you can split the screen to a 3:1 ratio so pleco Reader can be placed the top larger part and a music player on the lower smaller part. This allows one to listen to the MP3 while looking at the text in pleco reader

 

Something to consider perhaps.

 

9 hours ago, mikelove said:

(we've got a big expansion to our book catalog coming and will hopefully have a better design ready by the time that hits)

 

Care to wet our appetite.

More interested in whether or not there will be intermediate level books. Mandarin companion and Chinese breeze are great but unfortunately nothing past upper beginner

 

 I know you guys aren't keen on selling reader packages as it can be a pain when someone buys a few books and then wants the package discount. However I think it does encourage users to buy more initially. I guess you could argue that in a store you can't buy the hardcopies of graded readers  as a discounted series. Nevertheless the business model of selling readers as a package is sensible in my opinion.

Just food for thought....

 

In any case, great addition to the APP!

[mikelove]

29 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

More interested in whether or not there will be intermediate level books. Mandarin companion and Chinese breeze are great but unfortunately nothing past upper beginner

 

There's a good mix; I'm wary of getting too specific, because we've signed the license but haven't taken delivery of the data files yet and I'm worried at least a few of them will be in poor enough shape that they'll have to be held back, but I expect we'll have at least a couple of new things for pretty much everyone from advanced beginners to folks who are just about ready to give up graded reading materials altogether.

 

31 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

 I know you guys aren't keen on selling reader packages as it can be a pain when someone buys a few books and then wants the package discount. However I think it does encourage users to buy more initially.

 

That one has actually gotten easier as of 3 weeks ago, thanks to Apple changing their policies to allow developers of cross-platform apps to sell them outside of the App Store. Because of that, we can now contemplate / financially justify putting a lot more effort into improving our currently-rather-bleak website store, including adding the ability for it to dynamically price bundles based on people's past purchases. (Apple's rules require that we offer the same items as in-app purchases in our app, but they don't require that we charge the same price for them) So we're looking at a lot more bundle possibilities now thanks to that.

 

(incidentally, this also means that Pleco Android Registration IDs now seamlessly work on iOS, and vice versa; we can also now automatically restore non-App-Store purchases by cross-referencing them against App Store purchases they were activated with, so assuming you've bought something from us since 2009, your old Palm copy of Pleco should restore automatically instead of requiring you to dig up an ancient email with your Registration ID)

[imron]

40 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

and was surprised at how many new words I came across given my anki deck is around the 7000 mark.

This does not surprise me at all, and is why I continually advocate to learn from content that is relevant to what you are interested in.

 

Otherwise you'll be learning vocab that you'll never use, and missing out on vocab that is actually useful to you (where useful is defined as a word you'd come across in material you're reading, not in material that you might get around to reading some day).  As you can see, this holds true even at 'upper beginner' level.

 

And because I'm a pedant..

43 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

Care to wet our appetite.

*whet

[DavyJonesLocker]

@mikelove

 

thanks for the in depth response. Look forward to the new releases

@imron

thanks for the correction! My english seems to be degrading as fast as my Chinese ? 

 

4 hours ago, imron said:

Otherwise you'll be learning vocab that you'll never use, and missing out on vocab that is actually useful to you (where useful is defined as a word you'd come across in material you're reading, not in material that you might get around to reading some day).  As you can see, this holds true even at 'upper beginner' level.

 

 

I guess it depends on where your interests lie and what your goal is . I remember when i was formally studying Chinese many students (apart from myself and an older gent) disliked the NPCR series. The main concern was that the words learned even at a beginner level were not 'useful' (as defined by "I will never use that word"). I sit on the fence with this one,  I don't read Chinese simply because its 'useful', in terms of daily spoken Chinese or general communication. My eventual aim would be to be able to read a simple Chinese novel. Nevertheless for everyday life here in China,  words in the graded readers such as discussed above would not be a priority . It about achieving a balance in my view. I'd say about a 1/4 of words and phrases in my Anki decs originated from wechat, websites, Chinese shopping apps and associated reviews, and so forth. 

 

[imron]

11 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

I'd say about a 1/4 of words and phrases in my Anki decs originated from wechat, websites, Chinese shopping apps and associated reviews, and so forth. 

Those are all great sources.

 

20 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

I guess it depends on where your interests lie and what your goal is

It absolutely does.

 

12 minutes ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

My eventual aim would be to be able to read a simple Chinese novel.

Right, but a simple novel set during the cultural revolution? a simple novel set during the fall of the Ming dynasty and the rise of the Qing? a simple novel set in modern Beijing? a simple novel about finance? about IT? about government corruption? Sci-fi? And so on.  The 'long-tail' of words (let's say the words required for the final 10% of comprehension) for each of those (or any other) settings and genres will be significantly different, maybe even containing thousands of words not commonly found/used in other settings/genres.

 

If your goal is to read a simple novel, and you are acquiring vocab towards that goal, you need to make sure the vocab you learn is relevant to what you are hoping to read, otherwise that final 10% will continually elude you.  The best way to acquire that vocab is simply to read things that interest you and that are of a similar setting/genre/field as what you want to read.

[Shelley]

I ask again, where do you find these graded readers please?

[DavyJonesLocker]

24 minutes ago, Shelley said:

I ask again, where do you find these graded readers please?

 

 

Hi Shelly, it's in the "addons" section (New Releases --> Graded Readers) in the PLECO app. When you buy a reader it will automatically activate and you can see it on the left hand side menu  the "3 bars thingy" whatever that is called

 

You get the MP3 from https://store.pleco.com/addlmediadownloadcheck.php by entering your Reg ID

[Balthazar]

Thanks for the helpful reply, @mikelove.

 

21 hours ago, mikelove said:

There should be a back arrow in the top toolbar after you make an accidental swipe like that (should also be one when you tap on a link); does that not appear? If not, that's a bug, which should hopefully be relatively easy to fix.

 

No such arrow appears in the top toolbar after I make an accidental swipe. Such a feature would definitely make the accidental swipe a whole lot less annoying.

 

21 hours ago, mikelove said:

That one's definitely a bug - are you using the latest version of Pleco? Does it happen only if you kill Pleco immediately after you exit or if you, say, switch back to the dictionary and play around there for a few minutes before exiting, does it work better then?

 

The version number is 3.2.59. No update on offer from Google Play, so I assume it's the latest version. I haven't thought too much about what situations cause the app to forget which page I was on last. It seems to happen most frequently when I kill the app immediately after exit (I do not kill it while still in the reader mode, always press "back" to take me to the dictionary first, and then proceed to kill the app by swiping it away). It has happened once or twice when I haven't killed the app too (i.e. it's still on in the background). I don't think I've ever played around with the dictionary after using the graded reader (or at least not in the last few weeks), so it's hard to say whether or not that would give a different result. I'll try to be more conscious of how it behaves in different scenarios.

 

I should repeat that this has only happened while reading the current chapter of the 1500 words reader. It never happened with the 1000 word book, or with any of the txt-files I have imported.

 

5 hours ago, imron said:

If your goal is to read a simple novel, and you are acquiring vocab towards that goal, you need to make sure the vocab you learn is relevant to what you are hoping to read, otherwise that final 10% will continually elude you.  The best way to acquire that vocab is simply to read things that interest you and that are of a similar setting/genre/field as what you want to read.

 

I agree with this advice. However, the further below my "vocabulary level" I go in reading material, the less topic-conscious I tend to be. For instance,  I've been reading the lower level classical novel graded readers from BLCU. Unknown words appear from time to time, and I'll probably never have use for them, but since they are not frequent enough to distract me too much I don't really mind. When you're at an intermediate level or below you really can't be too picky about your reading material anyway.

[Shelley]

Thank you @DavyJonesLocker.

 

I will have a look

 

[mikelove]

2 hours ago, Balthazar said:

No such arrow appears in the top toolbar after I make an accidental swipe. Such a feature would definitely make the accidental swipe a whole lot less annoying.

 

OK, there should be an update on our beta channel today (https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.pleco.chinesesystem) that adds one. (we don't usually respond to bug reports / feature requests quite this fast, but your timing was excellent since we were already making other changes to that same part of Pleco for a bug fix update ?)

 

2 hours ago, Balthazar said:

I haven't thought too much about what situations cause the app to forget which page I was on last. It seems to happen most frequently when I kill the app immediately after exit (I do not kill it while still in the reader mode, always press "back" to take me to the dictionary first, and then proceed to kill the app by swiping it away). It has happened once or twice when I haven't killed the app too (i.e. it's still on in the background). I don't think I've ever played around with the dictionary after using the graded reader (or at least not in the last few weeks), so it's hard to say whether or not that would give a different result. I'll try to be more conscious of how it behaves in different scenarios.

 

Thanks. My best guess from the fact that it's restoring your chapter but not your exact page is that it's actually an issue with page loading rather than saving location; for some reason the attempt to jump to the page you were on on reopen is failing. The fact that it's only happening with a particularly long chapter also supports that idea. (this may not be addressed by today's bug fix but hopefully soon after if not)

 

By the way, what model of Android device / version of Android are you running?

[Balthazar]

Great, thanks!

 

My phone is a Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, running MIUI global 9.5.10 (Android 7.0)

[Balthazar]

Update received, I now have a back arrow option when skipping to the next chapter and can confirm that it's working. Great stuff, thanks again!

[mikelove]

Great! We did also attempt a fix at the chapter-position-losing issue (couldn't reproduce it with exiting/reopening but we could reproduce it by rotating the screen a bunch of times [which for state-saving purposes is very similar]) so if you're still seeing that please let me know.

[Balthazar]

The chapter positioning issue is still there on my phone, but I seem to be experiencing it with lesser frequency than before (it's only happened twice over the course of opening the reader around 10 times since Tuesday). [Edit: Oh, and I'm still on the same chapter as before by the way, slow reader as I am]

 

Also, I notice that the back arrow option does not appear if you happen to skip chapters through an "edge swipe" (in lack of a better term). That is, when you swipe your finger towards the left from the very right edge of the screen and jump to the next chapter (which I never actually intend to do) you do not have the back arrow option there to save you, as you would if you skipped chapters from the progress bar at the bottom.

 

In any case, I've barely had any issues since the last update.