More Pleco telepathy

[mungouk]

Maybe it's common knowledge, but I just discovered this by accident...

 

    Copy something to the clipboard on my mac.

 

    Open Pleco on iPhone, go to dictionary search.

 

    In the search box press and hold until "paste" comes up.  Hit "paste".

 

    It pastes in the contents of the mac's clipboard.  

 

That's with both phone and mac connected to the same Wifi network—not sure if it works otherwise.

 

edit: even faster... force-press the Pleco icon and select "Clipboard reader" from the shortcut menu.

 

Exceptionally useful!

 

 

[Zeppa]

Thanks - it works for me.

[大块头]

I use the clipboard reader function a lot. It's a shame that the Android version will no longer have it soon.

[abcdefg]

13 minutes ago, 大块头 said:

It's a shame that the Android version will no longer have it soon.

 

I didn't know that. Disappointed at that news. It's useful feature. I use it more than once every day. 

 

To Pleco if you are listening in: We Android users will really miss that feature. Please think twice before removing it. 

[大块头]

It's not their fault. Android is changing the way apps can access the clipboard.

 

https://twitter.com/plecosoft/status/1106023144232505345

[mikelove]

@mungouk - thanks! Credit there is actually due to Apple but it's a very cool feature, yes ? (though one which will hopefully become unnecessary at whatever point our Catalyst app ships)

 

@abcdefg - yeah, it's on Google's end, sadly.

 

It still works perfectly happily on Android 9 or earlier, and we have no plans to remove it for users of compatible versions of Android, but in Android 10, apps are no longer allowed to access the clipboard in the background; they decided the security consequences of malicious background apps being able to spy on passwords or other sensitive stuff people were copying to the clipboard were worse than the consequences of banning useful apps like ours from monitoring clipboard contents.

 

At the moment, your best bet is to simply 'share' the text with Pleco (often accessible from the same menu you use to copy it) instead of copying it to the clipboard.

 

We hope Google might eventually allow us to bring this feature back by offering a CLIPBOARD_MANAGER permission or some such, but there are no signs of that being imminent. (and of course if they did offer that permission, you'd have people getting prompted to enable it to use a free coloring book app or whatever and they'd be right back to the current situation)

[大块头]

Speaking of Pleco telepathy, @mikelove must check this forum every time he sneezes. ?

[abcdefg]

2 hours ago, mikelove said:

At the moment, your best bet is to simply 'share' the text with Pleco (often accessible from the same menu you use to copy it) instead of copying it to the clipboard.

 

I understand. Thanks for sharing this workaround. 

 

A big tip of the hat to Pleco! It has been my every-day companion now for several years. Would be hard to live without it.

[Dawei3]

4 hours ago, abcdefg said:

Would be hard to live without it.

Can you expand on this?  Why do you like it so much?  

I use the free version as a dictionary.  I wonder what I'm missing....  And I always like to learn about new tools for learning Chinese. 

[mungouk]

10 hours ago, mikelove said:

whatever point our Catalyst app ships

 

Will this require moving to Catalina?  I have no plans to do that due to all the apps I have that will no longer work (plus I usually wait at least 6 months before upgrading OS anyway).

 

Regarding the clipboard telepathy, how does this work?  Is it part of "Hand Off"?  Seems like a potential security hole, unless it only works with paired devices.

 

 

[abcdefg]

19 hours ago, Dawei3 said:

Can you expand on this?  Why do you like it so much?  

 

I'm afraid it's mostly simple, low-tech stuff. Nothing very sexy. 

 

The main thing I like is that Pleco stores the words I look up in the dictionary. This lets me do lots of short real-life-based reviews. For example, earlier this week I watched the Beijing Open tennis finals. Picked up some new tennis words. They were automatically held for me in "history." On day two I sort of remembered a couple of them when I heard them again, but wasn't 100% sure. So I checked them in "history" instead of doing a brand-new lookup. 

 

Also, I systematically add all those looked up words to a flash card list. I make a new list every week. Review those words when I'm riding on the bus or waiting somewhere killing time. Plus I do a weekend review or maybe two. This lets me cement the useful ones in memory. I eliminate the esoteric stuff, but keep most of these looked-up words for a couple months. Then I delete them, figuring that if they are words that I really need to know, they will pop up again on their own. 

 

So all day long, every day I'm looking up words as I go about daily life. Pleco gives me several more shots at remembering them, at transferring them from my phone to my brain. 

 

---------------------------- 

Here are some words I looked up during the tennis matches. Some I already knew, but hearing them again used in a different context allowed a welcome real-time review. Plus they are now in my flashcard stack for another run through or two this coming weekend. 

 

Spoiler

Tennis match Beijing Open

 

风格

力量

角度

奋斗

天福

配合

差别

流产

上当

脚步

常规

同步

失误

给力

交锋

双误

也许

乐观

 

 

[mikelove]

5 hours ago, mungouk said:

Will this require moving to Catalina?  I have no plans to do that due to all the apps I have that will no longer work (plus I usually wait at least 6 months before upgrading OS anyway).

 

Yes, unfortunately Catalyst won't work with older versions of macOS. I've had to say goodbye to quite a few apps too but I kind of resigned myself to the fact that that had to happen soon anyway because eventually I'll upgrade my computer and won't have a choice. (it sounds like Apple are finally about to launch a laptop with a keyboard that doesn't utterly suck, for the first time since 2015, so I expect a lot of people who've been holding off on upgrading for a while will end up in the same boat)

 

5 hours ago, mungouk said:

Regarding the clipboard telepathy, how does this work?  Is it part of "Hand Off"?  Seems like a potential security hole, unless it only works with paired devices.

 

It's part of Handoff, yes. My understanding is that the security is quite robust - it does indeed only work with paired devices - but it can be turned off in the system settings if you don't like it. (in the early days it was kind of slow and buggy and a lot of people turned it off because otherwise you'd have to wait like 10 seconds for 'paste' to work on your iPhone while it figured out if there was something to sync from your Mac)

[Dawei3]

On 10/8/2019 at 4:37 AM, abcdefg said:

I'm afraid it's mostly simple, low-tech stuff. Nothing very sexy. 

This was helpful.  I like hearing the techniques others learn to use (I'm sure there are some better ones than I have).  

[DavyJonesLocker]

On 10/8/2019 at 1:19 PM, Dawei3 said:

Can you expand on this?  Why do you like it so much?  

I use the free version as a dictionary.  I wonder what I'm missing....  And I always like to learn about new tools for learning Chinese. 

 

OCR /screen reader is a must for me. Use it about  30, times a day

 

Graded readers, read many. 

 

Stroke order diagrams 

 

Flashcard I bought but never used , was a mistake. ANKI just a much more  poweful system , but lacks definitions. ANKI is like the raw ingredients. PLECO is the set meal. Depends on what your after

 

 

 

 

 

[mikelove]

1 hour ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

Flashcard I bought but never used , was a mistake. ANKI just a much more  poweful system , but lacks definitions. ANKI is like the raw ingredients. PLECO is the set meal. Depends on what your after

 

The long-awaited 4.0 update has both an Anki importer and an Anki emulation mode, so we're hoping we can convert a lot of people back ? (not separate code, but our new rules-based scheduler was powerful enough to allow us to mimic most of Anki's behavior with a preset collection of settings; was made easier by the new Anki scheduler update, since that got rid of a couple of irritating little idiosyncrasies like reviewing child decks within a parent deck strictly in order and according to their own daily limits)