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teachinator -

Back to the original intent of this thread, I have a suggestion for a very minor change. I've been
using PlecoDict for just over a week now and I just started trying out the flashcard feature. One
thing that I would like to have is some visual feedback, when I tap the Add Flashcard (+) button,
that the tap was received -- just the button going reverse-video for half a second to indicate
that the card was recorded would be plenty.

It's just that when there's NO indication, I find myself thinking, "Did I miss the spot? Did my
card not get added?" and I have wasted a bit of time going and checking (it was always there so
far).

[Okay, later self-correction. I have been watching very carefully and now I think that there is
(always?) a flash when the card is added, but perhaps sometimes it's just too fast for me to catch
since I am tapping quickly and going on. So I will amend my request to ask that the indication
last some minimum length of time -- I don't know what is reasonable to make something noticeable.
But I know that I often don't notice the flash even when I'm looking at the screen.]

Hopefully this is what is wanted in this thread. I'm sure I'll have more as I play around with it.

Actually, I might as well toss this out -- another feature I'd love to see but that I think is
outside the scope of PlecoDict is a stroke order indicator (for example, the character drawing
itself on the screen in the correct stroke order). I realize this is probably an unrealistic
desire as such a feature would take a lot of time to implement and is more of a frill than a
necessity.



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mikelove -

Actually, this feature is already available, it's just hidden in our slightly-ridiculous array of
Preferences screens. If you go to the "Flashcards" section of Preferences, there's a check box
there for "Pop-up message on flashcard add" - enable that box and you'll get a helpful little
"Card Added" pop-up message whenever you add a new card. We don't enable it by default because we
thought it would be more annoying for people who didn't want it to have it and not be able to turn
it off than it would be for people who did want it to not have access to it.

And stroke order diagrams are coming in Pleco 2.0; should work really well, too, we've even got a
stroke order testing functionality for the flashcard system.










djwebb2004 -

Mike, I am a very happy user of Plecodict. But if there was one improvement I would like to see,
it is being able to jump to a specified number in a Flashcard. If there are 1000 Flashcards, being
able to go straight to #300 would be handy. Will that be in the upgrade?










roddy -



Quote:

slightly-ridiculous array of Preferences screens

If I was going to make one suggestion for improvement, that's where it would be. There are a
number of posts on here with people asking 'how do I / why can't I' questions, and very often the
answer is in the preferences - but the preferences are perhaps a bit overwhelming. Obviously it's
necessary to have them all and the customizability is great, but perhaps some kind of 'Set-up
Wizard' that takes new users through them one-by-one, or '?' icons next to them that can be tapped
for a pop-up explanation might be helpful. And perhaps a 'Main' preferences screen for those that
are most commonly used.

Something else that people are often unaware of is that tapping and holding toolbar icons opens up
further options. I'd imagine that's mentioned in the manual, but it could perhaps be indicated
somehow?

Have also adjusted the title of this discussion to better reflect the general mood.










teachinator -

Here's another feature I'd like to see in Pleco. I looked through the manual and I don't think
it's in there yet.

I'd like to be able to specify a default order in which it will cycle through the dictionaries for
each new query. (I'm defining a new query as what happens after I tap the eraser button; is there
a better way to start one?)

For example, for English-Chinese searches I have the Oxford, NWP, and LDC dictionaries installed.
I'd like Pleco always to search in the Oxford first, then the NWP, and finally the LDC, which is
the least useful for me because it doesn't have pinyin or English definitions, though I'm happy
it's there because it seems to have so many terms the others miss. But what Pleco actually does is
always start the next search in the last dictionary in which it did a successful search. This
means that I'm very often getting my first answer from the LDC and having to manually cycle to a
dictionary with a more useful entry.

Of course I could just tap a couple of times before (or after) searching to switch to the desired
dictionary, but 1) I forget to do it beforehand, and 2) if I could avoid even a couple of extra
taps each time, that would be nice.










yonitabonita -

I find the Preference settings a bit tricky to work out. I swear I consulted the manual and went
through every line in the flashcards section but to this day I have no idea how the flags work.
(it's ok, no one needs to explain it - I've decided not to use it).

My job as clueless user is not to worry about what's realistic for Pleco to achieve. In an ideal
world where there were no licensing issues, budgets, markets, questions of feasibility etc.. my
wish would be for Pleco to have 2 of Wenlin's functions.

1) I find Wenlin's explanation of the origins of characters invaluable when trying to understand
and remember characters. If Pleco could somehow get this function, I'd be willing to pay.

2) I really like the fact that a definition pops up any time I click on a Chinese character with
Wenlin. I'd reallllly love it if Pleco could do the same. Again, I'd be willing to pay for this.

You may say I'm a dreamer
I'm not the only one
(hang on, maybe I am)

Y










mikelove -

Lots of suggestions here...

djwebb2004: Actually, in 2.0 we're getting rid of the idea of flashcard "lists" completely; we're
replacing them with "categories," the difference being that a flashcard could only belong to one
list but can belong to as many categories as you like. So the whole concept of jumping to a
particular # flashcard won't really apply anymore.

roddy: We've been wanting to do a setup wizard since the pre-PlecoDict days, actually, but it
always seems to get punted to the next version. At the very least the Preferences screens
definitely need a major reorg, the current groupings don't make all that much sense, the labels
are less-than-intuitive and we could really use Prev/Next buttons on the bottom to expedite
jumping between screens. The wizard is a trickier proposition, but it certainly might be possible,
depending on how smoothly the betas go.

teachinator: This is definitely on tap for 2.0; when we designed the current software we really
didn't think people were going to want to use more than one set of dictionaries at a time (this
was before people started writing us to demand what eventually became the Complete version), but
now that they do it's really something we ought to have. Particularly with the new C-C dictionary
in the works.

yonitabonita: It's just as well not to learn how the flags work, since they're going away in 2.0
anyway (made unnecessary by our shiny new "categories"). Character origins are something we get
quite a few requests for; for various reasons it's highly doubtful we'd be able to license
Wenlin's, but we'd certainly be amenable to licensing another reference on this if we find one we
like. Pop-up definitions are a definite 2.0 feature, it's become clear that the Copy to Input
function isn't cutting it anymore.

Thanks, everyone!










gato -



Quote:

The wizard is a trickier proposition, but it certainly might be possible, depending on how
smoothly the betas go.

I personally don't like "wizards," because it tends to hide features too much and requires answers
to too many questions.

Beside going the "wizards" route, you can also try hide some of the more obscure features by using
either a separate "advanced" preference panel or maybe an advanced button on each panel. Having
this would leave you with a less cluttered screen and perhaps give you more room to give each
feature a more descriptive name. Currently, some of the labels a bit cryptive.










randall_flagg -

About the referral system that was mentioned earlier: I am up to 9 people now, and I am sure glad
that there is no reward system! I would never be able to recommend plecodict as wholeheartedly as
I am doing right now.

I also have something that I would love for the new plecodict to have. Wenlin has this great
feature that whenever you click on a character, it gives you a list all possible combinations with
this character, listed not in an alphabetical order, but in the order of frequency. I have found
that this has been the most effective learning tool ever: Whenever you come across a new
character, you just find out the three most common character combinations with this particular new
character and then memorize them. It gives you much more of a grasp for the meaning of that
character and its much harder to forget this character later on. Also, although it looks like so
much extra work, I am convinced that it ultimately saves the ambitious learner a lot of time! If
plecodict would have that, I’d be willing to pay…










mikelove -

gato - I mostly agree with you on wizards, but I do think there are certain instances when they
can be useful; for example, bringing something to people's attention that many of them wouldn't be
able to figure out otherwise.

One thing which we've already decided to do the first time people run 2.0 on Palm is bring up a
dialog box asking them if they're familiar with the Palm OS menu bar and how to get to it; if not,
we put a big friendly Menu button right in the toolbar so that they can easily find it. Far and
away the most common category of tech support question we get for PlecoDict on Palm now is "how do
I get to the flashcard system?" or "how do I get to the ordering screen?" or "how do I get to the
Preferences panel," the answer to all of which is "use the menu bar," so we think it's worth a
tiny bit of inconvenience to our Palm-savvy customers to make sure that everyone has full access
to all of PlecoDict's features. We'll likely come up with a few other first-run questions like
this by the time 2.0 has finished beta testing, and between them they should constitute at least a
rudimentary "wizard." (though there'll almost certainly be a "Skip Wizard" button on the first
screen to minimize the hassle for people who don't want to use it)

But the current Preferences screens are certainly more cluttered than they ought to be, a lot of
the checkboxes/menus really need 2 or 3 lines of explanation, so that's definitely something we're
working to improve on.

randall_flagg - 9 referrals, wow, thanks a lot! I was actually just having an e-mail conversation
with a customer the other day about frequency lists - personally I'm not that big on them, most of
the lists that I've seen tend to be way too subject-specific (e.g., lists based on newspapers that
put 南斯拉夫 at a comparable frequency to 你好), but it certainly wouldn't be that difficult
to implement if we found a (free) frequency list we liked. I'm inclined to think a better bet
might be to search for words containing that character in flashcard lists - for example, enter a
character and it'll tell you which HSK vocabulary words contain it.












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