Pleco 2.2 Instruction Manual : Version History
Version History
2.2.0
New Features
- Added an Optical Character Recognizer system as a paid add-on module, featuring an amazing "live" capture mode where you can point your iPhone 4 / 3GS' camera at words to instantly look them up in the dictionary. It also supports capturing short phrases / blocks of text for the document reader, scanning in long lists of words for flashcards (with a barcode-reader like time delay and even a "beep" when it records the word, and an option to define a new custom entry when a word can't be found in the dictionary)
- Added full iOS-style tap-hold copy-and-paste support to dictionary entry / document reader text displays; this was actually *incredibly* complicated, we basically had to reimplement the entire thing ourselves, but it should now be possible to tap-hold and select arbitrary portions of dictionary entries to copy-and-paste them into other applications (or other parts of Pleco); there's also a "Search For" button in the command popup along with the Copy button, so using that it's now convenient to do cross-reference searches for English / Pinyin words along with characters.
- Added an option (Settings/General/Popup Reader/Sticky dict selection) to make the dictionary selection in the popup reader / document reader "sticky," so that the software will keep defaulting to the dictionary that you manually select until you switch it to another one (rather than always defaulting to the first dictionary in Manage Dicts). The selected dictionary will remain the default in the same tab even between Pleco launches, but is maintained separately in the Dict / Reader / Flash tabs so you can default to whichever dictionary you like in each.
- Added Select / Cut / Copy / Paste commands to the search input field in HWR/Rad input mode
- Added normal iPhone-style bouncing behavior to dictionary entry / document reader text displays, so you'll no longer get a dead stop when you get to the top / bottom of a block of text.
- Added support for live deletion of installed modules in "Add-ons"; you can now instantly deactivate or update a demo dictionary / stroke order diagrams / audio / etc, rather than having to exit and reopen Pleco or (on iOS 4) kill it in the background before the module would disappear.
- Made updates downloaded in Add-ons load instantly instead of waiting for the software to be completely exited / reopened.
- Added an option (Settings/General/Security/Permanently disable web) to *permanently* disable all of Pleco's web browsing functions, useful for school administrators, users with young children, or anyone else who wishes to restrict web browsing on their iPhone. This can only be turned off by deleting and reinstalling Pleco (or by contacting Pleco support); if we get a lot of requests, we may also add a password-protected option to disable and re-enable web browsing, but this was much easier to implement and we got the impression that most of the people who want to block web browsing in Pleco are quite happy to block it permanently.
- Enhanced our long search term breakdown feature by adding header rows in the search results list to separate results for a particular character / part of a search term.
- Increased the maximum number of recent queries / entries to 1000 each.
- Added the ability to delete individual items from recent queries / entries with a standard iPhone swipe-delete gesture.
- Made the Pasteboard mode of the document reader accessible without purchasing the document reader add-on (as a sort-of demo version).
- Added the ability to automatically detect that a device had changed / offer to query iTunes to restore purchases on startup, rather than simply reverting to a demo version
- Added separate color settings for the document reader (so that it no longer simply uses the same settings as dictionary definitions).
- Added options to change the colors of correct and incorrect strokes in the flashcard stroke order test, for the sake of color-blind users.
- Streamlined the process of discovering / using demo versions of add-ons; there's now a helpful "TAP FOR DEMO" in the header of each block of Add-ons in the Add-ons tab, and the second button in the add-on details screen is consistently reserved to either offer a trial version of the add-on or to explain how to go about trying it out elsewhere in the app (if a trial is available at all).
- Eliminated the separate "Help" tab and made the "Reader" tab available all the time, relabeled "Read+Help" if the OCR module hasn't been purchased or "Read+OCR" if it has (in which case that's where the OCR module appears).
- Added a new option for Pleco to save / return to the last major tab (Dict/Read/Flash) that it was in before it exited; it won't actually open up the last document / resume your flashcard session, but it'll put you a few button presses closer to doing that. (Settings/General/Startup/Restore last tab)
- Added an option (now enabled by default on iPad) to keep the history button visible during search input. (Settings/Dictionary/Overall Interface/Basic Options/Keep history btn during input)
- Added an option to display document reader text in a bold font (which actually looks a lot nicer on a Retina Display at least).
- Added support for downloading / offline viewing of the instruction manual through the Add-ons tab.
- Added an option for larger margins in the document reader (Settings/Reader/Larger margins) - these should be more precisely customizable in 2.3.
- Made the document reader more tolerant of whitespace (spaces and newlines) between characters, useful in badly-formatted documents or in text copied out of web pages with a lot of extra newlines inserted in it.
- Added a prompt to select a new card answer score after invoking the "Undo" command in flashcards.
- Added a single-option Pleco panel to the built-in iPhone "Settings" app which, if turned on, resets all of Pleco's settings to their default values, useful in the event that you change settings in such a way that Pleco starts crashing every time you launch it. (hopefully not possible, but it's a sensible bit of protection against future bugs)
- Automatically populated the new dictionary entry creation screen's Headword sections with the current contents of the Input Field.
- Made text in the current / highlighted entry in the Entry List appear in white with a blue background on iPad, instead of retaining its black color, and adopted that white-on-blue text selection pattern on iPhone as well.
- Made dictionary search results containing multiple blocks of entries (for searches with lots of characters) automatically jump to the start of the bottom block of entries on iPad / in combined dict/list mode on iPhone, so that if you keep entering characters you'll see the definition update to show the latest one.
- Added educational discount prices to the Paid add-on file catalog screen (instead of only showing them on the product detail pages).
- Added an Edit button to the document reader in pasteboard mode which (sensibly enough) edits the contents of the pasteboard, though this is not available in the demo version of the reader.
- Made the Edit button in the document reader no longer a hidden / Experimental option needing to be enabled in Settings.
- Added a Settings option (Settings/Flashcards/Test Interface/Back tab back immediately) to go back to the previous card immediately when tapping on the Back tab.
- Added a Settings option (Settings/Flashcards/Test Interface/Prompt for new score on undo) to disable the prompt to select a new score after Undo'ing a previously-selected card score.
- Added a Settings option (Settings/Flashcards/Test Interface/Prompt to continue rep-spaced) to disable the prompt to continue a repetition-spaced session after finishing the cards due for review that day.
- Added a welcome message to the demo version of the handwriting input screen.
- Added a link to demo dictionary entries which can be tapped on to instantly disable demo dictionaries, avoiding the need to delete them or to find the option that does this in Settings.
- Added additional warning messages when attempting to purchase OCR, and made it appear in a separate "Not Compatible" section in Add-ons when not available on a particular device instead of disappearing altogether.
- Added a Settings option for the optional dictionary entry exit button to clear input along with opening it
Feature Changes
- Reduced the application size of Pleco back under the 20 MB mark (allowing it to be downloaded from App Store over 3G), through a combination of minor changes:
- Separated out the less-common ("Rare") Char Info Unihan database fields from the more common ones, and made the less common ones a free add-on download, available through the "Free" section of the "Add-ons" tab.
- Reduced the mixed character/Pinyin index depth in the PLC dictionary from 3 to 2; if we get a lot of complaints, we'll make a version with the larger index available as a downloadable add-on (or perhaps an even larger one with a depth up to 4 or 5).
- Switched from ARMv6/ARMv7 dual mode code to just ARMv6 code; this could theoretically hurt performance, but we've found that it has a negligible impact in practice, and it's worth it to get more people using Pleco.
- Shrunk the size of several built-in image files through more efficient encoding; the difference should be pretty much undetectable even if you look at both versions side-by-side.
- Swapped the positions of the add-to-flash / audio buttons in the popup reader to make the position of the audio button more consistent.
- Changed the Head / Pron labels for flashcard session field selections to Characters / Pinyin for clarity reasons.
- Changed the order of buttons in the flashcard Back command bar so that "skip card" and "forward" no longer share the same space (and hence "forward"ing back to the current card you'll be less likely to end up also skipping new cards)
- Renamed the "Manual" tab to "Help" when it's not integrated into the Reader tab
- Renamed the file extension for copied-from-USB Pleco add-on databases to .plecopackage, to (hopefully) avoid confusion when people try to extract .zip files that actually are supposed to be copied over as-is
- Expanded the tappable area for the dictionary switch button to make it harder to miss when tapping in that section of the screen; also did this for the add-to-flash and edit entry buttons.
- Improved Unicode Extension-B character set support in flashcards + document reader.
- Switched the font for document reader editing to the same font we use for Chinese text rendering elsewhere in Pleco; this will make English letters appear a bit odd (unfortunately, there's no way for us to use the same font for those while also using the same Chinese font) but should make Chinese characters more consistent.
- Added a helpful alert when trying to create an English-to-Chinese flashcard instead of just graying out the + button.
- Included staff in the educational discount description message.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that could prevent recent changes to flashcard category / profile lists from being saved correctly when putting Pleco into the background on iOS 4.
- Fixed a bug that could sometimes prevent flashcard Batch commands from working correctly when applied to "all results" instead of "selected results" or "all cards"
- Improved concurrency support in the database engine, which should reduce the frequency of some crashes.
- Fixed a bug that caused the keyboard to reappear on top of the handwriting recognizer when the screen was rotated on iPads running iOS 3.2.1/3.2.2
- Fixed a bug that caused drop shadows to be flipped on iPads running iOS 3.2.1/3.2.2
- Fixed a bug that could prevent ambiguous entry prompts from being accessed correctly in flashcard remaps / imports.
- Fixed a bug that could prevent score / scorefile values from importing correctly from XML flashcard files.
- Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented last document positions in the document reader from being saved out correctly on app exit
- Fixed (we think) a bug that could sometimes cause an audio syllable to fail to play when a new audio recording started to play while another recording was still in the process of playing
- Fixed (we think) a bug that could occasionally cause Pleco's settings to be overwritten / reset when a certain error occurred during exit
- Fixed a bug that could prevent attachments from automatically downloading correctly from the latest version of Yahoo Mail with Pleco's built-in web browser
- Fixed a bug that could prevent some file attachments from automatically downloading correctly from PlecoForums with Pleco's built-in web browser
- Fixed a bug that could prevent flashcard lists from downloading correctly from ChinesePod in Pleco's built-in web browser.
- Fixed a bug that could cause strange behavior (tiny handwriting input area, e.g.) when hiding the onscreen keyboard (using a Bluetooth one) on iPads and on iOS 4 devices.
- Fixed a bug that could cause characters in GB/Big5-encoded text files to fail to render (or register taps) correctly
- Fixed a bug that caused the text selection command button bubble to appear clipped / offscreen if the text selection took up the entire screen; it'll now appear in the middle.
- Fixed a bug that caused demo English-Chinese dictionaries to be prioritized above paid Chinese-English dictionaries in English search results.
- Fixed a bug that could cause hyperlinks to fifth-tone Pinyin words in the ABC dictionary to jump to the wrong word.
- Fixed a bug that caused Russian/Greek characters to be rendered in a double-width font in the document reader.
- Fixed a bug that could screw up handwriting input in flashcard free-answer sessions after switching out of flashcards into the dictionary and entering a character with handwriting input.
- Fixed a bug that could prevent flashcard import files with uppercase file extensions from being found correctly by the file open prompt
- Fixed a bug that prevented .pqb-backup user dictionaries from being added in to Pleco correctly
- Fixed a bug that prevented "plecoregister" Registration ID URLs from working correctly on iOS 4
- Fixed a bug that could cause unnecessary text encoding prompts to come up when opening a text document file for the *second* time
- Fixed a bug that could prevent an error message from appearing when a purchase failed.
- Fixed a bug that could prevent the text editor function from working correctly with some files in UTF-16 encoding.
- Fixed rendering bugs with a few rare characters in the ABC and other dictionaries.
- Fixed a number of bugs with the new install-addons-via-USB feature that could cause their corresponding downloads to be mistakenly marked as not installed when they were (or as installed when they weren't).
- Fixed a bug that caused the dictionary abbreviation icon to be off by a few pixels relative to other icons lined up with it.
- Fixed a bug that caused the stroke count label in Char Info to become invisible in Night Mode. (also affected the demo version warning)
- Fixed a bug that could cause the toolbar to fail to return fully to the bottom of the screen when opened after opening a popup screen. (there'd be a 20 pixel gap where a little bit of the tab bar underneath would show through)
- Fixed a bug which prevented custom dictionary icon abbrevations from being used correctly in the popup dictionary bubble.
- Fixed a longstanding bug that caused the "Educational Discount" section of Add-on detail screens to remain hidden if the price list hadn't finished downloading from Apple's server yet (causing people to mistakenly believe that no discount was availble).
- Fixed a bug that prevented failed downloads from automatically re-trying if the "Download" button for the corresponding Add-on was tapped again.
- Fixed a bug that caused the text edit area for the Pinyin sections of custom flashcards / user dictionary entries to be partially covered by the tone bar (rather than resizing around it).
- Fixed a bug that prevented the flashcard matching-word-example-stripping feature from working correctly when Zhuyin/tone-number Pinyin rendering was in use.
2.1.2
New Features
- Added a new, experimental option in flashcards that runs an extra filter on definitions to attempt to remove all instances of the card's Pinyin and of every individual character in its headword when those are what you're being tested on; ultimately we'd like to do this more intelligently by specially tagging them in the data files, but this should work pretty well in the meantime. (Settings / Flashcards / Test Interface / "Filter head in defns")
- Enabled search for Chinese terms containing A-Z letters, like B股, T恤衫, and 卡拉OK - these were already in our dictionaries but weren't being found correctly. This will work in most dictionaries without an update, but you'll need the latest version of the CC-CEDICT database (from the "Updates" section of the "Add-ons" tab) to enable it in that.
- Added a new option (Settings / Reader / Navigation / Popup tap side to move) which, in the document reader, lets you tap on the sides of the screen to move the popup definition "bubble" to the previous / next word; this should make the reader a bit more usable on iPad, though we're working on a better solution for iPad navigation for the 2.2 update.
- Added a free demo version of the Stroke Order Diagrams add-on (accessible after downloading the latest version of its database from the "Updates" section of the "Add-ons" tab) - the demo restriction is that it randomly shows you one of a few dozen demo characters instead of showing you the character you selected.
Feature Changes
- Updated the PLC and CC-CEDICT dictionaries to sort single characters with the same exact pronunciation in frequency order (as in ABC).
- Made the toolbars in the document reader on iPad significantly larger - we'll update the icons to match (and consider enlarging toolbars on other screens) in a future update.
- Made strokes in the fullscreen handwriting recognizer significantly crisper / less "fuzzy," especially on the iPhone 4.
- Adjusted the labels / descriptions / response messages in the add-on purchase / restoration system in order to improve clarity; many messages now try to explain the difference between licenses transferred from Palm/WM and licenses purchased originally on iPhone, and point you in the direction of how to restore purchases from one system if you've only got them from the other.
- Added an "operation has completed successfully" alert to several functions in the Manage Dicts screen.
Bug Fixes
2.1.1
New Features
- Added multitasking support with iPhone OS (now iOS) 4.0 on compatible devices; Pleco can now stay loaded in the background, will save out its preferences / current add-on download states / current flashcard session when backgrounded (in case it's subsequently killed without going back into it first), and will update pasteboard-based reader sessions / perform a search on the pasteboard contents when resumed as well as when first opened.
- Added high-resolution display support (for the new iPhone 4) to the few areas that didn't get it automatically, i.e., icons, handwriting input, and stroke order diagrams; pretty much everything in Pleco should now come up in glorious native resolution on the iPhone 4.
- Added a new option (Settings / Dictionary / Search Results / Split incomplete searches), enabled by default, which breaks down character searches that don't find a complete match into their constituent characters / shorter words; this should save you from having to edit / backspace / etc search queries in order to view the meanings of the their second / third / etc characters when only the first one is found in the dictionary.
- Added a new option (Settings / Panels / Handwriting Interface / Show 2nd chars on tap) that makes the Pleco handwriting recognizer behave like the iPhone's built-in recognizer in that once you tap on one of the character matches, it replaces the list of matches with a list of the most frequent characters that follow the character you selected, making it easier to enter common two-character words. (this option is always disabled in flashcard fill-in-the-blanks tests)
- Added a brand new (and still slightly experimental) "Share Files" command to the Settings and Flashcards tabs, allowing data files to be shared directly with other devices running Pleco via Bluetooth or WiFi - this works best with small files like flashcard lists / reader documents.
- Added support for the iPad (and iPhone, with OS 4.0) USB file transfer feature (through the Apps tab under your device in iTunes)
- Added options to save the current web page to Pleco's file system, and to save the next link tapped on; both of these can be enabled by tapping on the + button (which used to only be used to create bookmarks, but now is multifunction as in Safari)
- Added support for receiving files through the iPad (and iPhone, with OS 4.0) application file-sharing feature; Pleco will be presented as an option for opening text, XML, and other compatible file formats, though the file will only be deposited in Pleco's file system and still has to be opened separately within Pleco.
- Added support for installing modules / activating purchases via files transferred over to a device via USB, useful for customers with slow internet connections.
- Added the ability on our file download server to cause file download connections from China to default to our Hong Kong mirror server, since this seems to significantly improve download speeds.
- Added a new command in the root level of the Reader tab to reopen the last document file opened, saving a little time until we add the ability to automatically reopen the last document viewed on startup in a future release.
- Added a new flashcard option (Settings / Flashcards / Two-step multi choice), which makes multi-choice definitions one line instead of two (so they're larger and easier to read) but, when tapped, expands them to several lines and presents "confirm" and "cancel" options.
- Added a disable-able warning message when opening files that the Pleco document reader can't read directly (i.e., files which aren't in text format).
- Added a separate "show tone panel" option for landcape orientation.
- Added a new option (Settings / Panels / Stroke Order / Bold font) that widens horizontal strokes in stroke order diagrams to make them look a bit more like other Chinese fonts on iPhone; this font style is automatically used in flashcard stroke order tests to make strokes easier to tap on.
- Added options on iPad for (extremely large) full-screen handwriting and radical panels, and for a larger font size in the radical panel.
- Actually enabled the already-extant option (Settings / Dictionary / Overall Interface / (smaller) or (narrower)) for a narrower definition / larger (half screen width) Entry List on iPad.
- Enabled flashcard headword fill-in-the-blanks tests even without purchasing the handwriting recognizer add-on module, though the interface is a bit less nice (just one box) and there's the potential for accidental "cheating" owing to the built-in recognizer's presenting you with a list of likely second characters after entering a first one.
Feature Changes
- Updated the PLC dictionary to make its Pinyin match more closely with other dictionaries in cases like 因为 (total of about 200 entries changed), and improved the system for prioritizing full-text E-C search results in it.
- Added support for deciphering HTML entity codes in the document reader Live Mode feature, needed to view certain websites correctly (e.g. Wikipedia).
- Made the Char Info panel no longer scroll in Stroke Order mode (in which the screen contents are always fullscreen anyway)
- Increased the maximum number of cards the flashcard system can keep in memory at once to a slightly more ridiculous number (130,000, from 65,000) to accommodate a few very very enthusiastic Pleco flashcard users.
- Made the clipboard search on startup "only if changed" option always on, and removed the settings switch for it.
- Added code to save out the current pasteboard for comparison purposes whenever Pleco exits (or goes to the background), fixing the annoying situation where one would have Pleco configured open the reader on / search for the contents of the pasteboard on startup and end up having to exit a screen displaying a piece of text you'd just copied out of it.
- Made the toolbar at the bottom of the screen stay on the screen (above the input panel or keyboard) on iPad; you can disable this via Settings / Dictionary / Overall Interface / Show bottom bar during input.
- Made the port (the number after the : ) in the file upload / download server stay the same (50505) unless you change it via new setting (Settings / Reader / File Uploads) - to have it change every time you run Pleco as it did before, enable "Custom server port" and set "Port" to 0 on that screen.
- Added a confirmation prompt to the flashcard / dictionary import "Cancel" button
- Made the popup definition bubble on iPad always appear below the selected text when there's room for it, helpful since it keeps the start of the definition as close as possible to where your eye is on the screen.
- Shrunk the tappable area below the dictionary switch button in the popup definition bubble on iPad, since it was rather ridiculously large.
- Added better explanation text to the flashcard Import / Export / file upload / download screens, a template for other informational improvements to come.
- Improved the alert text when starting a flashcard session with no cards available.
- Shrunk the drawing pad in flashcards so that it no longer covers up the answer buttons, allowing you to keep it visible throughout a session.
- Improved the speed with which the flashcard drawing pad reopens after exiting it.
- Made tapping on the translucent URL input overlay in the Pleco web-browser close the keyboard, as it does in Safari.
- Added a "copied to pasteboard" text flash when tapping on the clipboard button in the popup reader
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bugs that caused flashcard files downloaded via Pleco's built-in web browser from ChinesePod, Popup Chinese, GMail, Yahoo Mail, and Shengci.wojas.nl to sometimes display right in the web browser instead of downloading.
- Fixed a bug that prevented searches for only the grammar replacement ... character (_) in C-E dictionaries to fail to complete correctly; searches like @_ and $_ should complete correctly now.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the first stroke of handwriting input to lag slightly.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Character Info command from working correctly in the document reader when far along in reading a very long document.
- Fixed a bug that could occasionally cause separate dictionary definition screens to fail to switch dictionaries correctly when tapping on the dictionary-switching button.
- Fixed a bug that could cause files to fail to open correctly / appear with the correct icons / attach to emails correctly when their file extensions are uppercase (.TXT instead of .txt, e.g.)
- Fixed a bug that caused the contents of the flashcard drawing pad to be cleared when a card is revealed, instead of only being cleared when switching to a new card.
- Fixed a crashing bug when resetting the encoding of a text file to (none set) via the > button in the file browser.
- Fixed a crashing bug in the web browser "Live Mode" on iPhone OS 4.0.
- Fixed a bug that caused the web browser "Live Mode" to fail to handle page redirects correctly, often causing images on certain pages to fail to load.
- Fixed a bug that caused English-Chinese searches with only the LDC and a bunch of Chinese-English dictionaries installed to skip over the LDC and only do full-text searches of those other dictionaries.
- Fixed a bug that caused dashes that were actually part of headwords (not just indicating identical characters in traditional) to be matched up with Pinyin syllables for tone coloring, causing subsequent characters in headwords to be incorrectly tone-colored.
- Fixed a bug that caused flashcard headwords containing certain characters (wide commas, e.g.) to fail to link up correctly to matching dictionary entries.
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes on flashcard imports with "store in user dict" enabled and the Adso dictionary installed / selected as one of the dictionaries to import into.
- Fixed a memory leak in flashcard sessions that failed to start correctly.
- Fixed a bug that caused the simplified / traditional character setting to not persist in character info panels opened from within other character info panels (i.e. by tapping on characters in the "Chars" tab)
- Fixed a rare crashing bug when editing text in the search input.
- Fixed a bug that caused buttons in toolbars at the bottom of some screens to fail to be colored correctly on iPhone OS 4.0.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the keyboard to stay visible when it isn't supposed to be (while doing handwriting / radical input) in iPhone OS 4.0.
- Fixed a bug that could cause shadows behind popup definition bubbles to appear reversed on iPhone OS 4.0.
- Fixed a bug that caused the popup definition bubble to stay visible even if the search results / dictionary entry changed underneath it (mainly a problem on iPad where the keyboard can still be visible below it).
- Fixed a crashing bug when deleting lots of files via the file browser.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the "clear recent search data" command in Settings to fail to do its job if the software was exited immediately after invoking it.
- Fixed an obscure crash in the flashcard import encoding check prompt.
- Fixed a bug that caused crashes when purchasing / restoring purchases / checking for new purchases / transferring purchases from other platforms on iPhone OS 4.0.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Edit Entry button from showing up correctly in user dictionaries when displaying search results.
- Fixed a bug that caused superscripted numbers on iPad to appear in a different font depending on whether they're 1/2/3 or some other number
- Fixed a bug that caused the last viewed dictionary entry to be saved out / restored incorrectly when exiting / reopening Pleco while viewing full-text search results
- Fixed (we think) a bug that could cause crashes in some cases when tapping on a link in a dictionary entry while the system is running very low on memory.
- Fixed a bug that caused the score data / default scorefile in Card Info screens in Search Cards to reflect the current flashcard profile, rather than the scorefile selected on the initial Search Cards screen.
- Fixed a few crashes / memory leaks in the document reader Live Mode.
- Fixed a bug that caused extra spaces to appear after diamond definition part separator characters in the Entry List.
- Fixed a bug that made the newline button not function correctly at the very start of an editable document / dictionary entry section.
2.1.0
New Features
- Added a full-featured flashcard system, for creating and reviewing lists of vocabulary; see the relevant section of the manual for details on this. This requires the purchase of the "Flashcard System" add-on module.
- Added the ability to create and modify new dictionary databases right on your device; create them through the Settings / Manage Dicts screen, add entries with the pencil button that appears at the bottom of the main dictionary screen. This too requires the purchase of the "Flashcard System" add-on module.
- Overhauled the add-ons system to no longer require registration; each copy of Pleco will now automatically be assigned a Registration ID the first time an add-on is purchased or restored, and that ID will be displayed on the Settings screen and can be used as an identifier for technical support / possible future platform transfers / etc. Free add-ons can be downloaded without any sort of registration at all. An "Enter Registration ID" option is still available for cross-platform transfers, but buyers who purchased originally on iPhone / iPod / iPad can now tap on a single "Restore Purchases" button when transferring to a new device, and needn't do anything at all to enable add-on downloading or purchasing.
- Significantly improved the speed / smoothness of handwriting input stroke drawing by using an optimized OpenGL pipeline.
- Optimized Pleco's user interface for iPad; this is still a work on progress, there are a lot more major design changes we want to introduce for iPad in future releases, but everything should now at least be functional and make pretty good use of the iPad's screen space. Aside from resizing lots of user interface controls, major iPad-exclusive changes in this release include adding support for starting up in landscape orientation (only technically possible on iPad at the moment), embedding the handwriting and radical input panels in the bottom third of the screen (only a good idea on iPad), adding a Key button to handwriting and a HWR button to the optional keyboard tone panel to allow switching between them without going to the top bar (only enough space on iPad), and turning the Copy to Input and Copy to Pasteboard end-of-entry links into toolbar buttons (only enough space on iPad).
- Enabled access to the Word Lists feature even when the Document Reader add-on hasn't been purchased, though that add-on is still required to actually view the contents of those lists.
- Added a keyboard clicking noise when tapping on buttons in the tone input bar.
- Added a prompt to the file save screen allowing you to choose which directory the file will be saved to.
- Eliminated the "Manual Upload" button in the Add-ons screen, replacing it with a Web Browser and a File Manager item in Settings to allow for easy file downloads / uploads.
- Added an option (now enabled by default) to always bring up links in a separate screen, even when they're tapped on in the main definition view. (Settings / Dictionary / Entry Display / Links always sep screen)
- Added an option (under Settings / Dictionary / Overall Interface) to keep the definition visible in the main dictionary search screen even when inputting text; this is only available if the definition is on the left or right side of the screen, however.
- Added a fifth Manage Dicts toggle switch, "(only as fallback)", which when enabled causes dictionary searches to try, but not stay on, that dictionary; this is especially useful with Unihan, since it lets you use Unihan as a fallback for rare characters but then automatically go back to ABC or another dictionary once you input a new search character.
Feature Changes
- Moderately improved application startup performance by rearranging Pleco's database files to consolidate header information at the front (reducing the number of disk reads required to open / initialize each file) and by loading on-demand several pieces of data that we'd previously loaded immediately on file open.
- Added a "Working..." overlay while registration / purchase requests are in process.
- Optimized the file download status update system to make the Add-ons tab scroll / respond a lot faster while files are downloading.
- Sped up the opening of the handwriting input dialog in landscape mode or with a larger-than-default character selection bar in portrait mode.
- Expanded the tappable area of the search input field at the top of the dictionary screen; now, tapping anywhere in that toolbar that the system doesn't interpret as being part of a button will open up input.
- Also slightly expanded the tappable area of the dictionary switch button, so it'll be more difficult to accidentally tap the screen above or below it.
- Moderately improved font rendering performance by caching more information about character widths.
- Made progress / activity overlays take over the entire screen and prevent other interaction until they finish what they're doing.
- Tweaked the stroke order diagrams screen to render a bit more smoothly, particularly with complicated character or at high speeds; bigger improvements in this should be forthcoming in a future update when we transition stroke order diagrams to OpenGL.
- Allowed opening of document files / the document reader from any file browser screen, even those outside of the Reader tab, if the document reader module has been purchased.
- Changed the "0.0 MB" size label for the handwriting / document reader modules back to "(built-in)", since 0.0 MB seems to have caused even more confusion than "built-in" did.
- Made the momentary "word added" messages take up the entire screen (with a translucent overlay)
- Resized the magnified character view to accommodate an onscreen keyboard when the definition is visible during a search.
- Enabled Night Mode in the document reader text editor
- Revised the PLC dictionary to merge all single-character entries in which the simplified / traditional versions and Pinyin match (previously broken up into multiple entries with superscript numbers after them), so that you'll no longer end up with useless definitions (like "shield" for gan1) in single-character flashcard imports. Also stopped including part-of-speech sections of definitions in full-text E-C searches, so that it'll no longer be impossible to get useful results for a word like "medicine."
- Tweaked the file download system to allow certain dictionaries (mainly intended for ABC) to cause the dictionary priority list to automatically be rebuilt when they're downloaded (only initially, not on an update); this is so that users who don't know how to find Manage Dicts can still have the largest available dictionary show up by default in popup definitions / flashcard imports / etc.
- Made editable text fields on configuration screens automatically scroll into view when tapping on them to start editing.
- Changed the "Edit" button on the Manage Dicts screen to "Reorder" to better represent what it does.
- Slightly sped up the drawing of text in scrollable fields by turning their backgrounds opaque when possible.
- Added the ability for the "Search for headword" command (much like its Copy to Input predecessor on Palm/WM), if activated on the main screen with no text selected, to check to see if the current search term already matches the current headword and, if so, replace it with the current headword's Pinyin.
- Made the "Word Lists" feature accessible even if the document reader hasn't been purchased (though the resulting wordlist files can't actually be viewed in that case, they can only be downloaded or emailed).
- Set file names in the file browser / file picker to reduce their font size to fit the available screen width for long names.
- Tweaked the names of a few Settings to make them a bit more sensible / less abbreviated.
Bug Fixes
- Finally fixed (we think) a bug that could sometimes cause Pleco to become very slow after it had been in use for a while; the bug involved a combination of some really-difficult-to-find memory leaks and a bit of code relating to text insertion points.
- Fixed a bug that could cause complicated headwords in the ABC dictionary (i.e. headwords with lots of //es and/or ()s in them) to become garbled in traditional-character mode.
- Fixed a bug that caused the document reader to default to the first dictionary in Manage Dicts even if that dictionary happened to be a demo version.
- Fixed a few small memory leaks / disappearing view problems in low-memory situations.
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when scrolling through a list of dictionary entries at the precise moment that a full-text search was in the process of being performed.
- Fixed a bug that could cause a freeze / infinite loop when displaying a dictionary entry in a list of full-text search results if the entry contains a word that's too long to fit in the width of an entire line.
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when canceling a download from the download details screen while it was in the process of "installing."
- Fixed a bug that prevented ABC hyperlinks with superscript numbers greater than 32 (yes, there are a few pronunciations that common - a whopping 58 characters are pronounced "yi4") from working correctly.
- Fixed a bug that caused activity / progress overlays to become distorted when the screen is rotated.
- Fixed a bug that in rare cases could cause dictionary entry list taps to be mis-directed to a different item than the one tapped on.
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when exiting a handwriting / radical input screen while holding down one of the character choices in it to display a popup.
- Fixed a bug that could screw up the background color / text positioning of items in the file browser view when in Edit mode.
- Fixed a rare crashing bug when exiting the handwriting recognizer screen.
- Fixed a bug that made some dictionary icon characters a bit fuzzy.
- Fixed a bug that could cause .zip files on some web servers to fail to automatically download in Pleco's built-in web browser (due to their having unknown MIME types).
- Fixed a bug that could cause extra Recent Queries entries to be recorded for handwriting recognizer characters in the process of being drawn in transparent mode.
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when exiting the dictionary details view on the Manage Dicts screen.
- Fixed a bug in the Settings selection list for the maximum # of characters in Live Mode, which had caused some of the larger settings to actually set a smaller-than-selected limit.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Full button from triggering a new search when in transparent or iPad handwriting or radical mode
- Fixed a bug that prevented the undo button in handwriting input from reverting to a backspace button when the character was fully undone.
- Fixed a bug that prevented some XML flashcard lists from downloading correctly in the built-in web browser.
- Fixed a bug that prevented "word added" popups from appearing with the embedded dictionary definition on the main screen set to be smaller than normal.
- Fixed a bug that caused crashes whenever viewing a block of text in which the last character is a character return (e.g. on custom flashcards)
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when exiting handwriting input a precise amount of time after having just drawn a stroke
- Fixed a bug that caused a few characters (e.g. Ju4 "opera") to fail to render correctly in stroke order diagrams; this fix requires a stroke order database update, however. (through the "Updates" tab in Add-ons)
- Fixed a bug that caused the bottoms of 'g's to be cut off in the folder name screen
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when using the Back command to jump to a no-longer-available dictionary entry
- Fixed a rare crash when uploading files to the built-in web server.
- Fixed a bug in the font size list in Settings that prevented the 84 and 96 font sizes from applying correctly (the font would still be 72), and added size-108 and size-120 options for the sake of iPad users.
2.0.8
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug which could cause multi-syllable Pinyin searches beginning with "chuang," "shuang," or "zhuang" to fail to return results.
- Fixed a bug that caused some links in the ABC dictionary to fail to be followed correctly.
- Fixed three iPad-specific bugs: one which prevented many dictionary entries from being rendered correctly (they'd be cut off at the first circled number character), one which caused the keyboard to remain visible in HWR mode (covering up most of the HWR area), and one which prevented the document reader web browser from copying out the selected text when tapping on the button to view that selected text in a separate window.
2.0.7
New Features
- Overhauled the Pinyin search system to no longer require spaces / apostrophes / tone numbers before syllables that begin with vowels. It will always do this in cases like "tiananmen" where there's no valid Pinyin parsing otherwise ("tiananmen," e.g., since "tia" isn't a Pinyin syllable and hence "tia nan men" is impossible), and with the new "Flexible syllable splits" option in Settings / Dictionary / Search Types enabled (as it is by default), it'll work regardless; e.g. "xian" will now match both the single syllable "xian" and the mutli-syllable "Xi'an."
- Added an option to add an exit "X" button to the top right corner of the main dictionary and Char Info screens - tapping on this will immediately drop you back to the root dictionary / reader view. (Settings / Dictionary / Main Interface / "Exit btn everywhere")
- Also added an option to add a search button in that spot instead of an exit button; (Settings / Dictionary / Main Interface / "Search instead" after "Exit btn everywhere" is enabled). Tapping on that button will jump to the main dictionary view and do a search on the currently displayed character or headword. (it also moves the magnifying glass icon in the popup reader to the rightmost slot, so that it lines up with the button in other screens)
- Added an option to open up the search input field upon returning to the main screen, from a search (General / Popup Reader / "Search btn open input") or from the Exit button above (Settings / Dictionary / Main Interface / "Open input on exit").
- Added a new option to integrate full-text search into regular English-Chinese / Chinese-English searches. ("Integrate in E-C / C-E srch" under Settings / Dictionary / Search Types) With this enabled, after switching through all of your E-C / C-E dictionaries, the software will automatically try a full-text search of dictionaries in the opposite language.
- Added an option to open the input bar immediately on application startup, under Settings / General / Startup Search.
- Added a new color scheme option to change the handwriting recognizer stroke color to white when in transparent mode, useful for using transparent handwriting with Night Mode colors.
- Added a new option (General / Popup Reader / "Exit on jump / info") to exit the popup reader view (hide it and its associated toolbars) when entering the separate definition or Character Info screen, reducing the number of button taps required to go back after returning from that separate screen.
Feature Changes
- Changed the keyboard "tone bar" to insert tones at the current insertion point location rather than the end of the current input text. The downside of this is that tapping on a tone button will now always insert a new character, rather than replacing the current tone if the last character in the input already is a tone number. If you prefer the old behavior, you can re-enable it under Settings / Panels / Keyboard / Replace existing.
- Increased the number of recent searches saved to 200.
- Added an optimization to significantly speed up performance when only reading out a small subset of a dictionary entry; this will really make a difference with flashcards (almost doubles the speed of flashcard imports), but for now will mainly affect entry list rendering when some fields are disabled (e.g. if you only set a list to show "Head").
- Inverted the colors of the "Duplicate Word" message for adding words to the wordlist, to make it easier to spot.
- Rearranged the Dictionary panel in Settings to split "Search Settings" into two separate panels (input and results), and change "Main Screen Layout" to "Overall Interface."
- Enabled full-text E-C searches to search for partially-completed words all the time, not just when no E-C dictionaries are installed.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that caused music / other audio playing in the background to be stopped when playing audio for dictionary entries.
- Fixed a bug that would prevent PDF and Word document files from opening up correctly in the document reader (they'd generate a download prompt instead).
- Fixed a bug that prevented stroke count numbers from displaying correctly in the radical table on iPhone OS 3.0.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the "fade" option from working correctly in stroke order diagrams.
- Fixed a bug that caused the search input bar to be missing its second row of buttons when returning to the main dictionary view via the popup reader magnifying glass button.
- Fixed a bug that caused an audio instead of a clipboard icon to show up for the optional "copy" command in the popup reader.
- Fixed a bug that prevented some links from working correctly in landscape orientation / definition-on-main-screen mode.
- Fixed a bug that prevented entries reached by tapping on links in the main dictionary view from being saved to history correctly.
- Fixed a bug in Char Info that prevented dictionary definition views spawned from the "Words" tab from allowing you to switch to a different dictionary.
- Fixed a bug that at certain font sizes could cause the height of dictionary entry list items to be incorrectly calculated (resulting in their text being cut off or in a large amount of white space appearing below each item).
- Fixed a bug that could cause text in entry list items to overlap the > icon / button in some cases.
- Fixed a bug that, with the "search only on clear" option enabled in transparent handwriting recognition mode, would prevent a new character from being searched for when exiting the handwriting recognizer.
- Fixed a bug that could cause crashes in certain rare cases when starting up Pleco for the first time after updating a dictionary.
- Fixed a bug that could cause an infinite loop / freeze in the document reader when opening a text file with *lots* of encoding errors (like a binary file accidentally labeled as .txt).
- Fixed a memory leak that could occur when exiting the document reader file browser while "editing."
- Fixed a bug that caused links in the ABC dictionaries containing extra punctuation to indicate tone sandhi to fail to work correctly.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the document reader web browser from going to the Pleco home page the first time it was opened.
- Fixed (we think) a bug that could occasionally cause some recent searches to be deleted from the search history.
2.0.6
New Features
- Added relevance sorting to fulltext English-to-Chinese searches; this can be disabled under Settings. Words are prioritized by whether they appear as the only word (or starting word) in a particular section of a dictionary definition, and words in definitions are prioritized over those in example sentences in some dictionaries. We've managed to do this in such a way that it has literally *no* impact on search speed, though it does require you to update your dictionary databases (through the "Updates" tab in Add-ons).
- Added an option to include an audio playback button in the popup reader toolbar.
- Added an option to include a clipboard Copy button in the popup reader toolbar; we haven't worked out a good way to do arbitrary text selection yet (the normal iPhone method interferes with tapping on words to look them up), but this will at least let you clip out a particularly-useful Chinese word which you can then insert into a text message / email / etc.
- Added preliminary support for rendering rare and Unicode Extension B characters in dictionary entries; with a database update this should now make every single character in the ABC dictionary render correctly. This requires the Stroke Order feature to be purchased / installed, however, since it relies on data in that database to generate its character outlines.
- Added the ability to render rare components in Chars / Components in Char Info; most of them can also be searched for, though they generally don't have any information available in Details.
- Addded a background grid option for stroke order diagrams, as already exists for the handwriting recognizer.
- Added a command to reset Pleco's color schemes to defaults without resetting other Settings.
- Added a Pack button to the document reader file browser, allowing you to wrap up a bunch of files / folders in a Zip archive to make it easier to download / email. (this is mostly in anticipation of our forthcoming flashcard-equipped version, where Zip compression will be important for faciliating fast / easy backups)
- Added an option to disable the placeholder "pulike" text that appears in the search input field.
- Added an option to restore the previous contents of the search input field when exiting / reopening the software.
Feature Changes
- Enlarged the tappable area of the popup reader dictionary switch / entry scroll buttons to make it harder to exit by accident, and slightly improved the speed with which it first comes up when tapped.
- Added the ability for the popup reader to detect that it's pointing at a multi-line word / phrase selection and move itself accordingly so that it doensn't cover up any selected text.
- Greatly improved the reliability of file downloads in the document reader web browser, so that text and other files which could sometimes be opened up in the web browser should now consistently generate a save prompt.
- Improved the system for choosing single-character dictionary entries in the popup reader, so that it's now more likely to pick the one with the most common pronunciation.
- Added support for U8 / GB / B5 / UNI file extensions to the document reader, with the first three automatically setting their text encodings based on those extensions.
- Added the ability to paste in text in the search input field even in HWR / Rad mode; just tap-hold on it and release and an Apple-style paste button will appear.
- Added the ability for the Wild button to respect the current insertion point position even when in Key input mode, rather than always inserting the wildcard at the end of the search input.
- Added the ability to remember / restore the last selected history mode (Entries or Searches).
- Color-scheme-enabled the Char Info Details / Strokes tabs, so cells in them will now appear colored just like those in Chars / Words, and added options to tint the background of the Char Info Details / Strokes tabs.
- Changed the default tone colors to make the red / green a bit darker and more readable.
- Added the current character to the top of the "Components" section of "Chars" in Char Info.
- Swapped the top / bottom parts of the Manage Dicts dictionary details screen, so the switches to enable / disable search / toolbar / etc access now appear on top.
- Made dictionary names still tappable to enter the dictionary details screen when Manage Dicts is in Editing mode.
- Improved the clarity / attractiveness of Pleco's version of the Apple text selection loupe for moving the cursor around in HWR / Rad input fields.
- Added the ability for the transparent-background handwriting recognizer to automatically re-enable when the search input bar is initially opened to it.
- Got rid of the "(built-in)" text for the document reader / handwriting recognizer add-ons, since it seemed to be causing a lot of confusion (the "built-in" actually just refers to the fact that there's no download required, not that the add-ons are already purchased / activated).
- Added a better error message in the document reader file browser when moving files to a location where another file with the same name already exists.
- Eliminated the scroll buttons from the document reader screen when in text editing mode.
- Added the operating system name to the tech support email form, and both its name and version to the information we send our server for registrations, in anticipation of future major iPhone OS updates.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an intermittent bug that could cause Char Info Details to be blank / missing when certain add-on dictionaries were installed.
- Fixed a longstanding iTunes bug which can cause prices in some regions (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, etc) to show up with Euro symbols when they're actually denominated in US dollars. This has to be configured manually in our download file catalog, though, so we may not have perfectly fixed this for all regions yet. (there's no 100% fix, sadly, since Apple's servers are telling our software the prices are in Euros even when they're not)
- Fixed cookie support in the document reader web browser in Live Mode.
- Fixed a bug that caused the file dates on extracted zip files to be completely incorrect.
- Fixed a bug that could cause occasional crashes when searching or scrolling through the 21st Century dictionary.
- Fixed a bug which caused the popup reader "search" command (magnifying glass) to fail to work correctly when returning to the main dictionary screen while it's in history mode.
- Fixed a bug that could occasionally prevent the popup reader bubble from appearing correctly in the document reader
- Fixed a crashing bug when exiting the document reader.
- Fixed a bug that would cause a save prompt to come up even after no text had changed in the document reader text editor, if you'd previously stopped editing and declined to save the updated file.
- Fixed a rare bug that could cause web browser downloads to fail to save correctly if you'd never opened the Document Files section of the reader screen before.
2.0.5
New Features
- Added the ability for fulltext E-C searches to search for partial words, matching on the first word in its database that begins with the search text entered, though this is currently only enabled when no dedicated E-C dictionaries are installed.
- Added the ability to listen to audio for single-syllable entries in the demo version (though this too requires a data file update through Add-ons).
- Added the ability to purchase Bundles even when a few of the items in them have already been separately purchased.
- Added an option in Settings for a simpler (boxy corners / no shadow) popup definition bubble, which should render a bit faster.
- Added a "Clear All" button to the document reader web browser history screen.
Feature Changes
- Added an extra two pixels to E-C Entry List items, which were a little too tightly packed and overwriting the inter-cell lines.
- Disabled the List Mode button when the dictionary entry history is visible.
- Disabled Radical input character-set checking by default, though it can be re-enabled through Settings; with it disabled, tapping on a simplified-specific radical will show both simplified and traditional characters containing that radical.
- Disabled reader "auto-clip on copy" by default.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a serious bug which caused Zhuyin / BoPoMoFo syllables to be incorrectly mapped to their Pinyin equivalents, making Zhuyin display / input useless.
- Fixed a bug that prevented headword display settings (dashes / brackets) from applying to Entry List items.
- Fixed a bug which made full-text English-to-Chinese searches switch to to Chinese-to-English mode even when the text entered was still a valid English word (or the start of one).
- Fixed a bug in the document reader text editor which, when the "auto-clip on copy" option was enabled, would cause the clipboard reader screen to come up every time you entered a handwritten character.
- Fixed a bug that could cause erroneous error messages to come up when changing pages in mid-load in the instruction manual.
- Fixed a bug in full-text E-C result highlighting which could prevent words appearing twice in a row from both being highlighted.
- Fixed a bug that prevented multi-line text selections from being properly cleared when deselected.
- Fixed a crashing bug related to exiting the document reader web browser, or setting it to load the most recently-viewed page on open.
- Fixed several display glitches in the ABC English-Chinese dictionary (though this requires a data file update through the "Updates" tab in Add-ons)
- Fixed a few bugs in "Chars Only" language auto-detect mode.
- Fixed a bug in the About screen that could cause a very long list of copyrights to be truncated.
- Fixed a bug that allowed document reader web browser history and regular bookmarks to be intermingled (regular bookmarks being moved to history, e.g.).
- Fixed a few small memory leaks in some infrequently-used screens.
- Fixed a bug which caused scrolling of items in the reader file browser to be unusually slow.
- Fixed a bug which could sometimes prevent the preview image that comes up when tap-holding on a handwriting / radical result from rendering correctly.
- Fixed a bug in settings that could prevent the "Alpha" background option from being made available when alpha handwriting input is enabled.
2.0.4
First release of Pleco on iPhone OS.
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