damn it i'm glued to this app i've had any problems until now
just a couple of issues with the latest version:
i can't copy and paste anymore. this was handy in conjunction with other apps as part of my studes.
the search results seems a lot slower and i am unable to choose how i search i.e. start, middle, end. this too was handy when searching for similar words or groups of characters. now if i want to search for words or phrases ending in something i have to do a lot of scrolling down.
the addition of the history, list buttons on screen limits my view especially when the keyboard is active.
There is a known bug in Android where the search box doesn't behave properly when there are also tabs. I'm trying to find workarounds for this and will hopefully push out an update very soon. This will fix the long-press problem which allows pasting and switching IMEs.
The search results should be faster! It's just that far more results are now generated. But definitely the first results should appear faster than the first result in the older version. Please compare with the free version and let me know if this is not true.
You can now use wildcards. Try using "*" or "#" in the relevant places. This works well for Hanzi and Pinyin although is a little bit funky for English.
The tab buttons do not show when there are search results so this should not really affect your view. In the previous version there was only whitespace where the tabs were. Please let me know if you mean something else?
Yes, sorry the tabs do disappear when search results are listed. But I was noticing the results were significantly slower. On the previous version I was able to get results quickly and able to scroll down through the list.
I compared searching with the pro and free version and the searching is significantly different. It's much more responsive with the free version.
Anyway, this now seems all academic as since your most recent update the searching seems to be better. Whether that's to a change you've made or a re-installation of the app I don't know, and I've noticed the paste and IME options are back, many thanks, but there is no copy.
I think there should be a minor adjustment to the wildcard option, when using the pro version as soon as you enter '*' it immediately starts searching, when I then enter 漢字 it takes a while to produce any results.
That's strange that the recent minor update change the search speeds because I haven't changed anything there. Was there one particular search term that showed a big difference in speeds? I could try it out on a few different setups I have for testing.
Yes, the wildcard feature needs a bit more work (which is why I didn't mention it in the release notes). In the meantime, I suggest entering the wildcard after the real characters. Will try to get this fixed soon.
Not sure what you mean about Copy. Do you mean Copy on the second screen or Copy when long-pressing on the search box? Both seem to be working for me. Which device are you using?
I was referring to the search menu which appears after a long-press.
However, sorry, it seems my phone was possessed or something . After restarting it the full menu (including copy) appeared.
I'm using an HTC hero, later this year I can get my upgrade (hurrah!)
As for the speed tests I was simply using characters I know that would produce large results (e.g. 人 and 國 )
Ah, I also have an HTC Hero (European version - which I must say is an excellent device from an ergonomic perspective) and so just tested 人. It seems slightly faster on the newer version to me. One reason why searches might seem slower is the progress spinner, but actually this is when the app is doing deeper searches where the older version would have just not done so. However, there are a couple of instances (like when the app is doing a deep search and you move on to search something new - such as in your wildcard example) where things are a little slower. There's not much that can be done about that other than making the user touch something to do deeper searches. But that's a worse UX IMHO.
There are a couple of ways the searching algorithm can be tweaked and I'll try and improve those over the next few updates.
I tried to export my chars list to tsv file, which works great. But I would like to know if you could add one more column with the pinyin transcription WITH tones in a separate column. Because I would like to manipulate those columns but it lacks the pinyin transcription atm. It would let one choose which column he needs from those exported. For my typical use, I only need simplified character + pinyin with tone + translation so I will extract second, third(?) and last column from the .tsv file.
So, a typical line as it is now :
刻 刻 ke4 quarter (hour)/moment/to carve/to engrave/to cut/oppressive/classifier for short time intervals
Would become if you agree :
刻 刻 kè ke4 quarter (hour)/moment/to carve/to engrave/to cut/oppressive/classifier for short time intervals
I am very glad to see updates coming to this wonderful app. Please keep them coming =)
Hi Marc - thanks for the suggestion. It shouldn't be too difficult to do technically but rather than adding a column for pinyin-with-tones it should probably respect the Phonetic System setting (e.g. maybe show Zhuyin instead). Then what if the user has selected NONE - should the column still appear (so the number of columns is consistent)?
Hi,
Yes, adapting this column to user-specified Phonetic System seems good . I don't think anyone should need more than one phonetic representation of a character.
And if keeping a constant number of columns is important I believe you should do that (empty column), to ensure scripts made today will still work tomorrow.
Or you could make separate export activity to manually select which column the user wants in his/her saved file. For example a dialog with checkboxes for every needed column in output file, where the user can tick which information he wants and then push "OK".
But it obviously needs more work
BTW, have you gone any further with the linking between characters and their radical?
Yeah, definitely allowing the user to manually select the columns is one step too far in terms of overly complicating the app. Much better to just give a fixed number of columns, or maybe all possible.
Haven't made any progress on radicals yet - it's yet another item on the todo list!
i've had any problems until now
. After restarting it the full menu (including copy) appeared.
. I don't think anyone should need more than one phonetic representation of a character.