Palm - pleco software - which dictionary ?

[mikelove]

wfujkramer - thanks for the compliment about the manual. (which was [mostly] written by yours truly) You actually don't need the trailing $ for wildcard searches, at the moment any search you enter will find all words that start with that search term; this can actually be a problem in some cases (finding a 2-character word in a mass of 4-character results from a Pinyin search) and is yet another thing we're planning to improve on in 2.0.

Re your wishlist, #1 is already an option - just go into Test Settings and check the appropriate boxes next to Test and Show. The Chinese measure word for 'volt' is 伏 (fu2) if that helps with finding a voltage converter.

roddy - given our past history of missing release targets, the best way for me to guarantee that the desktop version will not be ready by summer is for me to state publicly that it will be, so for the moment the most tightly-guarded secret about Pleco 2.0 will be its release date. But yes, a desktop product is definitely on our radar. Honestly, if we wanted to it would take us all of 3 weeks to produce a quick-and-dirty port of the WinCE version to WinXP (a lot of the low-level code would stay virtually unchanged), but this would not include sync capabilities or anything approaching a sensible desktop user interface, so we'd rather take longer and do this well.

stephanhodges - we're familiar with Palm's simulator license, but it doesn't actually offer very good copy-protection (no way to look outside of the simulator and uniquely identify the PC it's running on) and it's rather unreliable; we generally use a physical Palm with a USB link for debugging because of the simulator's stability problems. And again, it's not really an ideal user interface for a desktop program.

[Ole]

gato

However, neither PalmReader nor iSilo on the Palm seems to allow highlighting of words, is there a way around this? Or can this feature only be used with an editor like DocsToGo?

roddy

Mobipocket is my preferred document reader, but never been able to get it to display Chinese.

MOBIPOCKET can display Chinese if you use an Os like CJKOS, you just need to download a tiny, old-aged program called MakeDocW.exe. This program simply transforms any txt-file into an Palm readable format. (Gb, Big 5....but not UTF-8 ).

Explanations (...about DOKUSHA a Japanese Program...) and download: here

You can use the PLECO Dictionary within MOBIPOCKET in the modus "modify".

Ole

[jimmy30]

Does anyone know any place online or have any databases for Supermemo Palm for learning Chinese?

Thanks!

[hdejarne]

How does the flashcard program work? How do you input character into the flashcards? And is there graduated interval recall like with supermemo?

[gato]

You can add characters/words into the flashcard program by importing them through a textfile, or by adding them when you look them up in a dictionary. The key selling point for me of Pleco's flashcard system is that you don't have to fill in the definitions. If you import a list of characters without definitions, it'll fill in the definitions from its builtin dictionary. This will save you a lot of time. I haven't seen any other software with this feature.

For every item on your list, the program keeps track of a "rank," which you use as an indicator of how well you know a word. You can tell the program to only test you characters/words of a certain rank. You decide how many times you have to get it right for it to be bumped up a rank. Every time, you get it wrong, it would be bumped down a rank.

[hdejarne]

How do you keep track of such large numbers of flash cards that way?

[roddy]

You can have any number (I guess any number, I've never hit a limit) of flashcard lists, so you can, for example, have one for each chapter of your textbook.

[hdejarne]

Well I guess what I was thinking was, what do you do when you have 2 or 3 thousand flashcards? How would you go about reviewing all of those? I know with supermemo and similar programs it will tell you which cards to review and when. What about with Pleco?

[Shadowdh]

Ohters can probably answer that better than I, but pleco has a feature which allows you to set the flashcards depending on how often you get them right... eg you can set ranks to reveal cards you get right at certain intervals etc...

[gato]

I do have three, four thousand flashcards (six, seven lists of 400-600 each) -- glad I didn't have to fill in the definitions myself -- and I use the "rank" feature I discussed above to review new words. Pleco allows to choose how many words of a certain rank you review at any one time, up to 100. You can manually increase the rank of a word, or Pleco will do it automatically after you get it right a preset number of times.

[flameproof]

I hope it's OK to pick up this oldish threat... Question was: pleco software - which dictionary ?

I am a bit confused here, wouldn't be one dictionary for normal use enough? If so, which one?

And how about buying just the cheapest package and getting those free adsotrans and/or cedict? I use ZDT now, which uses cedict and I am happy with that. Important for me is that it has also Pinyin.

PS: I use PocketPC, not Palm.

[roddy]

If you are happy with CEDICT on its own then there are cheaper options than Pleco, although the dictionary engines might not be as nice - I found two paid options very easily, and there are quite possibly free versions. Obviously CEDICT itself is free - what you paying for there is the dictionary engine.

One dictionary (per language pair) is plenty for normal use, but some people like to have both for the sake of extra example sentences, different explanations, etc. Not necessary, but a nice additional extra.

[flameproof]

It will be definitely PlecoDict , I just wonder about the dictionaries....

Then what's the difference between Cedict and Adso?

[beirne]

Adsotrans includes CEDICT and the LDC, giving it 132,609 entries. It is in simplified characters only. CEDICT has 34,608 entries and has both traditional and simplified.

FYI, the ABC dictionary has over 196,000 entries. Also note that the only free English-Chinese dictionary doesn't have Pinyin, although you can usually select the characters and look them up on the Chinese side to get the pronunciation. You sound more interested in Chinese-English, though, so this may not be an issue.

[flameproof]

The key question is then, wouldn't Adsotrans per sufficient alone?

[beirne]

It should be. If you want to see, try looking up words at http://www.adsotrans.com/. The web page is more current than the dictionary in Pleco but it will give you an idea of the coverage.

[flameproof]

oh, that site is just CN>EN

I need CN>EN, EN>CN or was that EN<>CN ?

Can it do both ways?

[beirne]

The free Adsotrans dictionary for Pleco is just CN->EN.

[flameproof]

The free Adsotrans dictionary for Pleco is just CN->EN.

That's not so good then. How about Cedict?

[beirne]

Alas, also CN->EN. Your only choice for a free EN->CN dictionary for Pleco is the LDC, which has lots of obscure words but no pinyin.