E dictionary

Pleco is the one...their iPhone app is not cheap, but it's the best

oh, well RJ, you're the perfect one to ask then. I have "iced" and it has served me well. I haven't worked out yet what Pleco has over "iced" and thus why I should fork out. Everyone from Calkins onwards has raved about Pleco so my feeling is that it is better, but I'd like to know the advantages first. What do you reckon? [ I know others have spelled out the advantages before, but I haven't worked out whether those advantages are covered in iced or not...it's a time thing I guess...I haven't got around to sussing either out properly and so far iced hasn't let me down. ]

well, as I said, the version of the actual dictionary I use from pleco is free. They have a more extensive one that is not free but I havent seen the need. If I cant find in pleco I look in iced or vice versa. This has served me well. The pleco add-on that I use allows defining drawn characters (skritter style) on the itouch. This is not free but much cheaper than buying the whole pleco package to get this. To me this is important. When you are on the street in China and see a character you dont know, this is the only way to look it up. Calkins raved about the pleco package, which contained this feature, the dictionary, and a flashcard function with SRS. Back then I think you had to buy all or none, and he was happy with all of it, but now (at least for the itouch/iphone) you can buy separate functions if you like. Take a look at the iphone apps in the app store under pleco and they give descriptions. I am happy with what I have so I dont want to pay for things I wont use or already do elesewhere such as flashcards.

Thanks RJ. Iced lets you draw the characters to look them up too. I'm guessing the pleco one is better though?

My iced does not, unless Im missing something. If the free version of iced allows you to draw characters, then you need to teach me how to do it. :-)

Ok mate, I'll step you through it. Click on the iced icon to open it. If this hasn't taken you straight to search then click on search down the bottom left. Now up the top to the left of the search field is the symbol for how your looking it up. I'm guessing you've been entering English words and finding out the Chinese. If I'm right then the symbol should be 英。 If you tap on that it changes to 拼 for pinyin imput, and if you tap again it changes to 汉 for entering Hanzi. Now down the bottom left of your screen 2nd from the left is a world symbol. Click on that twice till most of the bottom of your screen is blank and waiting for you to draw the characters with your finger. This is how it works on an iphone at least. I'm hoping it's the same on an itouch. Let me know how you go. Good luck. :)

btw, this ability to input the hanzi seems to come from the iphone itself rather than iced because it is the same input that is used in email, sms, notes etc. Still iced can then deal with the hanzi imput. I guess I'm really wanting to know how the iphones character recognition [which is similar I guess to online character recognition like in mdbg] compares with pleco's.

No world symbol on mine. Perhaps the itouch is a little different. Pleco works but I had to pay for it. Sorry, cant compare the two. Pleco seems to be about the same as MDBG. For me its always a function of my lousy artwork. Once I draw it decent its there.

I just googled for you and it looks like it should be available on itouch. Click on settings...general...keyboard...international ..then click on Chinese ...simplified and or traditional. I hope you have these options. good luck.

You're right. I-touch settings made the difference. In fact there is a section on "iced" settings. I need to spend some time in the itouch settings function it seems. I have paid money for something I could have had for free. I just assumed all the settings would be inside the iced app itself. I do notice one difference right away, the pleco function allows use of the entire screen to draw on. Much bigger. Thanks for the tip mate.

I was going to mention that I thought I'd heard pleco uses the whole screen. These screens aren't that big to start with so that could be a definite advantage. I'm also interested in how the character recognition software compares. I guess pleco is also stroke order sensitive, right?

when I get a chance to play, I will send you my critique and compare the two.