Pleco 2.0 Feature / Upgrade Info

Last updated (very slightly) May 17, 2008

Note: Everything on this page is very much subject to change - nothing is final until the product is actually released.

PLECO 2.0 HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED YET - this page is a preview of a new version of our software that's currently in development.

(scroll down for more screenshots)

What is it?

Pleco 2.0 is the next release of our popular PlecoDict software. Major new features include two new dictionaries for advanced students, stroke order diagrams, native-speaker recordings of how to pronounce words, a built-in document reader, full-text search, ZhuYin/BoPoMoFo support, significant reliability improvements on Pocket PC, and a complete overhaul of the flashcard / custom dictionary entry system.

When will it be available?

The finished release of Pleco 2.0 is expected to be out sometime in summer of 2008.

What is your upgrade policy?

For customers who bought / buy the Professional or Complete bundle of PlecoDict after July 1st of 2006, Pleco 2.0 will be a free upgrade - you'll only have to pay if you want to add on any new dictionaries.

For customers who bought / buy the Basic bundle of PlecoDict after July 1st of 2006, you'll receive all of Pleco 2.0 except for the new stroke order diagram and audio pronunciation features as a free upgrade. You'll be able to buy those two features together at a special discounted price of just $9.95. We're increasing the price of the Basic bundle by $10 with the release of Pleco 2.0, so effectively you pay the same regardless of whether you buy now or later. As with Professional / Complete purchasers, you'll also have to pay if you want to add on any new dictionaries.

For customers who bought PlecoDict before July 1st of 2006, or received it as a free upgrade from our older Oxford Dict software, you'll likewise receive all of Pleco 2.0 except for the stroke order / audio features for free. Those two upgrades will cost you $29.95 when purchased together; purchased separately, the stroke order diagrams upgrade will cost $14.95 and the audio pronunciation upgrade $19.95. As above, you'll also have to pay if you want to add on any new dictionaries.

What are these new dictionaries, and how much will they cost?

The Standard Dictionary of Modern Chinese (现代汉语规范词典), our first ever Chinese-to-Chinese dictionary title, will cost $59.95 as an upgrade. It features 68,000 entries, with detailed definitions/examples, and is the product of a decade of work by a team of some of China's leading linguistics experts (including the legendary Lü Shuxiang, who actually has his own entry in the ABC dictionary).

The 21st Century Unabridged English-Chinese Dictionary (21世纪大英汉词典), a much larger English-to-Chinese dictionary than any we have previously offered, will also cost $59.95 as an upgrade. It's one of the largest English-to-Chinese dictionaries available, with a whopping 280,000 entries in total. Among other things, it has far better coverage of proper nouns than any of our previous dictionary offerings; for example, there are no less than 16 "The Simpsons" guest stars with entries in this dictionary, not to mention a dizzying array of cities, countries, and scientific terms.

These two dictionaries are mainly intended for advanced students; the Standard Dictionary contains only Chinese (no English translations), so it's mainly useful if you already have several years of Chinese study experience, and the 21st Century Dictionary does not include Pinyin, so it's most useful if you already recognize a decent number of characters (though you can easily look up the Pinyin for unknown ones in one of our C-E dictionaries).

Both new dictionaries will be available bundled together at a deeply discounted price of $79.95. For customers that bought PlecoDict before July 1st of 2006 (and hence will not receive the audio / stroke order upgrades for free or at a steep discount), you can get those plus the two new dictionaries for a total of $99.95.

What will Pleco 2.0 cost for new purchasers?

With the release of 2.0, we're going to be restructuring our new purchase bundles as follows:

Lite - this new addition to our product line will cost $39.95 and is basically a scaled-down version of our regular PlecoDict software. It includes only the Oxford E&C dictionary plus a handwriting recognizer; there's no audio, no stroke order diagrams, no flashcards, no document reader, just the basic dictionary. You can upgrade from this to the Basic version for just $30, the same as the difference in price between the Lite and Basic versions, so it's a great way to try out our software without spending too much.

Basic - the price of this will rise to $69.95 (as opposed to the $59.95 it currently costs), but will now include audio and stroke order diagrams along with all of the other new software features in 2.0. It will continue to use the Oxford E&C dictionary (and not any others). This will be the best option for beginning students.

Professional - this will remain largely unchanged from the current Professional version, will still cost $99.95, still include the same ABC and NWP dictionaries, but like the new Basic version will add in stroke order diagrams, audio, and all of the other new 2.0 features. This bundle will be the best choice for intermediate-to-advanced students, or for beginning students who want a lot of room to grow.

Linguist - the other new addition, this bundle is targeted to advanced (3rd-year and beyond) students of Chinese. It will cost $149.95 and include our three biggest / most advanced dictionaries: the ABC Chinese-English, the new 21st Century English-Chinese dictionary, and the new Chinese-only Standard Dictionary of Modern Chinese.

Complete - due to licensing restrictions which prevent us from including every single dictionary we offer in the same bundle, we'll likely be retiring the "Complete" name altogether with the release of 2.0; however, we do plan to offer extra discounts on add-on dictionaries purchased at the same time as one of these bundles, so if you really feel the need to own every dictionary we sell you'll likely be able to get that for around $200 total.

Will any discounts be available?

We're finally planning to start offering educational discounts with the release of 2.0. However, these discounts will not be available to individuals purchasing software directly from us - after looking into that, we've decided that it's simply not feasible to verify people's academic status on an individual basis. Instead, they'll be offered in the form of school discount programs, where someone at your school or university sets up a purchase account with us and you can then use that account to purchase software through our online store at a discount. We're already starting to roll out this program on a pilot basis now, so if you work at a school that teaches Chinese and would like to arrange a discount for your students, send us an e-mail and we'll be glad to discuss the details with you.

What new features can we expect?

Completely New:

• New dictionaries: we've recently licensed the wonderful new Standard Dictionary of Modern Chinese (现代汉语规范词典), our first Chinese-to-Chinese dictionary. It features 68,000 entries, with detailed definitions/examples, and is the product of a decade of work by a team of some of China's leading linguistics experts (including the legendary Lü Shuxiang, who actually has his own entry in the ABC dictionary). We've also just licensed the giant 21st Century Unabridged English-Chinese Dictionary, a 280,000-entry English-to-Chinese dictionary featuring a vast array of general and technical vocabulary along with excellent coverage of proper nouns.
• Speech capabilities: we've recorded samples for about 30,000 words from each of two speakers (male and female), and we're planning to integrate speech into our software in a number of ways (including several new flashcard testing modes).
• Stroke order diagrams: after 5+ years of requests, we're finally planning to put these in in this new version.
• Document reader: read GB/Big5/Unicode Chinese documents from within PlecoDict, tapping on unknown characters to bring up a definition and/or add them to your flashcard lists.

Search:

• Wildcard search for English-to-Chinese; English-to-Chinese search should be improved in general, if we have time we may even do a conversion of a free English-to-English database like WordNet to save you from having to buy an extra program for that. (and if we don't do it it should be very easy for someone else to :-)
• Much better control over dictionary search priority; change the search order or temporarily disable/enable a particular dictionary.
• Results can now be length-sorted or length-limited, so for a 2-character search you can have all the 2-character results come up before all the 3-character ones (or see only the 2-character ones).
• Hyperlinks in definitions, which will make cross-referencing considerably easier.
• Full-text search (i.e., search of definitions and example sentences), with an index to make it very very fast.
• Support for ZhuYin/BoPoMoFo input (with an onscreen keyboard) and text display.
• Overhauled dictionary interface with a built-in reader for tricky Chinese words and a lot of new options for arranging the screen and cross-referencing text.

Database:

• Huge change here; we're planning to encode flashcard and user dictionary databases in the open-source SQLite format (with a well-documented schema) instead of our own proprietary database system. This should allow for some big improvements in database reliability, and make it possible to store your flashcards / custom dictionary entries on an SD card on Palm (and store them on one more safely on Pocket PC). Plus it will mean that computer-savvy users can muck around with their flashcard data without having to go through our software. Paid/licensed dictionaries will continue to be encoded in (a slightly updated version of) our proprietary database format, as its data files are smaller and more specifically optimized for fast access on a PDA. Those of you with flashcards and dictionary entries in the current database format needn't worry, we'll be providing a converter utility to bring your old data over to the new database system.

Flashcards:

• Big changes are in store for the flashcard system. "Lists" and "Flags" under the current system will be collapsed into a single tool called "Categories" - you can create as many categories as you like, and assign as many as you like to any particular flashcard.
• The "Edit Lists" screen will be replaced by a screen which will list all flashcards matching a particular query ("belong to category X", "do not belong to category X", "belong to category X and category Y", "belong to category X and were created within the last 30 days", etc) and allow you to perform batch operations ("add to category Z", "remove from category Z", "delete") on one, several, or all cards listed.
• The current "Rank" system will be replaced by a "score"-based system, which can be configured to approximate our current rank-based approach but will also offer an "automated" mode where card repetition frequencies are adjusted using an algorithm similar to those in SuperMemo and Mnemosyne.
• Many new flashcard testing modes: multiple-choice, select-the-right-Pinyin-tones, fill-in-the-Pinyin-and-the-software-will-check-it, hear-a-word-and-fill-in-its-Pinyin, a stroke order tester, and see-the-Pinyn-and-draw-the-correct-character.
• Greatly improved import/export interface; it'll be significantly more robust, and we plan to offer an XML-based format in addition to a text-based one to allow more exact control over the way individual cards are imported (and allow you to transfer cards between handhelds with 100% accuracy).

User Dictionaries:

• Improved interface for on-device creation of dictionary entries, thanks to the new many-characters-at-a-time Input screen.
• Entries will now be sorted, so you don't have to scroll through a user dictionary in the order you originally created the entries.

Pocket PC-specific stuff:

• Improved installation process which eliminates the need for all the tedious copying over of keyfiles, fonts, etc. (we'll do this on Palm too if we can find a way to make it work reliably)
• We'll be moving more of the user interface over from Microsoft-designed controls to our own, which should make a number of areas (e.g. the text input field) significantly more reliable and Chinese-friendly than they are now.
• A new system to allow you to store font files on a storage card on Pocket PC (getting around the current requirement that they be stored in internal memory).

More Screenshots