2 posts tagged with "betatesters"

New beta version 0.3.2 provides full support to save your Preferences, Lists and History to the cloud and sync between your devices. It also let you customize the Japanese fonts.

Cloud Sync and (Semi) Offline Cache​

If you are signed-in, all your Preferences are synced to the cloud, along with My Lists and History. Syncing is currently only performed when the app starts up, when you sign in, when internet connection is restored after being offline, or when you manually do a "pull-to-refresh". If you haven't signed in yet but made some changes, they will be preserved when you sign in the first time.

The sync status is displayed at the top of the Dashboard screen:

• Signed out: you are not signed in, therefore your data are not saved to the cloud.
• Syncing: your settings/lists are being synced to the cloud.
• Saved: all your local changes to settings/lists have been saved to the cloud (it doesn't mean that the app is up to date if you have made changes on a different device since syncing is not periodically ran, do a pull-to-refresh manually).
• Not saved: your local changes to settings/lists have not been saved to the cloud yet, probably because your device is offline.
• Sync failed: an error occurred when saving local changes to the cloud, long press on the chip to display the reason and error message.

The app can also handle internet disconnections, and changes made to Preferences and Lists while offline are preserved locally (even if the app is restarted) and synced when the app goes back online. Note that the syncing strategy is "last update wins" so for instance if you edit the same List on an offline device A and online device B, the change from B will be saved to the cloud right away but when device A goes back online, it will send its change to the server and override the change from device B.

Custom Japanese Fonts​

Fonts are not prepackaged within the app anymore (reduced the bundle size by 3!) and will instead be downloaded on demand. They can be changed in Account > Preferences > Fonts. It is possible to use a different font for large and small texts.

The default Serif font in previous versions has been removed from Preferences > Japanese > Serif Font for Large Characters, but the same effect can be obtain by checking Preferences > Fonts > Use a different font for large text and choosing Sawarabi Mincho in the dropdown list.

What's Next?​

The biggest changes in these releases were internal, some work I had to do now to facilitate the development of future features:

• Grouped all design elements into a central Theme to prepare for the implementation of dark mode.
• Developed an offline-first syncing cache system to enable full sync of user data between devices and with the coming web and desktop apps.
• The offline-first cache also enables the app to work even without an internet connection. Currently only Preferences and Lists are cached but the next release should also cache all pages (kanji and words) so they can be consulted offline or without fetching them from the server. The next step will be the option to download the whole dictionaries in advance, and with the implementation of a local search feature, the app will be fully operational offline.

Happy testing :)

Other changes to version 0.3.0 to 0.3.2​

Fonts​

• removed fonts from the app file to reduce its size from 54mb to 22mb
  - uses OS default font (Roboto on Android, San Francisco on iOS) instead of Noto fonts
  - fixed "wiggling" Japanese text on iOS where kanji without furigana were not aligned with kanji with furigana
  - sets font weight according to their size to be a bit thiner and more readable

Preferences​

• Switch Level screen has a checkbox to let the user decide if preferences must be wiped out or if manually edited changes must be preserved
  - all settings are synced to the cloud if user is signed in
  - all settings and history are saved to the cloud the first time a user signs in
  - when the user signs out, all settings, lists, etc. are cleared from the local app

My Lists​

• lists stays visible even with no internet connection
  - lists can be updated, kanji/word added to them, even with no internet connection
  - internet connection is still required to create a new list
  - preferences and list changes made without internet connection are preserved even if the app is restarted
  - preferences and list changes are synced to the cloud when the app goes back online

Dashboard​

• replaced welcome header by "Dashboard"
  - displays status chips at the top: app version, online state, data sync status (signed-out/syncing/saved/not-saved/error)
  - kanji/word of the day are reloaded when the level is changed (if the dashboard is displayed)
  - kanji/word of the day are now selected from all entries in the user's level (instead of just the first 500 entries)
  - word of the day is now only selected among verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs (exclude particles, etc.)

UI​

• bottom navigation bar has a shadow on Android
  - better fits the keyword on kanji small card, makes it smaller or splits it over two lines
  - missing kanji keyword displays ??? instead of being empty and making the kanji bigger
  - denser word card with reduced vertical padding and vertically centered content
  - History app bar's filter buttons resize to fit in the screen width
  - prettier loading animation that looks like a shimmer
  - removed 'feedback-on-shake' gesture on iOS, use the standard 'feedback-on-screenshot' instead
  - moved all switches in Preferences to the right
  

Android users will finally be able to get their hands on the first Private Beta! Here is what you can expect.

Collections and Dictionaries​

Kanjiverse currently supports two types of collection: Kanji and Japanese (words and expressions). Each page of a collection is a series of customizable cards. New cards will added in the future, here is what's available now.

Kanji Collection​

The Kanji Collection contains 13,108 kanji with the following cards:

• Glyph Graph: everyone's favorite, decomposes a kanji into its components and sub-components, tap one of them to zoom in.
• Formula: a flat version of the Glyph Graph, shows Heisig's Remembering The Kanji (RTK) keyword for each component.
• Meanings & Tags: various informations about the kanji such as JLPT level, is it a pictogram, is it a joyo, etc. All those tags can be used as filters when doing a search.
• Readings: each possible reading of the kanji, sorted and colored by frequency of usage, lists all words that use this reading.

Japanese Collection​

The Japanese Words and Expressions Collection contains* 180,429 entries* with the following cards:

• JMdict Variants: some Japanese words can be written with different kanji, kana or have different pronunciations, this card shows them all, courtesy of JMdict/Edict.
• Kanji List: links to Kanji Collection pages for each kanji present in the word/expression.
• JMdict Senses: list of definitions with tags that can also be used as search filters.
• Compounds and Affixes: Japanese is an agglutinative language, words can often be part of other longer words.
• Tatoeba Corpus Sentences: sample sentences with English translations from the Tateoba Corpus.

User Level and Preferences​

Kanjiverse comes with 5 recommended profiles based on the user's level. You choose the one that matches your level and the interface and content displayed will be adapted to fit your needs.

Things that change based on the selected profile: types of card displayed, tag details, furigana, romaji or kana, English or Japanese labels, hiding rare kanji/words, etc.

Example of the same page displayed for Novice, Intermediate, and Expert levels: The same page displayed for Novice, Intermediate, and Expert levels. All the settings used in these default profiles can also be fine tuned individually: Some of the Preference screens.

Smart Search Bar​

The search bar helps you query all collections at once with different input methods:

• Keyboard Input: provides suggestions as you type, converts romaji to hiragana and autocompletes all filter tags.
• Kanji Component Input: search by radical, phonetic component or any part of a character.
• Filter Tag Input: every tag present on kanji/word pages can be used as filter. More than a hundred are available such as kanji composition, grammar element, frequency of usage, JLPT levels, etc. Search with different Input Methods.

Vocabulary Lists and Catalog​

You can create your own lists of kanji/words and share them with others. You can also browse the catalog and bookmark any list that others have shared!

To create your own list:​

1. Go to My Lists (tab in the bottom navigation).
2. Sign In is required (only email sign in is available for now, careful not to forget your password, account reset isn't implemented yet!).
3. Tap CREATE NEW LIST.
4. Enter at least a title, description is optional, and check Share List if you want to let other users search and bookmark this list (of course they won't be able to modify its content).
5. To add a kanji/words to this list, press the bookmark icon on any page, then select the list. Steps to create a custom list and bookmark pages.

To find shared lists:​

Instead of creating a list from scratch, you can search if someone has already shared a list for your textbook or favorite anime:

1. Go to My Lists tab.
2. Press the Search button (on this tab it is an icon of a magnifying glass hovering bookmarks).
3. Type the title you are looking for and press SEARCH.
4. Tap on one of the results to open the list's details.
5. Press the bookmarks icon to add it to My Lists. Steps to search the catalog of vocabulary lists.

Is that all?​

You might have noticed that not all features announced on the landing page are present in this first beta version, notably:

• Kanjiverse Corpus (sentences from the real world extracted from anime, drama, etc.): development will continue when the app is stable, for now only Tatoeba Corpus is available.
• Mnemonic Card: writing and sharing mnemonics to remember kanji will be added soon, meanwhile you can use the Formula Card to see Heisig's Remembering the Kanji (RTK) keywords for each component of a kanji.
• Share translation and votes: community features are currently limited to creating and sharing vocabulary lists, there is no feature to add content, vote or report either.
• Handwriting Input: the recommended workaround is to install Gboard.
• Web app: the quality of the web version isn't good enough yet to provide a satisfying user experience so it will be delayed until it stabilizes.
• **iPhone version: **the iOS version is ready to meet its beta testers, I am now at the mercy of Apple to allow its distribution... this might take weeks.

Don't be disappointed if a feature you were looking forward to isn't there yet, the development of Kanjiverse is far from over. In order not to delay the access to the private beta any further, I've decided to release a first version with only the features presented on this page. It should already provide beta testers with a usable experience. Further developments will then be prioritized based on the feedback from the community.

If you haven't register yet, go there and enter your email address to receive your invite link. Looking forward to seeing you in the private beta :)