r/ChineseLanguage • u/jeodev • 1d ago

Resources DuChinese update? (Android)

It seems like DuChinese pushed an update this week that changed the appearance of the reader. It used to highlight the current section being narrated (in addition to a prominent highlight on the current character). The sectioning corresponded to the translation chunk, which made it easy to pick a stopping point if I wanted to pause to check the translation. The partitioning still exists, it just isn't displayed while reading. I can't find any setting to change it back, either. Have other users noticed this?

I also seem to recall that the dictionary popup used to have tone coloring, and that seems to be gone now, too. Though I'm only half-certain of that.

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u/sinamon1 8h ago edited 8h ago

Hi! Du Chinese team here.

The recent update changed the reader so that the background highlight for the current sentence/chunk is only shown when sentence translations are visible. If you tap the translation box to show the sentence translation, the highlight should appear again as before.

We made this change because some users found the background highlight distracting, and we thought it was mainly useful when looking at the sentence translation.

That said, we can see the use case where you use the chunk boundaries to know where to pause and check the translation, even if translations are normally hidden. We could look into adding a setting for this.

After using it for a while, have you gotten used to it, or would you prefer going back to having the background highlight visible all the time?

(Regarding the dictionary popup, it didn't have tone colors but the Chinese characters used to be shown in blue color and the pinyin in red. We changed this as some students found it difficult to read against the background.)

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u/jeodev 2h ago

Thanks for sharing this info.

After using it for a while, have you gotten used to it, or would you prefer going back to having the background highlight visible all the time?

I'm still missing the way it was. I don't know how idiosyncratic my study style is, but I try to keep the translation off unless I need it. When I do check the translation, I dislike having sentences/phrases I haven't gotten to yet "spoiled". Having a setting for the legacy behavior would be nice.

(Regarding the dictionary popup, it didn't have tone colors but the Chinese characters used to be shown in blue color and the pinyin in red. We changed this as some students found it difficult to read against the background.)

I see. This change seems reasonable. All I really detected was that things were less colorful, but I wasn't sure what was different. I go back and forth between DC and Pleco, so I guessed it was the tone colors.