Sound fading issue (8830) Please Help.

There seems to be a non-deterministic voice issue on some BlackBerry 8830 devices. We are investigating it right now.

Are you willing to download the France2Go talking phrase book and check if you experience the same problem? Thanks.

Team -

Two things,

I am happy to test anytime, as a fellow programmer I understand how important testing can be.

I eventually installed the France2Go module. The ending completion sound appears to be better on this module. BTW - the physical filename for the database is misspelled as Feance2Go.ipd

The limit appears to be three .ipd files on my 8830.

On some phrases in the (France2Go module) - phrases with short words at the end seem to still have the sound abbreviated.

NOTE: I experience the exact same problem with the Eng-Chin Dictionary (ending sounds being cutoff)

Additionally, I found that while browsing the dictionary list using my mouse on the (blue page where the translation appears) I would continue to get Java Null Pointer Exceptions for some items. This did NOT prevent me from paging to the next item.

I noted a couple of other wish-list items (as time allows):
----------------------------------------------------------
If possible within the UI enable a user the ability to swap out the
ipd's so that we can leverage the two gigabytes of space available on the SD Chip (similar to the Media Player) -- Currently I am using the Blackberry Desktop Manager in Windows to perform this task. Moving it to the UI would be extremely convenient.

More ipd's capability although this can be offset by developing the item above.

It would be extremely convenient if the application could not use the main memory space to store the ipd at all. I know of one or two developers who have created a similar ability for the Palm platform. (basically they made the UI app very small and added the loading of data capability from the SD card as the main function.

Next Steps:
Please advise what I should try next. I am now going to try installing some of these on my Palm (Tungsten T3 - Voice Capable) device.

Please feel free to contact me at my registered email address. tcarternyc(at)hotmail(dot)com

Hi all,

I tested the applications on the Palm Pilot (Tungsten T3) and the sound completes totally. In addition using the Palm Quick Installer windows application I installed the applications directly to the expansion card. I do not want to carry my Palm pilot anymore because the all-in-one unit that has everything I need seems to be the Blackberry.

I hope the testing done proves helpful in resolving the remaining issues with the BB sound. Please add me to the contact list so I can upgrade when the sound fixes are in place.

Thanks for the update. It is very helpful. We have fixed the typo in the France2Go ipd file name.

We will fix the BlackBerry 8830 voice issue and notify you as soon as possible.

We are also investigating other issues/suggestions you posted.

We are investigating the issue and would like to collect some more information from you.

You mentioned that "browsing the dictionary list using my mouse on the (blue page where the translation appears) I would continue to get Java Null Pointer Exceptions for some items."

How do you use "mouse" on a BlackBerry 8830? The device does not have a touch screen. Can you let us know which exact word(s) you have the null pointer exception with?

The 8830 has a track button mouse below the center of the screen. The layout is:
[screen]
[phone button][menu button][mouse track ball][escape button][hangup button]

A picture of the BB 8830 can be found at (http://picasaweb.google.com/tcarternyc/Misc) - sorry its not that good.

I can identify the sequence of the places where i see the null Pointer Exceptions.

1. Open the dictionary
2. Select 'a' and in the menu hit to Translate
3. Roll the track ball to the right (next word is 'a few')
4. Continue rolling the track ball to the right (passing many definitions)
5. Some points where I see the java.lang.NullPointerException appear in the list below.
6. Error also occurs when I select some invalid (?) words from the lookup list.

NOTE: The exception message page shows only the message itself and a single underline right below the message. There are no other characters on the screen.

format: [word] null-pointer-message [word]
[a lot] java.lang.NullPointerException [a-]
[ab] java.lang.NullPointerException [aba]
[abbreviated] java.lang.NullPointerException [ABC]

After some reflection on this pattern I can see that the exception is being thrown on the following English words:

a priori
ab initio
abbreviation

This is a small sampling of the issue, I suspect there are many other cases as well. I note that these exceptions are thrown when I select the word from the Lookup list or using the mouse to browse through the dictionary. Having programmed Java before I would guess that a reference or pointer (related to the entry) does not exist when it is being called by some method.

Thanks for the clarification. We are able to reproduce it and an update will be released within 24 hours.

Please download the latest version 1.1.1. The Null pointer exception issue has been fixed. The sound fading issue on BlackBerry 8830 remains open. Thanks.

Team,

The null pointer issue no longer occurs after I un-installed and reinstalled the dictionary. I will keep looking for the sound fix.

Good work!

update:

I did find another issue while testing the latest build. One test case can be found by reviewing the word 'Achilles'.

When one selects the second definition of the test case above then the exception occurs.

uncaught exception: 1 >= 1

There is also a third icon with no characters in front of it(basically the two icons are right after each other), if one selects the third icon in the test case then you get the following exception:

uncaught exception: 2 >= 1

The exceptions above cause the program to close.

NOTE: A second test case would be the word 'Aden'. The exception pattern seems consistent that the problem occurs when two icons are in succession without any definition between them.

Wow, thanks for the detailed and fast testing. Yes again we can reproduce them. We are working on a fix now.

You are welcome.

Please download the new version (Phrase Book v3.1.2 and Dictionary v1.1.2) from the download area. This should have fixed the problems on BlackBerry 8830.

Just to confirm - the new version works great!

You guys are really excellent programmers. I am buying the Dictionary.
Thanks,
Tom C.