奏 series on Pleco

Anyone happen to know why 湊 is connected to 奏 in the character component break-down, but 凑 and 揍 aren't? Oversight, or am I missing something obvious? 🤔

Just a bug in the data - I'll make a note of it, but the new data in 4.0 beta already seems to have fixed it in the 揍 case.

With 凑 it's more complicated because it's usually listed as the simplified version of 湊 and so you'd generally only see one or the other in the character breakdown depending on which mode you're in. We haven't really figured out a good solution for that yet because there are a lot of other cases - 谢/謝 e.g. - where people would almost certainly *not* want to see both versions, and in fact, if they had a strong preference for traditional, might be quite irritated to see an obvious simplified character in that breakdown. So we need to articulate some sort of a rule/standard for when it's worth showing both the traditional and simplified versions in the character tab and when it's not.

That explains it - much appreciated. 

For what it's worth, my vote goes to providing a full list of all variants in the character break-downs, if possible (or indeed easier?). In my use case at least, it's quite hard keeping to a purely simplified or traditional diet in daily life - you're always dealing with both anyway.

I'd go so far at to say that if you're already busy sleuthing around for sibling/parent/child characters, you generally know to expect all kinds of variants in that section, whether or not you're set-agnostic yourself. (Just my tuppence, of course, so mileage may vary!)

you'd be better suited using 国学大师 if you want a true 'full' list of variants, as many rare variants do not have unicode points. if after a common variants list that's perhaps more doable, but the amount of work needed I imagine would probably end up in mike needing to arrange copyright permissions for a comprehensive 异体字 dictionary. Which I would be more than happy to see made available in pleco if possible, as well as a dedicated 多音字 dictionary too

On 10/12/2025 at 1:13 AM, Tomsima said:

you'd be better suited using 国学大师

What a treasure trove! I think I may have used it once and then lost track of the link. Thank you so much for the recommendation.

It comes with so much literature, too. I'm tempted to side-load the apk offered on the website... Have you ever tried using their app by any chance?

On 10/11/2025 at 7:01 PM, sanchuan said:

For what it's worth, my vote goes to providing a full list of all variants in the character break-downs, if possible (or indeed easier?). In my use case at least, it's quite hard keeping to a purely simplified or traditional diet in daily life - you're always dealing with both anyway.

 

I'd go so far at to say that if you're already busy sleuthing around for sibling/parent/child characters, you generally know to expect all kinds of variants in that section, whether or not you're set-agnostic yourself. (Just my tuppence, of course, so mileage may vary!)

 

That's fair, it may be something to make optional; I suppose if we tied this behavior to whether or not you're showing both character sets in other places then anybody who's scrupulously trying to avoid encountering simplified characters would not be affected, but even ignoring that, I do think in cases of pure radical simplifications like 谢/謝 that a lot of people might prefer to omit characters in the other set in order to keep the list shorter.

@sanchuan I've not used the app, the website tends to go down every now and again so it gave me the impression the app might also be unreliable, but don't let me stop you trying it

On 10/12/2025 at 4:25 PM, mikelove said:

I do think in cases of pure radical simplifications like 谢/謝 that a lot of people might prefer to omit characters in the other set in order to keep the list shorter

... as well as in other cases, I suppose: a traditional-only readership might be rather perturbed to find, say, 扌or 戶 in the breakdown for 護 (s护). Others might find it a learning moment.

But tying the behaviour to character set preference is probably ideal.