Can you reduce the time that it takes to search for a word?

Dictionary App Builder DAB Feature Requests
1

I’m the developer of the app √Root Korean: A Hanja Dictionary.

My app has slow search times.

For example, it took an average of 53.33 seconds to search for the word ‘mountain’ on an Android phone.

For example, it took an average of 47.56 seconds to search for the word ‘sun’ on an Android phone.

For example, it took an average of 46.47 seconds to search for the word ‘water’ on an Android phone.

For example, it took an average of 55.08 seconds to search for the word ‘mountain’ on an Android tablet.

These search times are way too long.

In the next update, can you improve the search times for SIL’s Dictionary App Builder five seconds or less on average?

If you are not using a Trie data structure to store words and their definitions already, you should consider using it. I think that using it will improve search times, ideally to five seconds or less on average. An explanation of it is available at https://www.toptal.com/java/the-trie-a-neglected-data-structure and https://medium.com/basecs/trying-to-understand-tries-3ec6bede0014.

More information about searches, searching, and search interfaces in Android apps is available at https://developer.android.com/training/search, https://developer.android.com/training/search/setup, https://developer.android.com/training/search/search, and https://developer.android.com/training/search/backward-compat.

2

Dictionary App Builder 6.0, coming in the next few days, supports much faster searching in the Android app.

1 Like
3

@richard That’s good to hear. I’m looking forward to it. How much faster (in seconds) are the search times in 6.0 compared to 5.6?

4

DAB 6.0 is now available for download. Please take a look and compare the timings for the search. It would be interesting to hear what you find.

5

Using an Android phone, on average it takes 3.20 seconds to search for ‘mountain’, 1.55 seconds to search for ‘sun’, and 2.20 seconds to search for ‘water’ in my app √Root Korean: A Hanja Dictionary, which was built with DAB 6.0.

Using an Android tablet, on average it takes 3.01 seconds to search for ‘mountain’, 1.50 seconds to search for ‘sun’, and 1.47 seconds to search for ‘water’ in my app √Root Korean: A Hanja Dictionary, which was built with DAB 6.0.

Ideally, I would like to see search times reduced to < 1 second in a future version of DAB.

Still, I’m very happy with version 6.0 of DAB. Keep up the great work @richard!

6

Great to hear about the improved search times! Very encouraging.

I’ve installed your app and I am getting < 1 second search times for all the above (0.88 seconds to search for ‘mountain’). That’s with a Moto G7 phone (a new mid-range phone).

1 Like