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+--- Thread: Anki? (/thread-553.html)
Anki? - wrightak - 2007-06-09
Impressive stuff, thank you. I think that if you want to draw even more users then it would be a good idea to enable support for importing from Supermemo too.
Anki? - resolve - 2007-06-09
Yeah, that's a good idea. I will include support for Supermemo's text format in the next release.
Anki? - dilandau23 - 2007-06-09
I think its almost there but here are a few issues I have:
1) If we look at the front end of Mnemosyne it seems quite simple. If we look deeper though it has support for img tags, sound tags, a lot of general html format tags, and even limited LaTeX support. That combination makes it pretty powerful. I use the img tag for learning nouns. I look at a picture and then produce the Japaneses word. I use the sound tag (whenever I have a sound file available) in my answer to compare to my own pronunciation. And I use different font colors in conjunction with categories to queue myself as to what type of answer I need to give. I do these things for most cards I have added post RTK1. I think you may want to generate a list of imported items that contain unsupported tags (or half-supported tags like "font") and give the option to not import them or at the least make changes to them. Maybe even add support for "alt" attribute so users could use img tags in the desktop app (if you add img support) but something else for keitai and web front ends.
2) Deck sync is still very fragile. I saw one other person has had the same problem I am having where, after a couple of trial uploads and deletes to test the program, a sync just destroys the desktop app deck. I think the problem may be that the online file may be giving a little too much precedence to deletes done in the past. That is just a guess though so I can't really give any suggestions for fixing this. It is a big problem though. In the meantime perhaps a "totally reset my account and delete all decks" feature would be nice.
3) If I type a really long question or answer or both, lets say I want to read an English paragraph then I want my answer to be a Japanese paragraph, then the keitai flash interface does not deal with this well. Maybe a limit to card question and answer length based on whatever can display the least would be useful.
I really love Anki and would desperately prefer to be using it, but I am currently not able to because of sync issues and the html tags. The last issue is not so important to me because the only long cards I have are because of mnemonic aids in answers but I see that it could become an issue later.
Anki? - JimmySeal - 2007-06-09
Neeto. Thanks for all your hard work.
On the graph front, there are three things I would like to eventually see:
-Turn certain graphs on or off (by use of a check box, +/- sign or one of those little triangular arrows.
-Save state of graph options, so if I set a certain graph to a 90-day view it would still show that view if I close and open the graph window. Also save the on/off state of graphs.
-A 24-hour due graph, showing what the review load looks like for the next 24 hours, divided up into 1-hour increments.
Of course, I recognize that these are all complete frills.
Thanks again for everything you've done already.
Anki? - resolve - 2007-06-09
JimmySeal: Sounds reasonable. Add it to the bug tracker so I don't forget!
Dilandau: Thanks for your detailed comments.
Firstly, Anki uses the same widget library (Qt) as Mnemosyne, so all the HTML markup that works in Mnemosyne should work in Anki too. You can add images with <img> tags. Colour markup doesn't work currently as Anki assigns a specific colour for the question, answer and furigana. In a future version I will add support for disabling this so that the user can use their own colour formatting instead.
Personally I find all the multimedia support a bit of a gimmick (I don't need to see a picture of a giraffe to think about a giraffe, and it makes adding new cards somewhat more painful). But I recognise that different people like to study in different ways. So more explicit support for images and sound will be available at some point in the future. It gets complicated when you try and support 4 different platforms (Anki runs on Qt, the web, cell phones and also Emacs), though.
I'm afraid you'll need to be more specific about the problems you're having with deck syncing. Using multiple decks at the moment is confusing and can lead to your deck ending up in a way that it shouldn't. But if you don't bring that into the equation, the syncing support should be quite stable. Please give me a case you can reproduce if you think there are further problems. A 'reset my account' feature would be okay, but basically further development on the web interface has stalled until I implement a new AJAX based version. That's slowly coming along.
The keitai interface is supposed to support scrolling, and it's a bug that it doesn't. Having said that, scrolling through a paragraph to answer a question doesn't seem like a very good way of testing your memory. Have a read of some of the articles on the supermemo site. They stress the importance of reducing facts to the smallest divisible units you can, so that you try and learn one thing at once, instead of many things.
Anki? - dilandau23 - 2007-06-10
resolve Wrote:Personally I find all the multimedia support a bit of a gimmick (I don't need to see a picture of a giraffe to think about a giraffe, and it makes adding new cards somewhat more painful). But I recognise that different people like to study in different ways. So more explicit support for images and sound will be available at some point in the future. It gets complicated when you try and support 4 different platforms (Anki runs on Qt, the web, cell phones and also Emacs), though.I agree that using the image feature may seem gimmicky at first, but as JimmySeal once pointed out, the image that comes to mind when I think "robin" is quite different from what a Japanese person thinks of "こまどり". Using pictures allows me to capture nuance. And lets look at your giraffe example. In Japanese it also is a homonym, possibly even the same word, for "Chinese unicorn". That means nothing to me but the picture sure gets the point across. I can picture a unicorn but what would make it "Chinese", an epicanthal fold? Also, I think sound is great for fine tuning pronunciation. It turns my SRS into Pimsleur Japanese 4 and beyond. Yes including images and sounds does make adding cards more of a pain but I can live with that.
Now I am not suggesting you tackle supporting images and sound and every other method of study across all platforms, but if I could add cards that could be reviewed differently depending on the platform that would just rock.
resolve Wrote:I'm afraid you'll need to be more specific about the problems you're having with deck syncing. Using multiple decks at the moment is confusing and can lead to your deck ending up in a way that it shouldn't. But if you don't bring that into the equation, the syncing support should be quite stable. Please give me a case you can reproduce if you think there are further problems.Here is what I did roughly:
1) Downloaded the program and installed it
2) Exported one category of my Mnemosyne file to a text file and imported it to Anki.
3) Deleted all cards in the deck.
4) Discovered the web/keitai functionality and activated an account on the web.
5) Re-imported the same text file to Anki and performed a sync.
6) Tested out the keitai interface. Eventually got a card where the question was "新<font color=blue>美</font>"(maybe a different tag but it was just plain text like that is the point) and decided that wouldn't work for me.
7) I made a new deck in the desktop app and imported a new version of the same text file from step 2 with all tags stripped from it.
8) Did a sync and contrary to what I expected (I assumed the new filename would stop this from happening) I uploaded the new cards and downloaded my old cards.
9) Deleted the old cards from my desktop app and synced again.
10) Tryed a few cards on the desktop and on the phone then did a sync again. All went smooth.
11) Went back to reviewing in Mnemosyne because I didn't want to get behind.
12) Few days later I decided that I would try importing everything and just bite the bullet on losing my current review schedule.
13) Exported full mnemosyne file to txt, stripped out all tags and then imported it to a new deck in Anki.
14) Did a sync and the desktop app uploaded all new cards and downloaded the old ones.
15) Deleted the old ones again and synced again.
16) Decided the workload involved in starting from scratch was just to great and went back to Mnemosyne.
17) Just kept drooling over the keitai interface, saw that a new version of Anki had been released. I decided to give it another go.
18) Uninstalled everything from my computer, deleted all files that i found that were left behind.
19) Downloaded the desktop app again (windows xp btw) and installed it.
20) Did a sync got all my cards downloaded.
21) Deleted all of them from the deck.
22) Created a new txt file with Mnemosyne and imported that into Anki. Did a sync and almost all of the cards (minus a few of the newer ones that i think were added in the interim) from my desktop app were deleted.
23) Tried to delete everything from the website deck manager (but I am not sure if i did succeed at this step I was pretty frustrated at this point.)
24) Made a second import and sync attempt and again most cards were deleted from the desktop app.
25) Deleted all cards and did a sync, uninstalled the program, deleted all the leftover files that I could find.
26) Just decided that the Anki program was still to unstable to trust my SRS future to and went back to Mnemosyne.
27)Saw that you added support for a direct Mnemosyne import and decided to give it another go.
28) Installed program Imported Mnemosyne deck and did a sync
29) Most of my cards were deleted from my desktop deck and a few were added to the web.
30) Deleted all the cards from my deck and did a sync to the web again.
31) Came here to express my views.
resolve Wrote:The keitai interface is supposed to support scrolling, and it's a bug that it doesn't. Having said that, scrolling through a paragraph to answer a question doesn't seem like a very good way of testing your memory. Have a read of some of the articles on the supermemo site. They stress the importance of reducing facts to the smallest divisible units you can, so that you try and learn one thing at once, instead of many things.I am not overly fond of long cards either but, in the future, if I just want to drill a grammar point by using a sentence in English and the answer in Japanese, I would like to know it will display properly. Now having said all of this, let me say that I love your program. It is fantastic in so many ways. I really really love it and want to use it. I just am not sure that the sync feature is ready for my elephant in a China shop approach to things. Keep up the amazing work though.
Anki? - JimmySeal - 2007-06-10
I think the synchronization feature does have the potential for problems. There are a lot of things that can go wrong and it's hard for a developer to account for all of them (and it looks like Resolve has accounted for a lot of them), but if you are careful, they can be avoided. I think that if you had taken these steps you would have been ok.
(deck currently full of unwanted cards)
1. Create a new deck
2. Sync (all cards are downloaded)
3. Delete all cards
4. Sync (server now knows all cards are gone. not positive that this step is necessary)
5. Import new cards
6. Sync
That should do it. Are you aware of the hidden "add deck" feature on the web? Unless you use that, all decks will be treated as though they are the same deck and that's the source of most problems.
Anki? - JimmySeal - 2007-06-10
dilandau23 Wrote:Now I am not suggesting you tackle supporting images and sound and every other method of study across all platforms, but if I could add cards that could be reviewed differently depending on the platform that would just rock.Yea, it could be something as simple as a "Don't quiz this on the phone" checkbox. That would be useful for a few of my Chinese characters that can't be displayed on my phone. (I've been resorting to making questions like "桌 {ト＋日＋木}" because my phone can't display 桌)
Anki? - Aikiboy - 2007-06-10
So, if I understand this correctly, in order to delete the deck on the server, just delete the current deck on the pc and synch? And if that's true, then I could have loaded another deck on my pc, deleted it, then synched with the server and then I could've started fresh again without affecting my good deck? I think I get it. The delete deck button next to the add deck button would be cool though.
BUT nuff of that! All is well with my Ankiz
! I even reviewed while eating pizza at Costco today AND I'm back on track(1220) and start with my new stories tomorrow, hand in hand with Anki. 
Was thinking of using the highly praised Mnemosyne for other aspects of Japanese Study. Then maybe later transfer over to anki. I don't really want to mess up my good deck now. Any thoughts?
BTW, thanks resolve for all the hard work!!
Anki? - JimmySeal - 2007-06-10
Aikiboy Wrote:So, if I understand this correctly, in order to delete the deck on the server, just delete the current deck on the pc and synch?Not quite that simple. If you have a deck "blargles.fc" on the server and want to empty it and re-fill it with cards, you would:
Open blargles.fc, or create a file with that name.
Sync.
Delete all the cards.
Sync again.
And then the deck should be clean for adding stuff to it.
Quote:Was thinking of using the highly praised Mnemosyne for other aspects of Japanese Study. Then maybe later transfer over to anki. I don't really want to mess up my good deck now. Any thoughts?As long as you're careful and you know what you're doing, you can have two or more Anki decks without much hassle. I've been doing it for the last 10 days.
Anki? - synewave - 2007-06-11
Not had a proper look round Anki yet. But if someone can advise on the following, I'd appreciate it.
1. Is it easy enough to import stuff into a stack and then import again to the same stack? (reason: I like to build my vocab in an Excel sheet)
2. Assuming 1. is easy enough, is there a "delete duplicates" option in case I import the same stuff twice?
Cheers,
Anki? - resolve - 2007-06-11
Yes, all the import routines allow you to load new data into an existing deck. So you can keep adding data to your deck to build it up. Duplicates are automatically filtered, and if duplicates are generated because you've elected to automatically generate reverse entries, these will be labelled with (duplicate) in the question so you can search for them in the edit dialog and delete them all at once, or edit the cards to use a different definition.
Let me know how you go!
Anki? - dilandau23 - 2007-06-11
JimmySeal Wrote:I think that if you had taken these steps you would have been ok.This is basically what I did but now every time I add cards that were in the original deck the web card file thinks they are supposed to be deleted and it overrides the desktop app. I am surprised no one else has noticed this behavior. No matter what I do create decks or anything, if a card has been deleted and then a sync is performed it does not seem to be possible to add the same card again and do a sync without it being removed.
(deck currently full of unwanted cards)
1. Create a new deck
2. Sync (all cards are downloaded)
3. Delete all cards
4. Sync (server now knows all cards are gone. not positive that this step is necessary)
5. Import new cards
6. Sync
I can repeat this bug any number of times, try it yourself add a card, sync, delete it, sync, add it again and sync. It will be gone. Is this action really that far outside the realm of normal use?
Anki? - JimmySeal - 2007-06-11
Ok, I can see that you are right, which is strange, because there have been times when I've deleted my whole deck, and refilled it with most of the same cards without that hapenning, but I can think of reasons why.
In any case, if you use the deck add feature on the web to add a completely new deck, I think you can get around this problem.
Anki? - resolve - 2007-06-11
dilandau23: I don't think this has cropped up before, but it certainly should work. I'll have a look into it.
Anki? - distefam - 2007-06-11
dilandau23 Wrote:Also, I think sound is great for fine tuning pronunciation. It turns my SRS into Pimsleur Japanese 4 and beyond. Yes including images and sounds does make adding cards more of a pain but I can live with that.What sounds are you using? Are you recording your own voice or taking sound clips from movies, songs, etc. A good source I find is the japanesepod101.com podcast, which now has line-by-line audio so you don't have to cut the mp3 yourself.
Anki? - Aikiboy - 2007-06-11
JimmySeal Wrote:If you have a deck "blargles.fc" on the server and want to empty it and re-fill it with cards, you would:Open blargles.fc, or create a file with that name.Well, I suppose then when I started I could have renamed my original deck, created a new deck under the original name, synched and deleted the on-line deck. Then reload the original and keep my stats and add the same deck from on-line. Hopefully I get it now. But it is a little tricky.
Sync.Delete all the cards.Sync again.And then the deck should be clean for adding stuff to it.
...As long as you're careful and you know what you're doing, you can have two or more Anki decks without much hassle. I've been doing it for the last 10 days.
Well, if I can keep from scrambling my decks, it would save problems using different software and let me review en route. I'll give it a go with a few sample decks and switch 'em back and forth and see if I can keep track of it all. Thanks, Jimmy.
Anki? - dilandau23 - 2007-06-11
snozle Wrote:What sounds are you using? Are you recording your own voice or taking sound clips from movies, songs, etc. A good source I find is the japanesepod101.com podcast, which now has line-by-line audio so you don't have to cut the mp3 yourself.Moving my answer to this to a new thread.
Anki? - resolve - 2007-06-13
I've spent the last couple of days updating the web interface, turning it into a dynamic ajax affair. It's only a few days old and my first foray into ajax, so there are bound to be problems, but I'd appreciate some initial feedback. I've tested it Firefox, Safari, Konqueror and IE 6. On Safari there's a known issue with the 'show answer' button not disappearing. Any other bugs are worthy of report!
Feedback on speed would also be handy - if you could let me know where you live and how long it takes the statistics above the question to update after you answer a card, it would be appreciated.
http://anki.repose.cx/
It should look a bit like this:
http://repose.cx/dump/ajax.png
Anki? - akrodha - 2007-06-13
I just tried it out and it looks great! I didn't really test the time, but it felt snappy enough for me. (I'm in Germany, by the way.) The statistics did take a second or two to appear, but that didn't bother me at all.
And thumbs up for letting me use the space bar!
Anki? - JimmySeal - 2007-06-13
Went to the web interface first thing this morning and it's great. Went through about 4 cards before I realized it was letting me use hotkeys too. And I can finally delete my unwanted decks
Edit: One request - when the review is done, can you display the time until the next card is due, because I'm neurotic?
Edit2: Just want to say again that this update is really awesome. The deck select screen with the number of pending cards is sa-weet.
Anki? - yorkii - 2007-06-13
font size is FAR TOO BIG!!
my deck has a question and answer side FULL of information and just doesn't fit on my screen at all. can this be edited?
Anki? - resolve - 2007-06-13
akrodha/JimmySeal: thanks for the feedback. "Next card will be due in.." will be implemented soon.
yorkii: I wanted to release my early work. More features including text customisation will be available in the future. You can make the font smaller for now by selecting miscellaneous instead of Japanese as the language you want to study (but note that'll change hiragana generation on the web interface only, too)
Anki? - dilandau23 - 2007-06-13
JimmySeal Wrote:And I can finally delete my unwanted decksAmen! This really is fantastic. Great changes. Thanks for being so dedicated. I got rid of all my bugged decks. Just amazing!
Anki? - dilandau23 - 2007-06-13
Deleted all my decks and uploaded a new deck but every time I try to sync I get "Unknown Error: Empty response from server"