Ubuntu's scim seems to have issues. Other Ubuntu users have reported the same problem. Here's what one Anki user reported:

I eventually got Japanese input working in Anki. This is what I did:
* im-switch -s scim_xim
* added "/SupportedUnicodeLocales =
en_US.UTF-8,en_GB.UTF-8,en_AU.UTF-8" to ~/.scim/global
* Disabled "Embed Preedit String into client window" in scim-setup
* Changed QT var to: XIMInputStyle=Over The Spot

I still have scim-qtimm installed, but I guess it's not being used.
$QT_IM_MODULE=xim by default.

As a bonus, it seems to work in emacs now too. But I mustn't have my
fonts configured correctly for it, because I get boxes instead of
Japanese text. Additionally, my tilde key works again! Some GTK apps
don't seem to work as well with the new settings, but I'll keep testing
it.

I set up the input methods long enough ago that I don't recall exactly what I did, but I do remember that I had to manually uncomment QT_IM_MODULE=scim in /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/scim (or the local copy in ~/.xinput.d/en_US, or whatever your native locale is). That allowed me to switch to scim for a fairly up-to-date Debian system several months back, I think Feisty Fawn is new enough that it'll have the same working packages.

The whole input-methods contraption is not quite at the "user-friendly" stage yet....

Actually, I've never had such problems on Debian - Ubuntu comes with scim set up by default, but it doesn't behave well with XIM/QT based apps.

Yeah I've had a few problems w/ QT apps in Ubuntu.. besides the input on anki (which fortunately those steps helped me fix), when I decided to setup Compiz (ooh pretty desktop!) and went to run anything QT based... I'd click right through the titlebar. It was there, but I couldn't maximize it or anything. Go figure.

Beta 7

All the unit tests pass on win32 now, and I've done a reasonable amount of
testing, so it shouldn't fall over the second someone else starts it up on
windows this time. There may be corner cases still, so please do your best to
break it!

As always, remove the old configuration file
(Mac/Linux: rm -rf ~/.ankidev, Windows, find it in Documents and Settings)
Remember that you'll need to reimport your .fc files, as previous .anki files
won't work.

The new test server is at a different location to the previous beta. As with the
previous beta, any data synced to the test server will be lost.

http://repose.ath.cx:5001/study

Please don't use this beta for serious work. You may lose data, and your deck
will not be importable in the next beta.

Win: http://repose.cx/dump/anki-0.3.0-beta7.zip
Mac: http://repose.cx/dump/Anki.dmg
Linux: http://repose.cx/dump/beta7.tgz

comments, suggestions, questions, etc

1) Using Deck --> Import locks up my computer when importing an old .fc deck. A window pops up saying that anki might freeze...but then nothing happens even if I wait. I can click the "close" button but the deck never loads, nor is it created anywhere. And then Anki and/or windows explorer will crash.

2) If I use Deck --> Open instead it appears to convert the .fc deck fine without problems

3) The website review seems good, though the mobile webpage appears to be the same, aka not the beta?

4) A few comments about the "Study Online" page

At the top of the page it says:

Studying study | add | list | more

I might suggest something along the lines of:

Now Studying: Deck Name ([url=]change) study | add | list | mobile | more | logout

I think "mobile" and "logout" are too important to be tucked away under "more". And under "more" I would list all the available study online options: study, add, list, simple mode, create new deck etc.

Also, when you click on "add" or "list", the name of the deck disappears, but if you are adding cards online it might be nice to have the name of the deck clearly listed

5) Documentation

One thing that might be good for documentation is to toss a wiki online. I'm sure some people here would gladly add a lot of stuff. you could add a "visit Anki Wiki" link to the program help menu.

6) Tags

I might be worth simplifying, renaming or clarifying some of the nomenclature....by my count, at various places in the program, there are "fact tags" "card tags", "card production tags", "model tags", "models" "card models", "Tags"

So, for example, in the "Model Properties" tab..where it says "tags" you might change to "model tags" to make it match the label used in the "Edit Deck" area. Also "Fact Tags" and "Card tags" could be matched up.



Overall, I think the program is great and I am really excited to use it ^__^

resolve: Downloaded the beta and tried to run it, but it exits with an error without starting:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "ankiqt.py", line 55, in <module>
File "ui\main.pyc", line 24, in __init__
File "ui\main.pyc", line 799, in setLang
File "gettext.pyc", line 465, in translation
File "gettext.pyc", line 448, in find
File "ntpath.pyc", line 102, in join
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0x83 in position 39: ordinal not in range(128)

Edit: Just tried downloading Beta 6 and it exited with the same error. For reference, I am on Japanese Windows XP SP2.


I'm also still confused about the test server. It still has a bunch of reverse-entry cards I never wanted (about 25% of one deck and 50% of the other). Shouldn't I be able to download the client, synchronize it with the server, and have my deck essentially as I had it in 2.8 without doing any special deck upgrade myself? I still don't understand why I'm getting all these new cards.

jimmyseal:

the newest beta is #7

The import feature isn't working for me...but if it is for you I think this is what you need to do to not get extra cards.

1) Deck --> Import
2) Select type of file. "old anki 0.28 .fc"
3) Select the File
4) Select the model. "Japanese"
5) Click the button that says "Edit the current model"
6) Select the "Cards" tab
7) Disable either "Production" or "Recognition" in the Card Model Window.
8) Close the model properties editing window and click "Import"

6 and 7 both crash right away on this computer.

I'm saying, shouldn't be possible to start using the beta (and not have extra cards) without doing any importing at all? To just make a dummy deck and synchronize it with the server and have the deck essentially as it was before?

I just downloaded Anki and started testing on my Mac. Haven't tried synching yet, but I really like what I see so far. The user interface is sweet!

Resolve, would you consider open-sourcing the server-side at some point in the future?

johnzep: Strange. I'll look into it!

JimmySeal: I will do my best to make the upgrade process smooth, but it's complicated. I'll explain it in more detail after work. That bug with beta7 not starting looks easy to fix - I'll get to it soon.

jreaves: the synchronisation part of the web interface is in 'libanki', which is part of the source which is already provided. Just the online testing code is not currently released. The primary reason is that it was cobbled together very quickly, and needs reengineering.

Ok, thanks for your support. I'm going to be AFK again until Sunday, so beg your pardon if I'm unresponsive until then.

Beta 7 sync still doesn't seem to work. I opened the Heisig sample deck, answered a few cards and then tried syncing. It went through the whole process, I created a new deck called Heisig instead of adding it to mydeck, it synced the model, the tags, the cards etc. However when I go online, the Heisig deck isn't there. Am I missing something?

Everything else seems to work ok though.

Did you 'go online' using the special URL instead of the current stable version?

johnzep: re the interface suggestions, you've made some good points. I think it'll become a bit cluttered if all the options are displayed in a horizontal line, though, so I'd like to add a horizontal menu first. The website could do with many improvements, but improving the backend is the first priority. Once 0.3.x is pretty stable and I've introduced all the features it's still lacking (images, sound, latex, undo, many more operations to the editor, etc), I will start working on more web interface improvements.

(you're right that the cell phone references the old stable version - I haven't updated that yet, but it's trivial to do)

A wiki sounds like a good idea.

I don't think reducing the choices for tags is a good idea, as the flexibility is both very useful, and necessary to properly make use of other features like prioritization. But I'm sure there's room for making it more straight-forward - something I'll look into as soon as things are stable!

Thanks for the feedback!

JimmySeal: basically your question is "Why can't Anki upgrade the deck perfectly for me without any interaction?"

The answer is it theoretically possible, but it's difficult, and tradeoffs need to be made. The current upgrade algorithm looks for identical fields in any column and uses that to determine which cards are pairs. A problem with the old Anki system was managing multiple cards: if you made a spelling mistake, you had to go back and correct both cards. Invariably some cards ended up being spelt differently. If Anki required every field to be identical for matching, a lot of cards would not be correctly paired together, resulting in being shown the same question in forward and then reverse, etc.

Of course, such a matching algorithm doesn't work if you have multiple cards with the same question or answer. Upgrading such cards needs a separate approach where no attempt to group cards together is made.

It's impossible to reliably decide which algorithm to choose. Anki could make a guess which might improve the percentage of decks that don't need to be manually upgraded, and I'm not ruling that out - it's something I will look at before 0.3.0 is released.

resolve Wrote:Did you 'go online' using the special URL instead of the current stable version?

If you're referring to http://repose.ath.cx:5001/study then I get a server error when I click on it.

So you don't even get to the login page? I'll check the logs when I get home..

I click on the link in my previous post and I get a network error I'm afraid. I'm at work at the moment but I'm pretty sure it was the same at home this morning...

It's likely that your work doesn't allow HTTP connection on ports other than 80, in which case you'll need to test at home. Can anyone else confirm problems connecting to the test page? It's working fine here, at two different locations.

I went home, turned off my firewall, it now works. It was quite slow though. The synching seems to work as far as I can tell.

Same server as the stable version, and nothing should be noticably slower in the new version. I guess it was just bad timing.

Thanks for the report, and glad it's working :-)

How far are we from .3 Official? Is it just syncing that really needs to be worked on? Don't mind my questions if you're busy/can't predict exactly.

Hi Sutebun,

- Syncing needs more testing
- The deck upgrade process could be better for people with one-way cards
- A few easy to fix showstopper bugs need fixing

After beta8 I will probably move my personal deck over to 0.3.0, and if that goes well, I will freeze the deck format and start encouraging people to use the beta for actual study.

Hi resolve! Just thought I'd let you know that I have reported a bug, which would not allow me to import my *.anki flashcards at all.