Has anyone ever tried a program called Anki?

http://repose.cx/anki/index.html

It looks quite slick, its free, opensource, multi-platform, and has a web & phone interface too. I think I will give it a try.

Well.. It sure looks good. Much better than the last such program I tried. Too hard to use.. =/ I'll try it out too!

Web reviews!

This is what I've been looking for! The only reason I keep reviewing on Fabrice's site is that I can access it at home, at work, or at my boyfriend's place. Now I can practice vocab using Leitner spacing and web synchronization. Neat!

Well... I tried it with one of the sample sets (JLPT4) and it seems pretty good.

Then I generated a Heisig RTK1 file for it, and hit a snag. It doesn't keep the cards in order when I import them, which doesn't really work since I don't want to review Kanji I haven't yet learned.

The solution would be to import items gradually only as I learned them; a minor inconvenience. I might look to see if the program could be changed to keep things in their original order at 1st review.

Did anyone get it to work on a Mac? I tried but the image won't mount.

Oh my god, the phone interface, will I ever use anything else again? Thanks for this link!

Mac: the download was slow but it is OK, size = 26,4 Mo. I am curently looking at the example decks. (10.4.8, not up to date, on G3 500 MHZ, still working good by the way)

holy s**t!!! this is almost exactly what I have been looking for.

I haven't installed it yet, but from the screen shots it looks great. If I can add loads of stuff to cards and not just one word translations, I think I could have found myself a mnemosyne beater. (the current love of my study life!) Also, the schedule algorithm is extremely important. I think that the algorithm here is excellent. Let's see if this software can get something going as good.

I did try it on my au mobile and it worked perfectly.

ill definitely be watching this software!

I've been using mnemosyne, but I really like the web synchronization idea. I've been uploading and downloading .mem files from an FTP server and it's a real pain. I also take issue with mnemosyne's minimalist design (no hotkeys, nearly zero help pages, opaque scheduling algorithm). I will give this Anki a try.

Anyone who uses a cell phone in Japan knows that packets are pricey, but the Anki site spells it out. I will probably not be accessing this program from my phone much.
http://anki.repose.cx/account/phone

Huh, it adds flash cards in forward and reverse order and there's no way to turn that off. That's really annoying. Anki may not be ready for me yet.

It works fine on my mac.

What a great program!!!

I, too, had been looking for this exact program.

Now... does anyone want to share card sets because I'm too lazy to type in my own?

From the website, it looks really impressive. Is Damien a user over here too?

Anyone using the app got time for a few questions?

1. How many sides do flashcards have?

2. Importing text files. How does it work? Tab seperated?

3. Can you disable the vice versa option?

Any other comments re: usability.

Cheers,

Quote:Huh, it adds flash cards in forward and reverse order and there's no way to turn that off. That's really annoying. Anki may not be ready for me yet.

It looks like the vice versa function can't be disabled for now, but I just e-mailed the creator begging him to add that feature.

Importing a tab-separated file works fine. I just exported from Mnemosyne and the import went smoothly. It even weeds out duplicate cards. And on top of that, if you import a file, it does not create vice-versa cards, so I may make my cards in another program and import them in the meantime.

Despite a few flaws, this program really is incredible.

JimmySeal Wrote:And on top of that, if you import a file, it does not create vice-versa cards, so I may make my cards in another program and import them in the meantime.

Hmm, nice observation. I'll use Mnemosyne to make cards then, as Anki complete blasts Mnemosyne out of the water.

However, I'll have to say that the program is quite unstable and, in the past two hours, crashed no less than three times. Given that it's very new, this is more than excusable, but I'm just warning some people out there.

Once the website is fully functional, Anki will be the complete spaced repetition package, well, at least as "free" and "Japanese" are concerned.

So, thanks, vosmiura! Very nice, indeed.

JimmySeal Wrote:if you import a file, it does not create vice-versa cards

As far as I'm concerned, that in effect does turn vice versa off. I always make my cards (for Twinkle) in a text file for import.

How about number of sides? Is it like Mnemosyne where you only get 2?

The cards only have 2 sides.


I've noticed one major flaw in the program. If you plan on using web synchronization, don't count on having multiple decks, or sharing the program among users on one computer. Though it lets you save different decks in different files, it seems to not differentiate them in the online storage. I created a new deck in a new file, and selected synchronize, and 360 cards were added to my deck. That's not the correct behavior.
Similarly, the username and password are set in the program settings. There's no user login/select feature. I imagine that loading a deck, changing users, and synchronizing in the wrong order could create veritable chaos.

Synchronization seems like a really tricky process with a lot of potential problems. It looks like this program has tackled it quite well, but there are still a lot of kinks to work out.

Even if you install multiple copies of the program, it seems to store settings in a central location, so that's not a workaround either. Maybe you could do it with separate Windows accounts.

i emailed the guy too to turn off the auto "add vice versa option". something that I just don't need.

Something else I have asked the guy about is line breaks, too. at the moment they don't seem to be supported and I use them A LOT in my question and answer files.

If this program is open-source and he gets a bit of a forum going, I'm sure people will exchange ideas n such and I think it could be the ultimate flashcard review system for Japanese.

He just needs an algorithm for scheduling as good as the one here!

<3 reviewing the kanji's schedule algorithm!

JimmySeal Wrote:I also take issue with mnemosyne's minimalist design (no hotkeys, nearly zero help pages, opaque scheduling algorithm).

What do you mean by "Hotkeys"?

do you mean this:

space = show answer
1 - 5 = how well you remembered the answer.

JimmySeal Wrote:I've noticed one major flaw in the program. If you plan on using web synchronization, don't count on having multiple decks, or sharing the program among users on one computer.

that could be a problem. Although I know you should mingle all the stuff that you want to study into one big file, I actually have two separate files for grammar and vocab.

yorkii Wrote:

JimmySeal Wrote:I've noticed one major flaw in the program. If you plan on using web synchronization, don't count on having multiple decks, or sharing the program among users on one computer.

that could be a problem. Although I know you should mingle all the stuff that you want to study into one big file, I actually have two separate files for grammar and vocab.

Weird, I thought I tried that. Looks like I get the dunce cap for today.

yorkii Wrote:

JimmySeal Wrote:I've noticed one major flaw in the program. If you plan on using web synchronization, don't count on having multiple decks, or sharing the program among users on one computer.

that could be a problem. Although I know you should mingle all the stuff that you want to study into one big file, I actually have two separate files for grammar and vocab.

Anki doesn't provide separate categories either, so there isn't even that option. I'd been working with three mnemosyne files:
Chinese Hanzi
Japanese words from ローマの物語
Japanese words from novels

each of those three files themselves were divided into separate categories.

I don't think there's anything wrong with going over different areas of knowledge (Chinese, vocabulary, grammar) separately, and it would be nice to separate stuff into different decks with sub-categories.

Third post in a row. One thing I especially like is the graph feature (I love graphs):


The first graph is particularly neat. It lets you know how much work lies up ahead, and when, so you know to be ready when 400 cards are about to expire the next day.

Bugger! Its still not letting me download the .dmg for my mac. I think its because im running 10.3.9. I get a verification failed message.

Is everyone who got it running on a mac using 10.4?

Im off to sulk now...

yorkii Wrote:Something else I have asked the guy about is line breaks, too. at the moment they don't seem to be supported and I use them A LOT in my question and answer files.

There seems to be some support (not sure how much) for HTML in the Q&A entries. <br> will give you a line feed.

I have a few things to add:

1) I don't know about Au and DoComo but Softbank has packet shihoudai that caps expense at 4410 yen after tax...I use that much in my business english classes when I need a quick photo of something or another. So for me, the cost of the mobile access is already taken care of. Even if that were not the case, the ability to easily review while in a queue or on a train/bus would be worth the 5000 yen a month.

2) I noticed the online portion seems to lack support for multiple files too, but I found a work around already. First open the file you want to work with and then sync with the site. Then manually delete the cards that were added to your desktop file from the site. After that sync again and you will only have the cards you want to work with both on the site and in your deck.

3) A similar workaround for categories is to just add a category word and a line break (<br>) at the front all your cards. That is basically the same thing and allows for sorting as well.

JimmySeal Wrote:The cards only have 2 sides.

Well, more like 2.5 sides. There's a special Hiragana field, which always appears with the answer, whether you're reviewing from English to Japanese with Kanji or vice-versa. I really like this behavior, and prefer it to a three-sided flash card. However, the Mac version still has a few quirks.

In the dialog boxes, hitting enter activates the 'Cancel' button, and not 'OK'. Very annoying.

A really jarring flaw is that the preferences store my user account password in clear text and not in dots. That and there seems to be no option for changing my password.

I'm also overwhelmed by the many "grading" options from 0 to 4 (or 5?). I'd like to stick with just a simple YES or NO... and maybe the occasional EASY.

The program is still a version 0 product. It's a bit rough around the edges, but I'm already liking it a lot. I can't wait for future updates. Whee!