skinnyneo
Member
Registered: 2007-03-07
Posts: 148
I've been looking at different ways to try and take RevTK with me while I am on the road, be it PDA, Nintendo DS, or other (other then a laptop). I was wondering if anybody here who might have an iPod Touch or iPhone if the RevTK site works works just like using a regular computer?
markl11
Member
Registered: 2007-07-24
Posts: 32
skinnyneo wrote:
....I was wondering if anybody here who might have an iPod Touch or iPhone if the RevTK site works works just like using a regular computer?
Well, I have never tried RevTK with my iPod Touch, but I do occasionally browse the web with it, and one thing to be aware of is that the battery runs down super quick if you are browsing. I am not sure what the battery life is when browsing, but it's very short.
Mark
volfy
New member
From: San Francisco
Registered: 2006-03-15
Posts: 3
I do 90% of my reviews on my iPhone. It works very well. The review section is fast enough. Loading the page initially takes awhile on the EDGE network but then it's fine.
The study section works except you can't type a number into the search box and pull up that frame. The reason is, you can't hit *Enter* on an input box that isn't in a form, and that input box is not in a form (it has a JavaScript event handler to see if Enter has been pressed). I worked around this by saving a bookmark going to the first Kanji, and then I edit the number in the URL if I want to go to a different number.
If you type in a keyword, the autocomplete drop down pops up and you can navigate that way.
The study pages load very slowly on the EDGE network. I wonder, does kanji.kooii.com compress the pages before sending them?
ファブリス
Administrator
From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-06-14
Posts: 4021
Website
I'm not such gzip compression is on, but then the Study pages aren't very long either, if you compare to your typical newspaper article, google search results etc. It's using quite a few Javascript files though, with the prototype library and the keyword list (for the dropdown) weighing in together at ~120KB already. This should be cached by the browser but I've found from looking at the server logs that even Firefox reloads them every once in a while, when the files clearly have not changed. Haven't figured a way to optimize this so far, there are some clever techniques but they require full control on the web server, meaning pricey dedicated serevr setups 
AJAX requests respond faster in general, and it seems on portables like the iPhone which support AJAX this is really useful in that not only less data is transferred, but also the scripts on the page and the page itself (the DOM tree) doesn't have to be completely reloaded and reevaluated in the browser.
I will eventually convert the Study page to AJAX, as this will make the page faster for all users (not only iPhone) but also reduce bandwidth usage from the server.
meolox
Member
Registered: 2007-08-31
Posts: 386
I'm really excited about the new updates to the ipod touch/phone, If I see a RevTK or SRS software on the app store when it comes out that will settle it for me and I'll be buying an ipod touch.
Having EDICT or another dictionar on the go would be great too, I really like the kanji search function they've got over at jisho.org, they've got a web version of it up for the ipodtouch/phone but I'd love to see a native version.
Last edited by meolox (2008 June 11, 8:46 am)
@Jarvik7
If memory serves, I think OS X actually already does handwriting recognition via Inkwell, but I'm guessing it's Romaji only. I agree that that'd be brilliant, but unfortunately I somehow doubt they'll do it. Then again, someone went through the trouble of putting a JP dictionary in Leopard, so maybe I'm being too pessimistic. Hopefully I am.
The ideal situation would be to have a proper dictionary available on the iPhone, not EDICT/Eijiro. Again, they're good for when you're in a pinch, but are a poor substitute for something more professional like Kenkyusha, or even Genius.
Only thing I'm worried about is that the kanji input is actually one of the Chinese, not Japanese, input methods. The JP input methods are keyboard and Japanese keitai style. Is this going to be a problem for certain Japanese kanji? Taking into consideration that the Chinese input would also be separated into Traditional and Simplified modes, is that going to make things even more complicated in terms of JP kanji input?
Or am I worrying too much and is JP kanji and Chinese kanji/hanzi close enough to where this shouldn't be an issue? I know there's overlap, but I don't know how much, and I especially don't know whether JP trends more towards simplified or traditional hanzi.
Oh yes, in regards to flash cards on the iPhone, I emailed Drew McCormack(?), the programmer that does Mental Case and asked if he had any iPhone plans. He said that yes, an iPhone client was in the works.
Personally, I'd recommend Mental Case over iFlash (I'm a longtime user of both), in that it actually does proper spaced repetition, has a quick study feature (it'll pop up a small window and go through your cards while you're at the computer; but this doesn't affect your score), a great interface, and a quick add feature that lets you bring up the program and add a card with one keyboard shortcut -- great for quick-adding new words/sentences/whatever you randomly come across.
Floatingweed5
Member
From: Scotland UK
Registered: 2007-03-10
Posts: 120
I tried Mental Case a while ago, not long after it was first released, so my impressions may be a bit out of date. It seemed to me that Mental Case was designed in a light-weight manner compared to other flashcard programs - more for casual, rather than hardcore studying. Specifically, it seemed to be targeting a niche in the fast growing GTD and productivity market.
At the time there was no way to mark cards as failed, meaning that all cards, difficult or easy, would go through the system at the same rate. There was an enforced time limit on each card which couldn't be turned off - meaning that if you wanted to spend a bit of time studying a troublesome sentence you couldn't. There didn't seem to be much scope for adding extra sides or supplementary information to cards. In the end the casual feel of the program turned me away.
By contrast iFlash has a very functional look but has a great engine below the hood and enough customization to tailor it to a number of different setups, study methods and large collections of cards. It doesn't use the Supermemo system, but it has a customizable Leitner system like this site, which is also "proper" spaced repetition 
. It has proved to be a great choice so far, and only the arrival of Anki on the scene has made me question my loyalty - the proposed iphone app making me stick with iFlash for now.
Anyway, the focus and feature set of Mental Case may have changed somewhat, so I'll give it another spin for some vocabulary that's been bothering me. There were many things I liked about it, and I see that it's half price throughout June if anyone else has been considering purchasing!
Yeah, I first started using Mental Case when it came out, and I had exactly the same complaints about it, actually.
Luckily, most of those issues have been fixed, thankfully. It actually scores cards now (pass/fail, not 1-5 or whatever). They definitely should've done that from the beginning, but better late than never, I suppose.
You can also just pause the slideshow (spacebar) and then use the arrow keys to go through at your pace. That's what I do.
Anyway, it's matured a ton, and is actively developed these days. Plus Drew said that .mac (I guess mobileme now) support is planned for 2.0, which if, like me, you have a desktop and laptop and iPhone, would be just absolutely brilliant.
I do suggest you check it out again. iFlash is overall more flexible, but the Mental Case way of doing things having grown on me (I didn't like it much at first either), along with its better upgrade schedule (iFlash's developer is a full-time student), it's become a strong contender.
