Beta 8

The backend has stabilized, and unless some unforeseen bug reveals a flaw in
the design, the deck format will not change again.

I've done more work on importing, making it better at both guessing if you
have one-sided cards, and also more correctly differentiating between furigana
and comments. Even if you only have one sided cards, it should import
automatically this time without the need to go through the importing dialog.
I'd appreciate it if as many people as possible could try starting beta8 with
their old Anki deck and confirm that their old data has been imported
correctly. I'm pretty sure it'll work for JimmySeal's decks now - yorkii, how about you?

Also new is auto-generation of readings for Mandarin and Chinese (per-kanji -
not very intelligent at the moment) and proper cross-platform font support (at
least for 明朝).

And of course, a number of bugs have been fixed.

**NOTE**

I'm almost ready to declare the beta stable enough to use, but I'd like
another day or so of testing. Please wait just a little longer.

Also note that the upgrade process needs to know your previously selected
'target language', in order to decide whether your deck should be 'Japanese'
or 'English'. If you want the upgrade to do the right thing, remove the old
configuration file (Mac/Linux: rm -rf ~/.ankidev/config.db, Windows, find it in
Documents and Settings) and then copy the config.db file from ~/.anki to
~/.ankidev

The test server is at the same location as last time. Any data left there will
be lost when I release 0.3.0. Please don't rely on it.

Let me know how you go!

Study: http://repose.ath.cx:5001/study
Win: http://repose.cx/dump/anki-0.3.0-beta8.zip
Mac: http://repose.cx/dump/Anki.dmg
Linux: http://repose.cx/dump/beta8.tgz

Last edited by resolve (2007 August 03, 2:17 pm)

Hi Laurent,

Thanks for the feedback.

1) is difficult to fix without inconveniencing people. If you deck has many of these 'triangle' cards, Anki will choose a different importing algorithm, but if there are only a few, it decides that correcting spelling mistakes should be a higher priority. For example, if you have 2 cards:

２年間 : 2 years
2 years : 2年間

This will fail without fuzzy matching as the number is half width in one of the cards and full width in the other. People who've been using Anki for quite a while invariably have quite a few of these cards.

Note that you can still import those cards properly if you do a manual import via the 'import' dialog.

2) That is more serious. Could you send me the decks in question, in .fc format? Are you sure it's not related to number 1)? Also, upgrading doesn't touch the old file (a new file is made), so it should be safe to try it on your Japanese decks too.

Last edited by resolve (2007 August 03, 10:05 pm)

Cards show a given fact in a particular way. When you click on a card in the 'edit deck' window, the bottom half of the screen, which allows you to edit fields, is the 'fact editor'. I don't understand what you mean about being unable to find recently added ones, though. If you sort by creation date, you can't see them?

Ah. You're not supposed to be able to disable all the cards - the user interface won't let you. Unfortunately I forgot about that when I manually upgraded your deck. If you send it to me again I'll attach cards to the new information you've added. :-)

resolve wrote:

1) is difficult to fix without inconveniencing people.

[...]

Note that you can still import those cards properly if you do a manual import via the 'import' dialog.

As a matter of fact, I did try to import the deck, and that failed. Something to do with it not being UTF-8 (which is strange, as I switched my whole system to UTF-8 some time ago. Besides, the characters involved are in the ASCII range. Oh well.).

Actually the import worked (when I made the right choices) but some cards (the same ones) are still missing.

2) That is more serious. Could you send me the decks in question, in .fc format? Are you sure it's not related to number 1)?

Yes, I'm going to send you one deck where the discrepancy appears. And no, I'm not sure this behaviour is not related to the previous one, but I noted that the cards involved are not the same.

Also, upgrading doesn't touch the old file (a new file is made), so it should be safe to try it on your Japanese decks too.

Yeah, well I was probably being a bit paranoid... thanks for the reassurance

Last edited by Laurent (2007 August 04, 5:26 am)

yes, silly me, I realized that (about UTF-8) a few minutes after posting my message (I corrected it immediately, but too late for you...).

I sent two decks to the address indicated on your website.

Beta 9

I have frozen the deck structure now, so decks created with beta8+ will
continue to function on future versions. You can now start using Anki to study
seriously. Please save regularly (don't rely on the 'auto save after every __
questions', as it doesn't make a backup).

Also, please make sure that your deck has been upgraded properly before you
start to use the beta seriously.

New in Beta9 is a different sorting system for the cardlist, some more tweaks
to the importing code, and some small bugfixes.

**NOTE**

Beta9 still syncs to a testing server. Anything stored there will be lost when
0.3.0 is released, so please keep your local deck safe.

Also note that the upgrade process needs to know your previously selected
'target language', in order to decide whether your deck should be 'Japanese'
or 'English'. If you want the upgrade to do the right thing, remove the old
configuration file (Mac/Linux: rm -rf ~/.ankidev/config.db, Windows, find it in
Documents and Settings) and then copy the config.db file from ~/.anki to
~/.ankidev

Let me know how you go!

Study: http://repose.ath.cx:5001/study
Win: http://repose.cx/dump/anki-0.3.0-beta9.zip
Mac: http://repose.cx/dump/Anki.dmg
Linux: http://repose.cx/dump/beta9.tgz

(edit: silly typo)

Last edited by resolve (2007 August 08, 2:10 am)

watashimo: I'm assuming you're talking about 0.2.8. It certainly is possible to turn it off - just uncheck the 'add reverse entry' box at the bottom of the 'add cards' dialog.

I just started using Anki 0.2.8 a week or so ago.   Loving it so far.  I know priority is on 0.3 now but I thought it might not hurt to ask anyway.  I have one card that just suddenly jumped to a review gap of 120 days.  Any idea how that happened and how I can bring back to a more reasonable gap since I just started reviewing it.  All the other cards are fine.

Sorry for not making it clear.  It happened in 0.2.8.  I haven't tried out 0.3 yet.  Decided to wait for the final release.

JimmySeal: The reason why your deck didn't upgrade flawlessly on the server is because your 'target language' was set to English. The web interface used to ask you what language you want to study when you signed up, though that may have been disabled when you signed up. Consequently it's trying to put English text in the first column. If you upgrade the deck locally, it should work automatically.

If you just use the automatic upgrade locally, it will get it almost right: provided the target language was set to "Japanese" in Anki 0.2.8, and you copy the config.db file to ~/.ankidev as described in the beta instructions, it will automatically detect the deck as one sided. Your novels deck will be upgraded perfectly, and only the English meanings in your Chinese deck will be reversed. All you have to do is load your old .fc file via Deck -> Open.

Anki 0.2.8 only had the concept of "Japanese" and "not Japanese", the latter being primarily used by my English students. The standard Anki format involves two cards:

eat : 食べる
食べる : eat

Anki has to know which field is the 'expression' and which field is the 'meaning'. The reason all of your cards are being switched around is because Anki thinks that your deck is English (because it doesn't have a 'Japanese' tag in it).

You can accomplish the same thing as an automatic import by:

1. creating a new deck with 'Japanese'
2. going into the 'model properties' and turning off 'unique' for the 'meaning' field (since you have the same reading for multiple kanji)
3. on the 'cards' tab, deleting the 'production' card
4. importing your old deck

You can then return to the model properties, rename the model from 'Japanese' to  'Mandarin', change the 'features' and 'tags', and you'll be set. But making sure your target language is 'Japanese' and using the automatic upgrade will be faster :-)

Last edited by resolve (2007 August 05, 7:52 pm)