Loving it so far! Is there a manual?

[Selek]

I've just joined the beta test, and so far I'm really enjoying 4.0. I especially like the new flashcard features. The time-til-next-review in the SM2 profile is just what I wanted. It's more Anki-like. I also appreciate the bottom navigation bar, which makes it much easier to jump from a flashcard to a dictionary search and vice-versa. I'm also impressed with the character-writing testing. I think that was an option in legacy Pleco, but if it was, I never made use of it. It seems more accessible here. I do have a couple questions.

1. First, is there an online or in-app manual for 4.0? I Googled and poked around and couldn't find one. I'm guessing not, as of yet. If there is one and I missed it, then I'll read it and you can skip my remaining questions!

2. I have a deck of a few thousand words on my legacy Pleco. For now, I've incorporated it into a new SM2 profile. Should I now add new words to a new "learning" category and learn those in the "learning“ profile, then shift them into the main deck's category? I'm guessing that's how this is supposed to work. Incidentally, I like the learning mode a lot. It shows you words/sentences, and then quizzes you later.

3. I tested all the remaining profiles, and I got the basics of all of them -- except Meta. I couldn't figure out how to tell it what cards to use, and it refused to start because it had no access to cards. How do I get this one working? Also, why is it called "Meta" -- does it combine all the other profiles at once or something?

Thanks for all your work on this great app!

 

[mikelove]

Thanks!

1) No manual at the moment, we're still redoing a goodly portion of the settings.

2) They're actually intended to be self-contained, i.e. you can choose one or the other. Learning is kind of our alternative take on the Anki/Supermemo/etc model, where we a) ignore SRS entirely for review cards, since we're skeptical of its benefits for language learning when you're also interacting with that language out-of-band and a lot of people find its due dates / deadlines hard to work with, and b) manage the rollout of different 'sides' intelligently, so you start off learning to recognize a card and then move on to learning to write it.

It's flexible enough that you could easily also use Learning for some particular skill that you want to review independently and without affecting your main card scores in your SM2 profile - for example, stroke order or tones - but the intent was that we'd offer users a choice of learning systems and one of them would closely mirror Anki et al and another one would be our own thing. (we're probably going to rename them to "Learning (SM2)" and "Learning (Pleco)" or some such to make that clearer)

3) Meta is a way to pull from multiple profiles at the same time, basically, yeah. Neither it nor custom will still be around in the next beta, though we may roll them out again at some future point with more intelligible settings. Internally, the main thing we use it for is for emulating Anki's card 'side' business when you've imported an Anki deck - those have a different hidden profile for each side and then the main profile is a meta profile juggling all of them.

 

[Selek]

Thanks very much for your reply. "Learning" sounds just right for me, and indeed, so far I'm enjoying using it. As I learn, will it get tougher? Right now, for example, each word appears with both Hanzi and Pinyin, and I've never permitted myself to see Pinyin before. Or should I just configure the test settings manually always to hide the Pinyin? Likewise, will learning mode eventually start asking me to write characters? I'd love that. Again, I know I can configure test settings manually to require me to do that, so I'll do that if need be.

I'm also curious what the timers and "steps" mean. Is the program timing me, and grading cards according to how long I take?

Thanks again for the best Chinese learning app in existence, at least for us English speakers.

 

[mikelove]

You can configure it to hide Pinyin manually, yes - it's easy to tweak but our default is to adopt a somewhat relaxed attitude towards characters until you get into that second phase where you do indeed practice writing them.

It's not grading you - the timers are just for your own reference. The steps are set spacing between reviews, which gets longer as you keep answering correctly - we do adopt steps like this for cards/skills that you haven't learned yet, it's just that once you compete the initial set of steps (what Anki calls 'graduating') instead of continuing to review at increasing intervals we simply put the cards in a loop where we review all of them regularly, roughly based on whichever ones were reviewed least recently.

 

[Selek]

I don't mind the Pinyin for the time being, so long as eventually I get practice reading characters without Pinyin. I like that phase 2 will add character writing. Does it also remove the Pinyin? If not, I'll go ahead and remove it now.

Also, is this an appropriate place for feedback? If not, I can repost these comments in the proper thread. If so, here they are:

1. I miss the "History" feature! Is it an option somewhere? I use this feature all the time in legacy Pleco. Typically I use it when I want to see the difference between two similar characters. Today, for example, I was comparing 建 with 健康。The history feature lets me see them one atop the other. Maybe it could be a third tab, next to Chinese and English?

2. When I do a search, sometimes the result appears without the top bar -- the one that has the "+" sign indicating I can add it as a card (or the + sign encapsulated in a square, indicating it's already a card). The top bar does reappear if I tap almost any other link in the app -- the "characters" tab along the top, say, or the "settings" or "organize" or other menus along the bottom. I can provide a screenshot if I'm not being clear. I can't quite reproduce when exactly this happens -- often the top bar does appear, but sometimes it does not. Most likely if I've been doing something other than searches.

3. My favorite add-on is Outlier Essentials (Simplified), and it works great -- except that when I tap on a character in the top bar of search mode, the OSC summary is not formatted as nicely as it is in Legacy. In Legacy, COMPONENTS, MEANINGS, and STROKE ORDER all get a line break and a new paragraph, making them easier to distinguish from one another. Also, in Legacy, the Meanings paragraph is formatted so that each meaning gets its own paragraph and subparagraphs. (This formatting is correct if I go directly to OSC from the character tab.) I know this feature is intended to be a quick "shortcut," but I rely on it heavily in Legacy. I often don't feel like tapping characters, then scrolling down to the full OSC definition. Again, I can provide a screenshot if my meaning is not clear.

4. I love the new stroker order screen. Well done!

I don't use the reader or OCR functions very often, but I will test them when I get a chance. Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

1) Still there, just tap the clock icon at the top left corner of the screen (with the search box closed).

2) Thanks, we've seen this one or two times but haven't tracked it down yet.

3) Thanks, will investigate - the format was supposed to be more similar than that.

OCR has actually been totally rewritten for the next beta so you needn't spend your time on that for this one.

 

[Selek]

Thanks for your reply.! The History feature still works great! Thanks for pointing out the clock icon to me. Some further comments and questions:

1. My main deck, imported from Legacy, has two "invalid cards." I don't see a way to edit or re-validate them. I guess I should just delete them and re-create them?

2. In the Organize Cards section, where one could see a list of cards in a deck, Legacy by default lists each existing card's won-loss record and other info about it. This info is still available in 4.0, but I have to tap on a card to see it. In Legacy, I'd scroll down a list of cards (say, HSK level 2) and browse to see which cards I hadn't ever reviewed, then add those cards to my main deck. Now there's no easy way to see at a glance which cards in a list have never been reviewed. Is there a way to display this info?

3. As you suggested, I did add "hide pinyin" as a third test method to my main "Learning" profile, and it's working beautifully so far. I'm still curious whether cards will migrate from "show pinyin" to "hide pinyin" as I get to know them better. This *seems* to be happening, but I'm not entirely sure. (I certainly do see that cards migrate from "this is a new card, let's display both English & Chinese so you can study it" to "okay, now we'll display only hanzi/pinyin and you have to give its English meaning.")

4. I love that English-to-Chinese is included in the Learning profile by default. I'd never tried it before, and I'm very glad I did. For better or worse, when I speak Chinese, I'm often struggling to convert an English word into Chinese, so this practice is invaluable. (Eventually, of course, the goal is to think in Chinese, not to translate from English. I'm working on it!)

5. Finally, is the Learning profile designed to work with very large decks? Right now my main deck has 3000 cards or so. Can I just keep adding cards to it, potentially from the entire HSK series, and rely on the app to display cards that I need to practice, and (mostly) hide those that I don't? Or is there a natural limit to the size of a deck, beyond which I should just make a second, more "advanced" deck?

Thanks again for having taken the time to reply to all my comments and suggestions. I'm continually impressed by the support for this app.

 

[mikelove]

1) Are they invalid because they link to dictionary entries that are no longer valid? You could use the 'remap' command in card info to fix that.

2) Not at the moment but it's been requested a few times so we'll most likely address that soon.

3) The only migration at the moment is from the recognize -> recall stages, but at one point we had an option for different test types to only enter the rotation at a certain point in each stage (or in a single stage) and we could certainly look at bringing that back.

4) Thanks!

5) It should be able to manage that, it's just that you'll see your 'review' cards less often if there are more of them. But if you divide your ultimate number of review cards by the number you expect to review per day, that will give you a rough idea of how often you'll see them and you can judge from that whether it's often enough. (on the other hand, if it's too often, you can use the 'minimum spacing' option to set a minimum amount of time between card reviews, beyond which it'll just tell you you don't have anything else due to review)

 

[Selek]

I chose the "remap" option for the two invalid cards, but the only option is "none," and I couldn't see how to add a dictionary to remap to. I suppose I can just make new cards for each, and then delete the invalid cards. I'm happy to do that, but I thought maybe I should test the "remap" function for you first. I must be misunderstanding how it works.

Incidentally, I'm reviewing 150 cards a day, and I now get a pleasant mix of several test types: pure "learning" display for new cards; display of Hanzi & Pinyin; display of Hanzi only (I added this as a third question type, along with your default two); display of English only, asking me to supply Chinese and self-grade; multiple-choice cards; tone tests; and, most surprising, display of Hanzi (and maybe Pinyin, I don't recall), asking me to hand-write.

As you know, version 4.0 now tells me how many cards I have waiting before I decide whether to start a test. I thought this might feel naggy, but somehow I actually am more chill about it now. Maybe it's because you said the Learning profile has a more relaxed vibe, lol. I do my 150 and call it a day. I'll probably drop down to 100 or fewer in due course.

I am really enjoying the hand-writing feature so far. I used to use ToFu Learn to practice writing, and I've avoided Skritter because of its subscription fee -- and because I'm wary of adding too many flashcards to my daily routine. Your system is better, for me, than either of those options. I like it better than ToFu Learn because you let me review the character after I get it wrong -- view stroke order, practice writing, etc. I like 4.0 better than Skritter because your writing tests are mixed in with other types of questions, providing variety and less boredom. I have no idea whether this feature has changed since Legacy, but I really like it. My only tiny issue is that sometimes I find it a bit hard to select the second or third character in a multi-character word. But tapping carefully on the right spot does work.

 

[mikelove]

I chose the "remap" option for the two invalid cards, but the only option is "none," and I couldn't see how to add a dictionary to remap to. I suppose I can just make new cards for each, and then delete the invalid cards. I'm happy to do that, but I thought maybe I should test the "remap" function for you first. I must be misunderstanding how it works.

That means there aren't any dictionary entries for those cards. My best guess is that they were pointing to entries in CC-CEDICT that were removed due to being invalid (e.g. a corrupted version of a word) - either that or they link to a dictionary that's not installed, but it would generally alert you about those.

Your system is better, for me, than either of those options. I like it better than ToFu Learn because you let me review the character after I get it wrong -- view stroke order, practice writing, etc. I like 4.0 better than Skritter because your writing tests are mixed in with other types of questions, providing variety and less boredom.

Thanks!

My only tiny issue is that sometimes I find it a bit hard to select the second or third character in a multi-character word. But tapping carefully on the right spot does work.

Thanks - that should be fixable, we'll investigate.