2.0.1b1 is rapidly approaching release, but there's one thing I'm still weighing the merits of adding which I wanted to ask about here.
It's a new Card Selection option tentatively called "Vocabulary Builder," and basically it's designed to (finally) help with the problem of importing a bunch of new vocabulary and then having too many cards to review at once. (the category "Split" option was supposed to do this, but it's a bit inelegant and nobody seems to be using it much anyway) The way it does this is by limiting the number of "not yet learned" (which probably means they're below a user-defined score threshold) cards that it'll make available in sessions at any given time; if a card has never been studied before, it won't be brought up for the first time until the pool of "not yet learned" cards is below a user-defined size (say 50). There'd likely also be a preference to choose in what order cards would be added to the pool - randomly, by order created, or by a mix of the two (so that cards created on a given day would all be added before cards created on the next day, but not in the exact order they were added, saving you from having to slog through 50 "an"s and "ba"s before getting to other letters of the alphabet in a big list like HSK). There might also be a setting to choose what ratio of new versus old cards you'd like to study in each session, though that's still up in the air (and would probably be too difficult to implement with Endless sessions, so it wouldn't be applied in those, at least not in 2.0.1).
In theory this concept could work for both frequency-adjusted and repetition-spaced sessions, so since the code would be almost the same we'd probably try to offer it in both. It's not actually that difficult to code, either. The big question, however, is whether it makes enough of a difference at all to be worth implementing - the category system already offers the ability to gradually add small groups of new words to your testing pool, so in some respects this is just a lower-maintenance way of achieving the same thing, but that alone might be enough to make a big difference for new users who don't want to take the time to learn the ins and outs of the category system - if we make this the default setting, then really all somebody needs to do is import a list of vocabulary words they want to learn and the software will take care of the rest, no need to organize them at all unless there's a particular reason (like textbook chapters) to do so.
It's a new Card Selection option tentatively called "Vocabulary Builder," and basically it's designed to (finally) help with the problem of importing a bunch of new vocabulary and then having too many cards to review at once. (the category "Split" option was supposed to do this, but it's a bit inelegant and nobody seems to be using it much anyway) The way it does this is by limiting the number of "not yet learned" (which probably means they're below a user-defined score threshold) cards that it'll make available in sessions at any given time; if a card has never been studied before, it won't be brought up for the first time until the pool of "not yet learned" cards is below a user-defined size (say 50). There'd likely also be a preference to choose in what order cards would be added to the pool - randomly, by order created, or by a mix of the two (so that cards created on a given day would all be added before cards created on the next day, but not in the exact order they were added, saving you from having to slog through 50 "an"s and "ba"s before getting to other letters of the alphabet in a big list like HSK). There might also be a setting to choose what ratio of new versus old cards you'd like to study in each session, though that's still up in the air (and would probably be too difficult to implement with Endless sessions, so it wouldn't be applied in those, at least not in 2.0.1).
In theory this concept could work for both frequency-adjusted and repetition-spaced sessions, so since the code would be almost the same we'd probably try to offer it in both. It's not actually that difficult to code, either. The big question, however, is whether it makes enough of a difference at all to be worth implementing - the category system already offers the ability to gradually add small groups of new words to your testing pool, so in some respects this is just a lower-maintenance way of achieving the same thing, but that alone might be enough to make a big difference for new users who don't want to take the time to learn the ins and outs of the category system - if we make this the default setting, then really all somebody needs to do is import a list of vocabulary words they want to learn and the software will take care of the rest, no need to organize them at all unless there's a particular reason (like textbook chapters) to do so.