New Flashcards Engines Questions

[Shun]

Hi,

I've been studying for some time with the new 4.0 beta flashcards engines, and it worked well throughout. I have a few questions:

• If I add a new profile, which of the following would be the exact Anki emulation? "Learning" may come closest, but with its many features and time interval settings, I think it differs.

• The Legacy profile is intended to emulate Pleco 3.2's engine, but I found that in both the Legacy and Simple learning modes, Repeat incorrect cards now only supports a single repetition, when Pleco 3.2 supported two. Is there a way to bring two repetitions (with different time intervals) back? Can I configure the Drill profile to behave like the Simple profile, just with more repetitions when I answer a question incorrectly?
• Apart from the differences in the choice of settings, if I configure the same settings, is there any difference in behavior between the Legacy and Simple profiles?
• Is Learning now the top-of-the line SRS engine?
• Documenting all the new flashcards features and settings well is going to be a huge job. I'm just wondering, did you perhaps write the User manual as you designed the app, to lighten the load at the end?

Regards,

Shun

 

[mikelove]

If I add a new profile, which of the following would be the exact Anki emulation? "Learning" may come closest, but with its many features and time interval settings, I think it differs.

SM2 is the one intended to emulate Anki. You get a slightly tweaked version of it if you import an actual Anki deck, one that's designed to properly handle Anki-specific stuff like independent scheduling of different card sides.

The Legacy profile is intended to emulate Pleco 3.2's engine, but I found that in both the Legacy and Simple learning modes, Repeat incorrect cards now only supports a single repetition, when Pleco 3.2 supported two. Is there a way to bring two repetitions (with different time intervals) back? Can I configure the Drill profile to behave like the Simple profile, just with more repetitions when I answer a question incorrectly?

Legacy should support two repeats - do you not see an option for a second interval if you configure repeat incorrect 'during test'?

Apart from the differences in the choice of settings, if I configure the same settings, is there any difference in behavior between the Legacy and Simple profiles?

They're actually not all that similar - Simple really doesn't do very much algorithmically, it shows you whatever cards you ask it to and doesn't try to manage their repeat intervals or whatever in any way.

Is Learning now the top-of-the line SRS engine?

From our perspective, yes, but it's not doing much of anything that Legacy (or SM2) doesn't also do; these are all following the same basic principles. And in fact in its default configuration Learning doesn't do any algorithmic SRS at all, reflecting our feeling that that's more trouble than it's worth for most users - it advances learning cards through a series of increasing interval steps, but once they're learned, it reviews them roughly in order of how long it's been since they were last reviewed. (you can however configure it to do the whole easiness factor / interval thing)

Documenting all the new flashcards features and settings well is going to be a huge job. I'm just wondering, did you perhaps write the User manual as you designed the app, to lighten the load at the end?

No, I - correctly - expected the design to change significantly during the betas and didn't want to waste the effort documenting something so ephemeral.

 

[Shun]

Thanks for your clarifications!

Legacy should support two repeats - do you not see an option for a second interval if you configure repeat incorrect 'during test'?

You're right, I was too quick.

They're actually not all that similar - Simple really doesn't do very much algorithmically, it shows you whatever cards you ask it to and doesn't try to manage their repeat intervals or whatever in any way.

I see, the Legacy profile of course has all the different testing modes from v3.2 hidden inside it. Now it's clear.

No, I - correctly - expected the design to change significantly during the betas and didn't want to waste the effort documenting something so ephemeral.

Of course, documentation of a finished product is usually the quickest part.

Regards, Shun