suggestion: the perfect flashcards / "anki" review

[gandq]

dear mike,


i know there are several threads concerning the flashcards, but i admit that i was too lazy to read them all. so i don't know how much of this was already suggested by other people. i hope you don't mind.

i thought about the perfect flashcard tool and you can find my suggestions at the end of the post. in between i want to sum up my experience with flashcard programs: why they are so important and which flaws do they have. i do this hoping that pleco will create the ?ber-flashcard-tool. please skip if not interested.


as i am studying german-chinese translation and interpretation, creating my own vocabulary cards is of great importance to me. not only for learning them, but also because i learn a lot of words that cannot be found in a dictionary, so i need to create my own one.
i also think about it as an important tool for my professional life later on, because there will be speacial terminology to be learned/reviewed/accessed for different interpretation jobs.

i am currently using anki (http://www.anki.com) as my vocabulary tool. before that i used a freeware app (http://www.andante.org/chinese.html). both programs have the advantage that one can enter new vocabulary using a pc and then load it onto the pda.

that's the main reason why i never really used the oxford flashcards. another reason is that i am german and flash cards consisting of entries from an E-C dictionary just don't suit my needs. i need my own entries and i need to create a lot of them quickly - best done with a computer and not on the pda itself.


the freeware app soon became too limited and i was very happy to find anki, as it has the following positive features:

- attributes for each entry can be personalized and every term can be tagged as belonging to any number of categories. that way it is possible to review only a selected number of terms in a database, for example all terms beloning to category A, C and E (i.g. lesson / context of term (i.g. economy, science etc.) / Teacher XY / Chengyu and so on).

- it is easy to keep a large number of databases on the handheld without losing oversight

- on the pda one can chose which attributes of a term one wants on the front and which on the back of a 'card'.

- it also features a sketchpad and

- each term can be marked. that way one can review only marked terms later on


negative:

- editing terms on the pc is a bit primitive. there is no dragging of terms or categories to another position and no review feature.

- there is no way to search the databases on the palm. this is possible with the freeware program (using the 'find' mode of palm os). biggest flaw

- there is no AND option for selecting the categories of terms to review, very annoying as my databases get bigger and bigger and i might not want to review all of the terms belonging to category A, but maybe only those who belong to A AND C AND which are marked. this is the second biggest flaw.

- no quick review mode, only study mode with front of card and back of card for each term

- no hints, the 'hint' button will show the whole card

- no large screen support



THE IDEAL FLASHCARD APPLICATION:

- desktop program for creation of new entries (with import option for tab-delimited textfiles etc. with older vocabulary)

- integration into pleco dict (vocabulary cards are included in searches, pleco dict entries can be added to flash cards). at least a possiblility to search the flashcard databases

- categorisation of terms in order to have a flexible way of selecting the terms to be reviewed

- sketch pad for practicing characters on the move

- i like the front/back layout for a 'card' - feels just like paper flash cards

- quick review mode: all attributes of a term are shown at once

- some study modes (e.g review recently entered terms - that way a term would need a date tag / card box system etc.)



that's about everything that comes to my mind right now.
the oxford flashcards were rather a nice bonus, in my mind. with plecodict you could take it a huge step further and make them a powerful tool for students and professionals alike.
thanks for taking my suggestions into consideration.


cheers,





jo.

 

[mikelove]

We've looked at Anki - some of those features aren't really practical for our revamped flashcard system, but many of them will be showing up in PlecoDict 1.0.

We're not going to have a desktop flashcard editor in the near future (it would have to be able to read from the dictionaries as well and at that point we'd basically be creating a desktop version of the entire program) but PlecoDict will (and in testing already does) support import from text files. Custom flashcards are now integrated into the dictionary (along with any other custom entries you wish to add on your Palm), categories are supported for flashcard lists, the sketchpad already works in Oxford E&C and will continue to be offered as an option in PlecoDict, the front/back layout can easily be approximated with our new field display options, quick review is another feature that works in Oxford E&C and will continue working in PlecoDict, and PlecoDict supports a range of study modes that dwarf anything you might find in Anki.

Our attribute system doesn't work quite like theirs, each card can only be assigned to a single word list (though you can create duplicate copies of them in additional lists), but we do offer a system where you can assign a card any combination of up to 32 user-selectable "flags" - you can enable them while you're reviewing a card, batch-assign them to all the cards in a list or set defaults for different situations (so for example you'd set the "learned in class" flag to default to on at the start of every Chinese class, thus marking all the cards you added during class with that flag). And when reviewing flashcards you can choose to only study ones which include a particular flag.

 

[gandq]

when can we have it? / desktop tool


dear mike,

that sounds really nice for the most part.

i know you hear this question very often, but when will the flashcard feature be available for testing/use?


i still would want to urge you to reconsider offering some kind interaction with vocabulary lists created on the pc.

a simple program for that purpose would be ideal.

it is the fastest way of creating vocabulary and, in my opinion, of crucial importance for productivity. i would never have entered all the vocabulary i have over the last two years using stylus input on the palm (although it would be very cool to be able to edit the entries on the palm and correct mistakes for example). managing and organizing the lists and their content on the palm is also not the optimal solution.

the possibility of importing text files is a first step. but what if i import it, then add more vacabulary to the list on the pc? would it mean that i should only import completed lists? but then, when is a vocabulary list complete?

i have databases for each course and continue to add new words as the school year advances. using the categorization feature of anki, i can tag them with the context i learned them within and the general class that it belongs to, like 'chengyu' for example. this way, the databases unlimitedly expandable (the missing AND option for selecting of cards to review i very annoying in that respect).

how will text import work in pleco dict?
i also don't quite understand the tagging-feature you mentioned.

another thing that would be important is text export. will plecodict be able to exprot tab-delimited text?

a syncronisation feature would be cool, but not really necessary. ( the only program i know of that includes this is 'mobile tutor', http://www.mobiletutor.com - check out the desktop module, it has some interesting features, although entering new words is not as convenient as with the 'anki builder' and it does not support chinese).
still, the possibility of editing entries on the palm could make the list files on the desktop become outdated soon and could lead to data loss if installed again, overwriting the newer palm data.


btw: the full title for this post was supposed to read " 'anki' review" (seemed to be a too long title. i changed it now). 'perfect flashcard tool' is what plecodict should become. i am not at all copletely contend with anki, it is just the best program i could find so far.


all that being said: do you need a beta tester for plecodict's flashcard feature? I would be glad to assist you.

cheers,




jo.

 

[mikelove]

I don't have a firm date on flashcard availability - the basic feature changes and interface redesign should be done within a week, but it may be a few more weeks after that before we've got everything stable and relatively bug-free. (and it's closely tied in to the custom dictionary entry system, which still has a lot of bugs) We're not really looking for testers - as soon as we've got something ready for public consumption we'll roll it into a public PlecoDict beta.

PlecoDict does indeed include text export - between that and the text importer you can get most of the functionality of a dedicated desktop program like Anki-builder with only a little more effort. Or if you simply keep track of which words you've already sync'ed to your Palm, you can easily stick the new ones in a text file whenever you feel like importing them. But if you make most of your flashcards based on dictionary entries it really doesn't take that much longer on Palm than on PC.

Certainly if we had unlimited resources we'd love to produce a desktop flashcard program (probably even with full-fledged synchronization capabilities), but we don't, and there are several other projects that are a lot higher on our priority list, chief among them the Pocket PC port and our new handwriting recognizer. Once those (and PlecoDict 2.0) are wrapped up, we'll look at where we are, how things are selling and what the reaction to the new flashcard system is like and decide from there if we want to do a desktop flashcard editor - it might tie into another strategy we're working on (one I'm not ready to talk about yet) so it's certainly possible we could end up producing one eventually.

The tagging feature is a little difficult to explain, it's probably easiest just to see it. Text import reads in a tabbed text file (from an SD card or from a PalmDoc or Memo Pad file in RAM) and at your option tries to match the words to dictionary entries (otherwise it'll just use your definitions, if any) - export uses the same tabbed format.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

 

[gandq]

as always, a very quick and thourough answer. thank you.

don't get me wrong, i am certainly looking foreward to the pleco flashcards and the day i can get rid of anki. the possibility to have your own entries included in the dictionary alone would make me switch, but i am sure there will be many more good reasons when it finally is available.


greetings,





jo.

 

[haraldalbrecht]

PlecoDict does indeed include text export - between that and the text importer you can get most of the functionality of a dedicated desktop program like Anki-builder with only a little more effort.

Just my two fen: the text import and export should be already quite convenient for us users. Did I understand it right that im/export is going to be based on Unicode? If yes, this would probably solve many problems (well, I'm rather not thinking about issues such as surrogate characters for the moment).

On a related topic: I am not sure whether this is something in your line of thought or product strategy: what about providing the import/export functionality as a small set of Java classes? The individual flashcards themselves could be modelled as sets of key and value pairs, with some predefined keys, such as Pinyin=, Chinese=, Translation=, et cetera. My rationale for this suggestion is that on one hand you would be free to modify your internal database format as you like while others could use your classes for creating applications. The classes could act as mediators between PlecoDict and external applications, such as a flashcard editor.

For instance, a flashcard editor application should be rather straightforward realizable in open source development: oversimplified, it is a set of lessions containing cards. The interface can be a table swing widget with tabs representing lessons. This application could then use your classes for directly writing PlecoDict files, or it can write some text or XML-based file. As far as I understand (at least I think so but I might be perfectly wrong), it could be even possible to immediately register the pdbs created with the Palm Desktop for installation at the next hotsync.

 

[mikelove]

First off, text export/import will work with GB, Big5, or Unicode (UTF8), and PlecoDict's built-in fonts cover the entire CJK Unified block (we're thinking about also including ZhuYin and Hiragana/Katakana in the final version). There are a few tiny subsets of extensions A and B covered too (the B's are all in the Private Use area) since ABC includes a significant number of unusual characters.

As far as providing import/export through Java classes, it isn't entirely out of the question, but creating any sort of external code interface on Palm is a lot of work and with this one there are a whole host of synchronization and copy-protection problems to deal with. And honestly I don't know if there's a big enough market for this sort of thing - sales are going well but we're a long way away from being able to make PlecoDict a bona fide "platform," much though we'd like to do so. If there's a lot of demand for an external flashcard editor then it would probably be best to just create one ourselves - we'd be able to offer a lot of features that would be impossible in a third-party product, like viewing/selecting entries from copy-protected dictionaries (right now text export only includes headwords for those, and text import matches those headwords back to dictionary entries).