Suggestions for Flashcards

[IronPhantom]

Awesome program you have here!!!

I have a few Flash cards Enhancement Suggestions:

1) Multiple choice entries for testing characters, pin yin, definition etc. This will espeically help with new words in the beginning stages of memorizing characters.

2) Double tap on a character will pop up the definition & pinyin for that character. This is especially useful for multiple character terms.

3) After popping up the definition & pinyin for that character in a multiple character term, an option to add that character to that specific flash card list (Not in Default). This would make it easy to add the single character additions to the flashcard list.


Anyway, I hope these suggestions help for your next version. If I think of more I will post them here.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for the suggestions. Multiple-choice is an oft-requested feature and one that we're very much hoping to add in the 1.1 update.

Your other two suggestions fit in with our idea for a "Character Info Screen" - we designed this for PlecoDict 1.0 but never got around to implementing it, hopefully it'll make it into an update at some point. In addition to the features you describe, it might eventually include a better-integrated version of the Unihan character info database, stroke order diagrams, audio pronunciation, words that start with or contain that character, and other fun things.

 

[IronPhantom]

Hi,

I am not sure if this is a new suggestion or I'm just overlooking something. I'm brand new to plecodictionary so this may just be a newbie issue.

My flashcard lists are very long as they correspond to the new characters from the lessons in my book. Sometimes I have to pause in the middle of going over the flashcards, or i have to open another application.

Afterwards when I return, I have to re-start the flashcard list over again. Is there a way for me to continue where I left off? Is there a 'save' feature for practicing the lists?

 

[mikelove]

I'm afraid there's no way to do this yet - it's rather tricky to implement. Also, changes in card rank do not take effect until you start a new flashcard session, so if you're adjusting card frequency based on rank you'll want to start new sessions frequently for optimum performance.

 

[IronPhantom]

Oh, I have a really great suggestion for your next upgrade.

Being able to study the bopomofo characters with the flashcards.

I haven't found a flashcard program yet that supports this feature. It would be a tremendous benefit for those trying to learn this system. People would be able to learn the entire in span of a few hours, maybe even less.

 

[mikelove]

This actually will be possible very soon. The Pocket PC version of PlecoDict will come bundled with the standard SimSun and MingLiU fonts - these include the Zhuyin/Bopomofo alphabet, so since PlecoDict is Unicode-based it would be trivial to create a flashcard list that used them. We'll also add these characters to the Palm OS font files at some point (probably in the 1.0.2 release) so that everyone can have access to this.

 

[sfrrr]

How soon?

Sandra

 

[mikelove]

Not soon enough, I'm sure... Given our history of missing release dates I'm not saying anything except to repeat my earlier statement that we'll have something usable released by September 1st, "usable" not necessarily (but hopefully) including flashcard and custom dictionary capabilities. And after we meet that goal, any future release targets will be expressed in vague generalities like "pretty soon" or "not too much longer now" or if we really want to be specific "in a few months or so".

 

[baturjan]

I second IronPhantom's suggestions.

If multiple choice is implemented, it would be nice if the choices didn't include characters that are ONLY from the flashcard set, like Wenlin. Otherwise, it's easy to deduce which one is correct by ruling out the others that you know already from the flashcard list. In doing so, you click "know/correct" but you really don't know what the caracter is, you only "know" it because you know the others. So your test results are not accurate. The flashcard program should randomly pick characters from the dictionary that have similar amounts of strokes and radicals to the character that you are being tested on.

In addition to my suggestion, I'm sure research has been done to findout the optimal ways of using the multiple choice method. I think it would be best to know what those findings are before simply implementing some form of multiple choice.

It would be cool to, if something like SuperMemo or the Leitner method was implemented. While I say this, the Pleco flashcard may be set to utilize some of these methods. I just haven't spent enough time with the flashcards. This brings me to my next suggestion.

I actually have spent a lot of time with Pleco flashcards, but the problem is that there is no clear explaination/examples on how to use the flags, ranks, and other settings. It's rather frustrating actually. The "info" link inside the flashcard program doesn't give enough to explain. I did give the manual a cursery glance. maybe I need to go back through it more thoroughly.

 

[mikelove]

Well yes, certainly a multiple-choice system would be better if it drew from a wide variety of word choices. At the same time, picking words from the entire dictionary isn't necessarily a good idea either, because you could have four or five choices and only recognize one of them and know that's the one even without knowing the word's meaning. So we'd probably want to give you a couple of options for word selection depending on how you'd structured your flashcards - you could pick a subset of flashcard lists to draw from, or perhaps cards with a particular flag or rank. And the similar-strokes approach might work for character flashcards - we could even match radicals too - but we'd need something else for multi-character words.

We actually do support the Leitner method - search the documentation for information on "Ranks". We're considering renaming them to "boxes" or something similar in the 1.1 release, since "Rank" has a somewhat ambiguous meaning. But the Rank system will let you organize flashcards a la the Leitner method. You're right that the flashcard documentation is less-than-perfect, but really the flashcard system itself isn't as straightforward as we'd like - again, something to fix in 1.1. We're planning to make at least some minor improvements in the manual for the 1.0.2 release, though, possibly including an expanded flashcard tutorial that covers the nitty-gritty details of ranks etc.

 

[sfrrr]

Oh, man. I'm starting to drool again. In addition to previous and next buttons in the flashcards, I'd love to be able to enter long multi-character phrases so I could test myself on the points of grammar my teacher is making in these sentences.

Sandra

 

[IronPhantom]

Another Suggestion - Importing Word lists

Sometimes, my word lists get corrupted and it says "Word not found in Dictionary..." or something close to that. When this happens, I have to delete the old list and re-import each of my lists again from my .txt file. I have made about 30 lists now and it takes an enormous amount of time to import the lists.

It would be nice if there was a way to multiple import all of my .txt files at once and automatically rename them to the same name as what I named them for my .txt file for example: wordlistA.txt wordlistB.txt would be imported automatically at the same time and autonamed to be WorldlistA and WordlistB respectively, instead of 'Imported words' (Currently, they have to be re-named each time a list is imported.) It would save a _ton_ of time.

Is this suggestion doable? It would be awesome if this suggestion could be included it in the next update!

Thank you so much!

 

[The Duelist]

Importing Multiple Flashcard Lists From Text A File

Multiple Flashcard Lists Can Be Created From A Single Text File.

Just Append Each New List to the end of the Text File.
(Use Standard Syntax)
Save the Single Text file.
Copy to PDA & Import.
A Separate Flashcard List is Created for Each Group.

eg. Multiple_Lists.txt
// List A
你 nǐ you
// List B
好 hǎo good
吗 ma question particle
// List C
我 wǒ I
很 hěn very

Hope This Helps
The Duelist

BTW: You may have to 'Rename' the lists to remove the 'Random' characters on the end of the List Names
(Mike: Minor Bug :wink: )

 

[IronPhantom]

Thank you very much for the suggestion Duelist! I will definitely try it out.

Oh, this reminds me of another suggestion.

Multiple deletion of lists (including 'select all' 'select none' options. So then if the lists get corrupted somehow, users can delete all with two clicks and just re-import them all.

 

[mikelove]

The Duelist - thanks for posting that, that's exactly what I would have suggested

However, in response to IronPhantom's second posting: an easier way to do this would be to use a utility like Filez (http://www.nosleep.net/) to simply delete the "PlecoDict Flashcards" and "PlecoDict User DB" files - that would give you a completely clean slate to reimport the lists.

Actually, though, you can save yourself even more trouble and preserve your flashcard statistics/ranks/etc if you just back up the User DB file occasionally; the corruption you're experiencing (which we really thought we'd fixed in 1.0.1, sigh) is actually in the user-created dictionary and not in your flashcard file. So instead of going through this export/import procedure, you can achieve the same effect by occasionally copying the User DB file to your SD card. (might as well back up the Flashcards file too, though this kind of corruption only affects the user database) There are even utilities like BackupBuddyVFS (http://www.bluenomad.com/bbvfs/prod_bbvfs_details.html) that will automate this process for you.

 

[IronPhantom]

Thank you for your suggestions Mike. They are very helpful.

I do have a question though. The single file to do multiple import of lists is great when first importing. There are some drawbacks though I believe.

What happens right now, it appears, is that when updates are made, such as one or two minor changes to a list, say in a single file with 30 lists, then when re-import is necessary, re-importing all of the lists is required. The bigger the file and the more lists added the longer it takes.

Perhaps in a future upgrade, can you add a it so that it will replace the same list (if modifications/updates) were imported thus deleting all the lists to re-import wouldn't be necessary? In doing so it would also check to see if modifications were made to a particular list. If it's the same with no modifications it could save itself alot of time by not re-importing if no changes were made. This would make the process more efficient perhaps?


Oh, one other suggestion that might be good. When in review mode in endless loop, it only allow the user to go forward, but not backward in a list. It would be great if it could go backward also in the endless loop mode!

Another feature in the review mode that may be great is to allow the the user to first see the character, then click on door to get teh full definition and pronunciation (exactly like in test mode). Currently, in review mode it appears it can only do one and not the other. For example, when it shows the character, then I click the button in review mode, the defintion will pop up, but the character will disappear!

I hope these suggestions help.

 

[mikelove]

Well to be honest, the current import/export system was really only intended as a temporary measure, a way to easily deliver premade flashard lists (like the HSK) and to back up flashcards in case of a system crash or a file corruption bug. It was never intended to be used for things like synchronizing flashcards between a PC and a Palm; that sort of functionality is what we'll be adding in the eventual desktop version. (along with all sorts of other wonderful features that it's much too early to talk about)

So while it might be possible to add a feature like this to the current importer, since we're going to be throwing out most of that code when the desktop version comes along I don't know if it's worth bothering with.

And on the endless loop suggestion, this is mostly a design limitation in the flashcard system - it's already rather memory-intensive and we didn't want to make it further strain the tiny amount of memory available on a typical Palm by keeping a record of every flashcard visited in an endless loop session. But I suppose we could at least keep a record of the last 20 or 30 cards viewed. I'm having difficulty understanding why people keep asking for this feature, though - if you don't mind my asking, when in a typical flashcard session would you want to go back to a previously-viewed card, and why?

And as for your other suggestion, you can already achieve this if you simply enable the "Don't record answers" option in Test Settings and run a normal test session (instead of a review only one).

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Luo Yang]

One feature I would like to see in Flashcards would be sublists. That isn't really clear so I will explain.

I could have one flashcard file for a text book (Integrated Chinese), when I select this file it gives me the subfiles for each chapter. So instead of having a separate file for IC ch 1, IC ch 2, etc. they would be organized more nicely. Instead of having a list of 100 flashcard decks to sort through, only teh general topic (book title) would be shown and then the individual decks (chapters) could be selected separatly. (For those who use Anki, they have this feature. Theirs has a few limitations I woudl like to change, but you will get the main idea of what I mean.)

 

[mikelove]

This makes sense, yes. It sort of fits in with the category feature. Hopefully we can come up with a way to implement this that will satisfy (almost) everyone...

 

[IronPhantom]

I'm having difficulty understanding why people keep asking for this feature, though - if you don't mind my asking, when in a typical flashcard session would you want to go back to a previously-viewed card, and why?

This is a very nice feature to have. After a person reviews a card and moves on sometimes we forget what the card was. Being able to move back to view it will significantly improve the ability to recall the character and definition.

For example: Let's say we have a phrase with characters 'ABCDE' and it has a definition. I will create a flash card list, first I will have separate definitions for character 'A', 'B' 'C' 'D' and 'E'. Now when I review I will go through the cards for characters A-E, then finally the phrase 'ABCDE''. When I get to 'ABCDE', sometimes I forget the definition for 'A' . To be able to scroll back and quickly review what 'A' was will help me not only remember 'A' but also the meaning for the phrase 'ABCDE'.

This is the power of the scroll back feature -- to be able to review a recent card quickly, instead of having to wait for the next cycle to review it.

I hope this helps explain the desire for the scroll back feature!