Suggestions for Flashcards

[Luo Yang]

Scroll Back

I agree that the scroll back feature, at least for a few cards, is very useful. I currently use flashcards on my palm and sometimes after I have studied a card I immediately forget it, or have a question about a specific stroke, etc and want to go back to look at it. This ability for a quick review has greatly helped my remembering the words. Going back is also nice for if I bump a button and advance and want to go back.

I don't generally scroll back more that 3 or 4 cards, the exception being if I ahve two characters that look almost the same and I know I just had one and now have the other, I may scroll back a bit to be able to compare them. Even then I won't usually scroll back more than 10 cards.

 

[Luo Yang]

Edit Custom Dictionary

As I am using the flashcard program more another suggestion I would have is to enable the "Edit Custom Dictionary" for every card. For cards that were created by custom dictionary this feature appears, but for words where the definition is being pulled from an existing dictionary it doesn't appear. There are two reasons I would like this feature enabled for every card:
1. Sometimes the program for some reason can't find the definition even though exists. It also won't allow editing. One example of this I ahve encountered is 姐妹 jie3 mei4. It did not come up with an English definition and it also didn't allow me to add one under card info.

2. Sometimes a word has many meanings and I want to specify a specific one, or add one that is not listed. For these I would like to be able to add add/edit the custom dictionary file.

Just a suggestion for making a great product even better.
Luo Yang

 

[Luo Yang]

Delete post

I wanted to delete this post, but since I sent a later post it won't let me so I am just replacing it with this text.

 

[Luo Yang]

Allow session save

I know it has been stated before, but I wanted to give my agreement that it would be great if flashcard sessions could be saved so we could go to other programs, or use the dictionary without needing to start over on the flashcard session.

 

[mikelove]

IronPhantom and Luo Yang - thanks, this explains a lot. And I'm glad to know that it would still be useful even if it only covered the most recent few cards.

Luo Yang - interesting suggestion, but I'm afraid it would be rather difficult to implement. There's really no good way to let people edit entries in a copy-protected dictionary database (we compress and pack together the data in those files in such a way that it would be very tricky to allow this), and letting people create new user dictionary entries based on copy-protected ones presents some (potential) copyright issues along with the practical problem that we'd need to add a lot more capabilities to PlecoDict's built-in text editor (bold styles, symbols, etc) in order to let you use it to edit such complicated entries.

Plus it makes it harder for us to implement some of the new collaboration ideas we're working on - we're hoping ultimately to provide a way for people to easily share user-created entries with others through our website (perhaps in collaboration with a project like Adso, so that they could be made available to non-Pleco users as well) and obviously we can't use copyrighted content in a freely-distributed dictionary.

But it's interesting to think about other ways of solving this problem, though... perhaps we could create a user dictionary entry that would automatically be amended to the built-in one whenever the flashcard definition came up. Or if we implemented your other suggestion about letting you pull up definitions from multiple dictionaries, all we'd have to do is replace the "Edit Custom Entry" button with an "Add Custom Entry" one. (if we pre-populated it with the characters/Pinyin but left out the definition I don't think we'd run into any copyright issues)

And yes, saving flashcard sessions seems like an extremely popular idea

 

[Luo Yang]

Hello Mike,
Thank you for all your responses. I think your idea to have the "add custom entry" would work great, especially if the card then linked to the custom entry instead of the dictionary entry it was previously linked to.

Truly, thank you for your willingness to respond and also your desire to want to continue to make the program better. I am excited to see where all PlecoDict heads in teh future.

Luo Yang

 

[Luo Yang]

Buttons have two features

Currently the Palm's buttons (hardware) can be set to navigate the flashcards (right, wrong, open, etc). It would be nice to have the option to have the same button have two different features in some cercumstances. Example: Allow one button to be set as teh button to open the card and also the button to select the card as correct. Another button could be set to also open teh card and then select it as incorrect. That way, the first time you hit the button it will open it, the second time you hit it it will record your answer.

This is not at all an urgent request. I just figure I will make suggestions as I am using the program.

Thank you for creating such a wonderful study tool!

Luo Yang

 

[Luo Yang]

Import expands words

Flashcard Import Bug:
When flashcards are imported the program often associates a shorter word with a dictionary file of a longer phrase/idiom/etc. For example: I was importing the word 羽毛 (yu3mao2 - feather) and it was linked to the dictionary entry for 羽毛被 (yu3mao2bei4 - quilt stuffed with feathers). This is true for other shorter words that may be the beginning characters for a longer phrase/word.

I know the current importer was quickly added on and isn't fully developed yet. I wanted to let you know so that as you are working on the import system you would know what bugs exist in the current system.

Thank you for all your work on developing a wonderful product for study.

Luo Yang

 

[mikelove]

Actually that one is quite unexpected - the importer (even in its current state) is supposed to scan through all possible matching words and pick the best match, so I don't know why this would be happening. This may turn out to be an easily-fixable bug, since the matching code is already there and should work at least most of the time.

Does the list you're importing include Pinyin or is it characters only?

 

[Luo Yang]

Including Pinyin

I have been including teh characters and the pinyin, no definitions. I just had an interesting link. I had 罗马帝国(Roman Empire) and it linked to "罗马帝国的第一个皇帝? (or something like that). I was thinking "Hmmm, I don't think I created this card", then I realized what happened.

Thank you again for all the efforts you are putting in to develop what is already a high quality program.

Luo Yang

 

[Luo Yang]

Re: Import expands words

I recently realized that it is doing this (chosing the longer term instead of teh shorter term entered) with the dictionary as well, not just the flashcard inport. Here is exactly what I just did that produced this behavior in the dictionary:
1. set dictionary to ABC
2. write pinyin "shimao"
3. from the list select the characters "时髦? (NOT 时髦词)
note: at this point everything is as I expect. The definition for "时髦" is showing.
4. hit the "Copy to Input field" button.
note: now the irregularity can be seen. The character "时髦" shows on the imput field, but the characters and definition for 时髦词 are displayed below. In order to view the definition for 时髦 you need to select it again.

The program is selecting the longer term instead of the shorter one that has been entered.

I don't know if this is happening for anyone else. Some of my other settings that may possibly effect it are: I am using simplified script, but have the traditional script displayed to the right when applicable.

For the dictionary this isn't a big deal as it is easy to just select the desired term, but when importing flashcards it is more troublesome since it isn't as easy to find and change the cards that have been changed.

Since I found this in the dictionary and it should be easy to reproduce (hopefully), I wanted to let you know.

Thank you for all your work,
Luo Yang

Flashcard Import Bug:
When flashcards are imported the program often associates a shorter word with a dictionary file of a longer phrase/idiom/etc. For example: I was importing the word 羽毛 (yu3mao2 - feather) and it was linked to the dictionary entry for 羽毛被 (yu3mao2bei4 - quilt stuffed with feathers). This is true for other shorter words that may be the beginning characters for a longer phrase/word.

I know the current importer was quickly added on and isn't fully developed yet. I wanted to let you know so that as you are working on the import system you would know what bugs exist in the current system.

Thank you for all your work on developing a wonderful product for study.

Luo Yang

 

[Luo Yang]

This entry appears to have been deleted from the dictionary.

Every so often I get a card that says "This entry appears to have been deleted from the dictionary". The chinese character links to what ever card is before it. This makes this mystery card very hard to identify since I use "random" and it always changes to a new character (or a blank card if it happens to be the first card to come up).

Is there a way, other than switching off of random and going through all my cards, to identify which card this is so I can fix it?

I don't think I have deleted any of my dictionary entries for cards I am using, though it is possible.

Thank you,
Luo Yang

 

[mikelove]

On the issue of incorrect search results, this is actually related to the 'er' at the end of shimao - the indexer factors that in and sorts 时髦词 before it (because 'ci' comes before 'r' alphabetically). This also explains the problem with 羽毛. This might be tricky to fix, though it probably would make more sense if the indexer ignored the 'r's, but at least it only affects those entries and does not appear to be a universal problem.

With 罗马帝国 it's probably related to the dictionary sort order - 罗马帝国的第一个皇帝 is in ADSO and 罗马帝国 by itself isn't (and neither of them is in ABC) so even if you have a user dictionary entry for 罗马帝国 it'll probably pull the one from ADSO first.

As for your latest posting, if you scroll through your flashcard lists in the Edit Lists screen, this card should come up as "INVALID" and you can easily delete it then. Or you can tap on the Info button when the card is showing to find out which list it belongs to.

 

[Luo Yang]

Info Button showing which list a card belong to

I tried tapping on the list when the card (or any card for that matter) is showing and the list it is in is not displayed.

It gives me: Char, PY, Rank, Flags, Total, Rank, Created, Reviewed, Hist

I saw there is an option to change cards around using this info list and I am guessing that would display the info, but it was mentioned that that has a high probability of causing the Palm to crash so I haven't enabled it.

If I use that option simply to view the associated list, but don't ever do anything with it will it still cause the system to crash?

Also, thank you for your explanation of what was happening with linking incorrectly. It is always nice to understand what is going on rather than it seeming random.

 

[Luo Yang]

Do not show card if flag is chosen

There is currently the option to only show cards that have certain flags. It would be useful to also have the option to not show cards that have certain flags.

 

[mikelove]

Oh right, I forgot that the list is hidden altogether when that option is turned off. (very late change after we realized the crash potential of that option) If you enable the option but don't actually use it to change the flashcard's list, it shouldn't cause any problems.

And we actually had the option to exclude flags in an early beta version, I believe (might not have even ever been relased), so the code is mostly there already, but we dropped it because we didn't really have a very good interface for it - having flags toggle between + and - before turning off was rather awkward and we thought it would likely confuse more people than it would help. I suppose we could offer a separate option line for it, though.

 

[Luo Yang]

Thank you much for the info.

As far as the flags. I don't think there would need to be + and - flags. The way of flagging cards could be done exactly as it is now, the change would be within the flashcard "card settings". There is currently an option to "Require flags: >Flags". What I would like (though again, it is no hurry, just a suggestion) would be to have the option to "Ignore flags: >Flags". The exact same flags could be used. For example, text books often have people and place names. Some of these aren't very useful for normal study however there may be times I wanted to study them. So, I could create a flag "Proper Names" and identify these items. Then, most of the time I could have the option checked to ignore those cards. However, if I wanted to review them I could uncheck that box or change to only show those cards.

I agree that having the three way toggle +, -, off would be confusing, but simply adding a line in the "Card Settings" section wouldn't be confusing (in my opinion anyhow).

As always, thank you for all your work on creating and improving what is already a fantastic tool!

Luo Yang

 

[Luo Yang]

Allow time set on "Round rep spacing to nearest day&amp

This change is not very important, but the thought comes up occasionally (always after midnight) so I wanted to mention it. Put it at the bottom of the suggestions list.

There is the option to "Round rep spacing to the nearest day" It would be useful to be able to set what time a day counts as. Aka: Instead of it being 12 midnight to have the "next day" start at 4am, etc. The reason for this would be for studying after midnight.

Example:
I have my cards set so that ones that are at level 1 repeat endlessly until I get them correct (Spacing:0). I keep going through the deck and each time it gets smaller and smaller until eventually I am told that there are no cards that meet my criteria (aka: all those difficult cards have moved up to level 2). The next day All the level 2 cards come back as well as any other cards that happen to be that day as the timing works out. If I am studying a deck and working away at those level 1 cards and the time passes midnight all the number 2 (and other) cards are loaded into the deck. Instead of working just on the 20-30 difficult level 1 cards, my deck jumps back up to the 500+ cards to go through for the day. If I could set 4am (or some other time) as the "next day" I could study past midnight without all those cards coming back.

As mentioned, this is a very minor detail, but I wanted to mention it since it came to mind. (It is not yet midnight, but I am in my nightly race to finish my deck before midnight so it made me think of it... Hey, this way it gives me a solid goal to work toward to keep me on task. )

Luo Yang

 

[mikelove]

Great idea - this is the sort of little thing that you almost never think of when you're designing a piece of software. But as a frequent insomniac myself I have a great deal of sympathy for people studying after midnight... thanks!

 

[The Duelist]

Studying After Midnight

Luo

You may be able to Study After Midnight by using the
''Card Settings:Limit to Cards" Option.

'After Midnight' you could set Limit to Cards Reviewed to 'Yesterday' (ie Reviewed Before Current date).
If there are Still Cards you need to Review from the previous Day,
change the Option to Reviewed After (Midnight) Current date.

Hope This Helps
The Duelist