Suggestions for Flashcards

[Anonymous]

folders or catagories?

I noticed awhile back you mentioned the possibility of categories or folders for flashcards. Is this something that is still being considered or was it deemed impossible. I enjoy splitting up my cards by chapter but it is starting to cause problems now that I have multiple books and over 100 chapters. Thanks again for all the hard work you have obviously put into the product.

 

[transparent]

A possible new flashcard option?

I haven't seen this in this thread, so I'll throw it out there -

Sometimes, I am deciphering text and need to look up a phrase/character, but this phrase or character isn't in a vocabulary list that I'm currently studying.

Currently, I have a list of "commonly looked up words" that I add entries to when I realize I have looked up a word many times and still don't know it.

Perhaps a neat feature would be to have a setting to automatically add frequently looked up items into a user-specified list, and be able to set the # of times a word is looked up before it gets added.

For example, if I look up the word "奇怪" more than 10 times in the last week, then it gets added to a list of "commonly looked up words". (or even something more global, like more than 10 times since install, or something more specific, like 10 times since pleco was started this session)

Now that I think about it, this sounds like it might be memory intensive, having to keep track of that - but if it's possible, could be useful.

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Another flashcard/dictionary option I was wondering about since Pleco 2.0 is slated to have voice capabilities ... is if either A) users would be able to add their own voice recordings to entries or B) a cantonese speaker's pronunciations would be available as an add-on

A) would probably be much more powerful, since this would make it possible to learn different dialects (don't know if there is a lot of interest in this, but I would certainly love to learn my ancestral dialect) or even allow a user to create their own cantonese pronunciations

(maybe the desktop companion would be able to import audio recordings/handle recording/handle the binding of audio to dict entry and allow export of a custom voice module)

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And finally, a question about the planned desktop companion - would a version be available for Mac OS X?

And not sure if it's already in the works, but it would be awesome if the PlecoDict desktop companion became the de-facto tool for studying/learning/processing Chinese on the desktop, as in a helper for reading websites and documents.

Looking forward to 2.0!

 

[mikelove]

Guest - this is indeed possible, and in fact is already in the works for version 2.0 (see http://www.pleco.com/pdpreview.html for details. We're actually replacing our current Lists system with nothing but Categories (the difference being that a card can belong to only one list but can belong to more than one category), but there will also be "supercategories" that can incorporate cards from many categories, so you'll get the same effect as you would from our adding categories to the current system.

transparent - we've been experimenting with a number of ways to incorporate a feature like this, actually. One option is simply to turn our current history list into a (length-limited) flashcard list, making it easy to make flashcards out of frequently-used words, but doing something automatically might make a lot of sense if we could deal with the memory requirements.

We'd certainly like to add some sort of option for inserting your own voice recordings, though it probably would require the use of our desktop software (since it would be considerably more difficult to create new recordings and add them to a database on a PDA). As for Cantonese, though, that really wouldn't make sense for us, since all of our dictionaries are based on Mandarin (which affects not only the romanization but the actual words and meanings as well). We'd love to put out a Cantonese dictionary if we could, but there are very few of them out there and all of the relevant publishers have already rejected our licensing proposals.

On the subject of a Mac desktop version, the initial release will likely be Windows-only but we certainly would like to do a Mac version eventually; the main issue there is that Palm has pretty well given up on Mac compatibility (and Microsoft never offered it for Pocket PC) so the Mac sync situation is not all that clear right now. But as Mark/Space has pretty well taken over the Mac sync market, I suppose we could make our sync software work as a Missing Sync add-on, perhaps also negotiating some sort of a discounted bundle deal for Mac users who don't already own Missing Sync - assuming their APIs are similar to the regular Palm Desktop ones, a Missing Sync add-on would probably make more sense than developing a sync module for the now largely discontinued Palm Desktop for Mac.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[baturjan]

settings "sets"

I would be nice to have custom sets that could be configured to different types of flashcard usage. Instead of going through all the settings and changing things every time we need to do a different type of testing, we could save the current settings as a set and name it, "testing fixed", "review created first", etc. Then, all we have to do is select the set and all the settings are changed.

 

[mikelove]

This should be covered by our new "profiles" feature, one of a long list of things we wanted to do in 1.0 but didn't have time to implement. (avoiding such a list in 2.0 is a big part of the reason we're being so vague about release dates )

 

[johnh113]

flashcard suggestions

Dear Mike,

I use the flashcards a lot, and have a few more suggestions.

1. I would like to see the battery meter while I am in the flashcards. Often I spend an hour or two on the flashcards, and the battery can get pretty low, sometimes forcing a soft reset.

2. When I am reading a definition in a flashcard, the sample sentences are very useful, and often have words that I don't yet know, and that aren't yet in any of my flashcard lists. I would like to be able to add words to a flashcard list while I am in a flashcard session.

3. This isn't really a suggestion, just an observation. And yes, I read your warning that states:

Old Versions: At present, flashcards linked to entries from one version of a free dictionary database will not work correctly with a newer version of that database. If you update your CEDICT or Adso databases and find that some of your flashcards have become "INVALID", install the older databases linked here:

I, of course, loaded the new versions of the dictionaries anyway. I have never seen the "INVALID" message but what happens every once in a while in my flashcard session is this: 1) the charcter appears, 2) I click on the reveal box, 3) the pinyin and definition appear. This, so far, is exactly as it should be. However, after I click on the "check" or "x" box, I get a message that says, "Sorry, the dictionary associated with this entry no longer appears to be available. (you may also see this error message after you upgrade to a new version of a dictionary)" After I then click on the "check" or the "x" again, the error message goes away and the program goes on to the next flashcard.

This happens with flashcards linked to the ABC dictionary as well as flashcards linked to the other dictionaries, even though I obviously never updated the ABC dictionary since you've never posted an update. And, it is not repeatable. That is, the next time through the list, the flashcard that prompted an error message last time does not prompt an error message this time. But some other card might have an error message.

This is not a problem for me. It doesn't bother me at all and doesn't interfere at all with my use and enjoyment of your product. I just thought a description of what I see might help you understand what the program is doing.

John

 

[mikelove]

1. Good idea, we'll see if this can be implemented without too much hair-pulling. It might also make sense to add the wireless signal indicator for Treos, so that people whose jobs require that they be continuously on call won't have to worry about getting caught up in their flashcards and not realizing that they're in an area with no signal.

2. This should be possible in 2.0; the current plan is that words in flashcard definitions will be available as hyperlinks and tapping on them will bring up a miniature version of the dictionary interface (much like Instant Access mode).

3. Thanks for the detailed problem report. It actually sounds like the system is working normally - the message isn't coming up because there's something wrong with the flashcard that you just marked correct or incorrect, it's coming up because the next flashcard in the session is unavailable - that message is getting displayed instead of the missing flashcard's text. And those missing flashcards will come up randomly just like any other flashcards in the list. You can get rid of the missing cards by scrolling through the "Edit Lists" screen and removing any cards marked "INVALID", or by installing those old-version dictionaries.

 

[Anonymous]

wrong answers

Hi,

Is there any way to set it so that the cards I answered incorrectly are repeated at the end of each flashcard session until I get them correct? So the flashcard session ends only when I report that I have gotten each flashcard correct. This would GREATLY reinforce my retention of flashcards I am having difficulties with. (The repeated flashcards do not have to recorded as part of the repition spacing -- Just a small feature to repeat for wrong flashcards that is not in 'test' mode, but in review mode)

If this feature is not available yet, can you make this a future option?

 

[mikelove]

It's not available yet, but we've gotten lots and lots of requests for it (this feature and the ability to suspend and resume sessions are easily the two most requested flashcard improvements) so it will almost certainly be part of 2.0.