I am so confused!!!!

[hongputaojiu]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to get my head around pleco vs skritter vs other companies which offer character retention programs.

To be honest, I am not a big tech person, but have read that at some point a program to input characters to help with retention is necessary/useful/advisable, etc.

Can anyone help me understand exactly what these are and how should I choose one?!?!

Thanks for any help you can give.

best wishes

hongputaojiu

[Mouseneb]

Personally, I love Skritter. I've been using it for a while and found my character retention and reading ability has gone way up. Plus the developers are really cool and very responsive.

[hyq.neuron]

A friend of mine also uses Skritter. I looked at it briefly and it seemed nice to me.

[Daan]

What you're looking for is called SRS software, short for spaced repetition system. Anki, Mnemosyne and ZDT seem to be especially popular around here. Have a look around on these forums, there've been lots of threads on this subject.

[renzhe]

He might be looking for something that actively tests him on character writing, like Skritter.

I think Skritter uses SRS, doesn't it?

Personally, I've come a really long way with Mnemosyne, but I've hit a wall recently, after more than 10,000 entries. This probably has to do with other stress and far less time I devote to it now, though.

[xianhua]

I would also recommend Skritter. I'm just coming towards the end of trial period, but considering paying the subscription, to extend my use. I've found it a big help to actually write the characters. I wonder if any of the others (like Pleco) allow you to write characters, as I think this is a real plus point, particularly in terms of long-term retention?

[Mouseneb]

Yeah, Skritter uses SRS

[hongputaojiu]

Hi guys

Thanks for the replies. yeah I have had a go at the free trial of skritter. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out on something with pleco, anki, etc.

I will probably try and work out how to use skritter properly to maximise the subscription fee.

cheers

hongputaojiu

[mikelove]

Pleco includes a character writing feature based on our built-in handwriting recognizer - you draw in a character, see a list of actual characters that most closely match what you draw, and tap on the correct one. There's also a separate stroke order teacher - you see the outline of a character and tap on its strokes in the correct order. And we do support SRS too.

We've thought about adding a mode that combines these, i.e. something that doesn't show you the character but is less tolerant of mistakes in stroke order than the handwriting recognizer, but we're still trying to decide on a good interface for it. It wouldn't be difficult for us to do something like Skritter - we've got all of the necessary stroke outlines / line-matching algorithms / handwriting recognition code already - but honestly I'm not sure about the idea of drawing a stroke and having it just disappear if incorrect (even if you get a hint after a few incorrect strokes); it seems kind of frustrating, interrupting the flow of one's practice session.

There's also the problem of false positives / partial false positives; you could think of another character which shares a radical with the correct one, get halfway through drawing it and only get positive feedback, then suddenly discover that the strokes you're writing for the second half are wrong (or are being matched to different strokes than what you're thinking of). Or successfully guess your way through a character you don't know very well - the system has to tolerate a few minor mistakes, since even if you write a character correctly the algorithm isn't always going to perfectly match every line to the template, but that mistake tolerance also means that if you can't remember whether the dot in 的 slopes right or left you can probably get away with trying both.

So I tend to think a system with a little less continuous feedback is actually a bit better for character writing practice, something which might perhaps give you a running indicator of how closely you seem to be matching the correct character (a red/green bar, say) but wouldn't interrupt you until you finished writing.

(sorry, got a bit off-topic there - nothing against Skritter, it just doesn't jibe with my personal taste in character training UIs)

[AdamD]

The iPhone/iPod Touch has built-in character recognition: you just select a Chinese handwriting keyboard and start writing. A cheap and easy option, if you already have one.

The UI is quick and responsive, but it's only about 90% accurate (it straight-up refuses to recognise a load of characters, such as 汽) . Needs serious work.

[md1101]

it straight-up refuses to recognise a load of characters, such as 汽

i just tried it and it got it straight away. I used seven strokes (just in case you didn't).

[imron]

Try 日. 9 times out of 10 I always get 曰 (although just trying it now, it came up with 日 every time - I guess maybe they've fixed it up a bit in the most recent version of the OS).

[md1101]

true it keeps showing 曰 as the first option (i had never seen that character before). but 日is usually in there as a 2nd or 3rd choice but a couple of times not at all. i guess its not perfect.

[imron]

Other characters have always worked fine for me. This is pretty much the only one that regularly stuffs up.

[AdamD]

i just tried it and it got it straight away. I used seven strokes (just in case you didn't).

I just tried it again and, er, appear to have egg on my face. Anyway, there are too many times when it just won't recognise a correctly-written character. Even if it's not fixed soon, hongputaojiu would do well to give it a look.

Skritter's a wonderful tool, but it's just a bit too fussy about where every stroke should be; I find that to be a huge roadblock. I want to learn to write the characters first (thereby aiding my retention), then worry about the correct proportions in whatever font applies at the time.

The iPhone, Microsoft's IME, Tomoe and (based on what I've seen) Pleco all try to respond with the correct character straight away, which I think is a much more effective way to learn. On the iPhone -- DianHua, specifically -- I can smash out dozens of characters in a few minutes, purely because I'm not being evaluated on every stroke.