Android Newbie (Anki, Dolphin, Pleco)

[Silent]

Since a couple of days I've exchanged my dumbphone for an android smartphone. I've run into questions on a couple of apps. Hope someone is able to answer them:)

One of the apps I installed in Ankidroid. It seems to work quite well. However I'm unable to find the option to hide cards. In the deck I study I hide the listening and writing cards. Does anyone know where to find this feature in Ankidroid? If I upload my deck and sync it will the cards that should be hidden also be hidden on my phone?

I believe that in the past some problems with the sync have been reported here. Is there somewhere an overview of the problems that may occur with sync? Any tips & tricks on preventing problems with the sync?

The Dolphin browser has a plug in (translate) that (is said）can translate selections or entire websites. I‘m able to translate the entire website, but I've not figured out yet how to select a piece of text and get that translated. I've no clue how to select the text. Any suggestions how to do this. (Please note, I want to select text from the original. If I first translate the website then I'm able to select text and the app tells me what the original text is)

The disadvantage of this app is that it needs connectivity as it uses google translate. Anyone aware of an offline alternative pop-up dictionary?

I've a couple of voice recognition apps (pleco and voice translator) installed. For some texts it works great but most of the times what comes up is complete crap. This may very well be an issue of my pronunciation. So I wonder, has anyone with decent Chinese tried these and what is your judgement? (If it's only my pronunciation that fails it might be a good practice tool)

I played a little with the OCR Demo of Pleco. Though a bit clumsy for small characters in a book that needs to be kept open ( I guess this improves with experience) it seems to work nicely, and completely offline. So I might want to get the payed version (with translation) for my trip to China. However, I wonder how easy/hard it is to move the flashcards created with it to Anki. Any one done this before?

[lechuan]

Is there any reason not to just use Pleco's built in flashcard system (the paid version has a much more powerful flashcard system with SRS and a many customization options).

You can also use Pleco as an offline pop-up dictionary (NOT a translator), you can copy your page to the clipboard, then switch to Pleco reader (there's an option to automatically paste from the clipboard when you switch to pleco reader). You can also select the "share" command on the page and send it to Pleco Reader (but you get the extra menu text, etc).

Select text in Dolphin: Tap the “Menu” button, select “More,” tap “Select Text” and slide your finger over a selection of words to highlight the text. Select “Copy” to copy the text. Press and hold your finger against a text field and tap “Paste” to paste the copied words

I think the pleco voice recognition uses google (and requires a data connection). I haven't had any issues with it recognizing my words, though I've only used it for short words.

[Guest realmayo]

Silent: open the deck, and on the right of the big "Start Reviewing" button there are two others, one is Limit and one is Cram. Select Limit, then tick the "By Tag" option, and you'll get some choices that should help you.

Pleco blah blah blah, some people prefer Anki over Pleco's SRS.

[lechuan]

Interesting, I've never tried Anki for Chinese (hence the reason I could only blah blah about Pleco ). What kind of differences are there with features and repetition algorithms?

[Guest realmayo]

This topic http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/37049-next-best-equivalent-to-anki/

Some people don't see any benefit of Anki over Pleco but there are enough people who seem to use Pleco as a dictionary and Anki as an SRS.

[Silent]

Is there any reason not to just use Pleco's built in flashcard system(the paid version has a much more powerful flashcard system with SRS and a many customization options).

I use anki now and that suits me fine so why should I move to a more expensive solution? Though I seem to run in an issue now that on my phone Anki does display all info instead of only one side of the card even before pushing the answer button.

Tap the “Menu” button, select “More,” tap “Select Text”

Select text is not available for me. However I found the option share which gives the option to send it to pleco reader which seems a decent alternative. I've not yet found a way to open a file directly from Pleco reader. The descriptions at the online manual doesn't seem to fit what I get to see.

Thanks for the replies so far! Now figure out how to fix my anki deck.....

[imron]

I use anki now and that suits me fine so why should I move to a more expensive solution?

I think the biggest argument for this is that if the format of Pleco's flashcards meets your needs, then flashcard creation and maintenance is essentially instant. Just click a button and the card is added to your list, and you can instantly have flashcards of any combination of word, definition, pinyin, sound etc, which can also be arbitrarly and instantly changed at a later date if you want to have production vs recognition etc (and you can have different score files, so the scores from your production set don't muck up the recognition set and so on).

So, if the format of Pleco's flashcards does meet your needs, and all you are interested in is Chinese flashcards, then you save a bunch of time and hassle. Then it just becomes a matter of whether the time and hassle you save is worth the cost, and for me, that answer is a definitive yes.

[Gleaves]

In Dolphin (HD, not browser mini), I just long press on text and it gives an option to select it. In Pleco, General>Startup Actions lets me adjust what happens when I open Pleco (For instance, I have it set to read the clipboard and open up immediately in Reader if there is Chinese text longer than 4 characters). I really like ankidroid, it handles audio quite well, although I rarely sync, so I'm not sure about those issues.

[Silent]

then flashcard creation and maintenance is essentially instant. Just click a button and the card is added to your list, and you can instantly have flashcards of any combination of word, definition, pinyin, sound etc, which can also be arbitrarly and instantly changed at a later date if you want to have production vs recognition etc

This seems the main point why people promote Pleco, but what does that really mean? Sure, it may be a little quicker and faster then Anki, if you add them from other pleco Components but is that really what you want? I mean I can add 'all' unknown words I come across and drown in flashcards. If that's what I want 1 click adding is very attractive.

My strategy of adding cards is usually however a bit different. When I come across words I want to look up I add them to google translate or mdbg. When it's time to add cards to study I collect those list, combine them with chats etc. The vocabulary list I derive from that is used for adding cards (based on frequency and expected usefullness). This means I will have to look up the words and add the cards to study. I see little difference in this for Anki or Pleco as I have imported a fair amount of word lists (hsk old, new, chengyu, etc) in Anki where I only have to add a label to mark them as study material.

Sure, the benefit of Pleco is that (probably) a far more extensive wordlist is available to add. At a more advanced level that may be a real advantage. But then, creating the flashcards may have an educational value too if you add them and really think what to put on them. If you know which words to add and want to add in bulk, also in Anki cards are created in a matter of seconds.

[icebear]

This seems the main point why people promote Pleco, but what does that really mean? Sure, it may be a little quicker and faster then Anki, if you add them from other pleco Components but is that really what you want? I mean I can add 'all' unknown words I come across and drown in flashcards. If that's what I want 1 click adding is very attractive.

Actually this can be avoided by setting up Pleco so that it never allows more than X unlearned words appear in a day (thus limiting the flood of unknowns).

Also, your method of selecting words would work fine in Pleco - have it so that added words go into one list which isn't the active list used for flashcards. Export out to the website or program you want to frequency sort by. Add the top X words back into your active list; clear "scratch/adding" list and start again the next day.

The beauty of Pleco is that there is no laborious card/side editing required, which I think is a huge turnoff for Anki.

[imron]

Sure, it may be a little quicker and faster then Anki, if you add them from other pleco Components but is that really what you want?

When I'm in vocab learning mode, my strategy is to give myself a limit of new words per day. Usually it's a soft limit of 5 and a hard limit of 10. Then I just read native material. If I come across a word I don't know, I look it up in the dictionary, read and understand the meaning, and then click add. Once I've hit my new word limit, I may still look up the word, but I just won't press add. Pleco essentially reduces flash card maintenance time to zero, and the fraction of a second it does take to add, is done during existing study time. I then have 3 profiles set up, each with different score files.

• New cards - which I use for drilling cards that have been added but that I've not yet started reviewing. This is so I can go over them and make sure I've learnt them properly before they start in the review cycle.
  
• Revision - pinyin on the front, Chinese word and Chinese definition on the back. This is my main learning deck, which tests for production and where I spend extra time after each card to help burn it into memory.
  
• Pronunciation - Chinese word on the front, pinyin and Chinese definition on the back. This deck I use mostly to test speed of recognition when I see a given word.
  

Once again, Pleco creates and maintains all of this automatically as I add new cards, and I can add/remove other profiles as I wish using the exact same set of cards. I then regularly "flush out" the deck once it starts to get to more than about 30 mins of revision a day.

creating the flashcards may have an educational value too if you add them and really think what to put on them

This is true, and in fact I also used to argue the same thing about a paper dictionary - the act of painstakingly looking up the radical and the word helps you remember it. But the fact is, I now rely on the drilling of the flashcards to achieve this - and in fact, that is their exact purpose. I also don't just mindlessly hit next, next, next, next as I'm doing repetitions. I make sure I'm spending time to ensure the words are properly entrenched in my mind before moving on.

If you know which words to add and want to add in bulk, also in Anki cards are created in a matter of seconds.

That's fair enough if you want to add words in bulk, however I firmly believe in only adding words that I have come across in context. Firstly because it helps give words a mental hook to aid in remembering, and secondly because it ensures I'm learning whatever is most relevant to me at that point in time.

Anyway, I get that Pleco is not suited for everyone, and that different people have different strategies for flashcarding, and that's fine. I'm just responding to the OPs questions explaining the reasons why I find it useful.

[somethingfunny]

On 21/05/2012 at 12:04 AM, imron said:

each with different score files

 

Ah.  

 

That feeling of "I wish it could do this..." followed by "It definitely should be able to do this..." followed by "Right, there's no way it doesn't do this, I just wish I knew how to do it..."

[imron]

8 hours ago, somethingfunny said:

I just wish I knew how to do it..."

 

Flashcards -> New Test -> More Settings -> Scoring -> Scorefile -> Manage -> New

 

You  only need to set it once per profile.

[mikelove]

Those are going away in 4.0, actually - profiles now = scorefiles, but we make up for that by letting you filter cards based on their status in other profiles. (Scorefiles were no longer workable because they’re too dependent on profile settings thanks to our new stage / step system, though that system also covers about 80% of the use cases for multiple profiles)

 

(and don’t worry, there’ll be a lengthy wide public beta test to make sure we come up with workarounds for all of the edge cases this might cause problems with)

[imron]

As long as I can have a separate score file per profile I'll be happy. 

[mikelove]

Yep, the change is that now it won’t be possible for them to directly share a score file.