Anki 2.1.45 Beta

[cqg]

@Rumo

@cqg

I find “Oldest first” or “Position (Older first)” -even if not 100% accurate- much more user friendly and intuitive terms.

I have to disagree. If I choose “oldest first”, and then am not shown the oldest cards first (because “lowest” isn’t equivalent to “oldest”), that isn’t user-friendly at all. Also, the concept of Position is explained under Insertion Order.

Yes, that’s also true. The “problem” will be easily solved just by explaning the “position” concept also in the “New card gather priority” and “New card sort order” info settings, or by adding that info to the manual, otherwise IMO, is going to be difficult for the average user to figure out what "Position (lowest first) really means.

Edit: anoter -maybe better- option would be the addition of two new options to the “New card gather priority” and “New card sort order”: Latest added first and Order added, already present for custom study decks:

[hengiesel]

I have to admit that the wording is also confusing to me. Does “lowest” here mean smallest , or does it mean low as in low priority ~ comes later. After the reading the info boxes, I’m still not entirely sure. Maybe by position (#1, #2, …), and by reverse position (#n, #n-1, …) would make it easier to understand?

[AnKingMed]

Was there ever any hope for adding a feature somehow that allows editing of the entire tag?

[Rumo]

@AnKingMed

@dae is this an error that can be fixed? Batch editor is no longer working

@dae, we could add a mock model to browser that redirects calls to beginReset() and endReset() to table.begin_reset() etc., because browser.model was often only called for this purpose. Do you think that’s a good idea?

@AnKingMed

Was there ever any hope for adding a feature somehow that allows editing of the entire tag?

Here is @kleinerpirat’s suggestion for reference: Anki 2.1.45 Beta - #72 by kleinerpirat

@hengiesel

Maybe by position ( #1 , #2 , …), and by reverse position ( #n , #n-1 , …) would make it easier to understand?

I don’t think all users are familiar with mathematical notation. What about “Position (ascending)” and “Position (descending)”?

[AnKingMed]

@Rumo

@AnKingMed

Was there ever any hope for adding a feature somehow that allows editing of the entire tag?

Here is @kleinerpirat’s suggestion for reference: Anki 2.1.45 Beta - #72 by kleinerpirat

Missed this. I think that’s a great solution.

[dae]

@cqg

Probaby I’m still missing something here, but trying to figure out which settings apply only to the parent / actual deck and which ones applies to the parent deck AND its subdecks requires a lot of experimentation through trial and error and it’s, in my opinion, one of the most confusing aspects of the GUI.

Based on your previous feedback, I moved all the sorting options that are taken from the deck you select into the “Display Order” section. We could add a note to each of the tooltips in that section to make it clearer if you think it’ll help.

@cqg

Add a “Random” option to the previous settings.

You get that by adjusting the order in the new cards section. Anki does the shuffling as cards are added, as it’s expensive to shuffle all the new cards at display time when users have lots of them. It would be more user friendly if there weren’t a separate option, but would come at a performance cost.

@cqg

Latest added first and Order added , already present for custom study decks:

Same here - they’re missing because they can’t be implemented efficiently. It’s not as important for filtered decks, as the work only gets done at building time.

@cqg

think that its help page deserves a complete overhaul, maybe with the addtion of examples ilustrating the use of each settings in different scenarios (simple deck, deck > subdeck, etc…). I will be happy to help if help is necessary.

PRs that improve the manual are always welcome!

@Rumo

I don’t think all users are familiar with mathematical notation. What about “Position (ascending)” and “Position (descending)”?

I think my thinking at the time was that “lowest first” would be simpler than ascending. Happy to change the wording if we can get a consensus; it’s best to be making these changes now and not after it’s been translated into many languages.

@Rumo

@dae, we could add a mock model to browser that redirects calls to beginReset() and endReset() to table.begin_reset() etc., because browser.model was often only called for this purpose. Do you think that’s a good idea?

There appear to be a fair few addons that call model.{beginReset,endReset,reset}, so if it’s not too difficult to add, that sounds like it would be good. Bonus points if you want to take a stab at @kleinerpirat 's suggestion as well.

[cqg]

@dae

Based on your previous feedback, I moved all the sorting options that are taken from the deck you select into the “Display Order” section. We could add a note to each of the tooltips in that section to make it clearer if you think it’ll help.

Thanks, I missed that. Yes, IMO adding such a note to the tooltips (and the manual) would help a lot to make things clearer.

@dae

Anki does the shuffling as cards are added, as it’s expensive to shuffle all the new cards at display time when users have lots of them. It would be more user friendly if there weren’t a separate option, but would come at a performance cost.

Thanks, I also didn’t know that, good to know!

@dae

PRs that improve the manual are always welcome!

I’m not familiar at all with Github, but I tried anyway. As I said there, please feel free to ignore it if you want.

@dae

I think my thinking at the time was that “lowest first” would be simpler than ascending. Happy to change the wording if we can get a consensus; it’s best to be making these changes now and not after it’s been translated into many languages.

What about…

• Order due
• Order due (reverse)

[hengiesel]

@cqg

• Order due
• Order due (reverse)

Due is heavily associated with review/learning cards (e.g. is:due or prop:due cannot find new cards). I know it’s sometimes used referring to new cards (e.g. in the browser), but how can a card be due without a due date . My vote goes out for Ascending position / Descending position, mirroring ascending interval / descending interval.

[ycodet]

Hello.
In Anki 2.1.45 (6ffa7440), I have a difficulty with the HTML editor. If I paste into it a table such as the following one:

<style>table {width: 100%;} td {text-align: left;}</style>
<table><tbody>
<tr>
<td>compro</td> <td>compramos</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>compras</td> <td>comprais</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>compra</td> <td>compram</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>

the “style” element is not saved. I noticed that the table did not have the look I wanted, and when I reopened the note in the editor the element was not there. Maybe I did not understand something.
Best,
Yves

[Rumo]

@kleinerpirat

I’m thinking of an addition to _maybe_add_search_actions, that would add a context menu entry in the same category as Search (or replace it) and enable direct access to a prefilled Find & Replace dialog for the selected item.

After thinking about the implementation, I’m not so sure anymore that this is a good idea, because the sidebar actions are independent of the browser table selection, but Find & Replace is not. What would be the most intuitive behaviour when the users selects Find & Replace for a sidebar item?

1. Search for all notes/cards with the relevant tag/field and select them before opening the dialogue.
2. Keep the current search and selection and operate on its notes.
3. Keep the current search and selection, but operate on all notes independently of the selection.
4. None of the above.

@AnKingMed

Batch editor is no longer working

Made a PR:

Add mock browser model to support legacy resetting

Batch editing in particular is possible without add-ons by now, though.

[kleinerpirat]

@Rumo

Keep the current search and selection, but operate on all notes independently of the selection.

This one. I would expect the action to affect all notes of the selected sidebar item, regardless of what’s selected on the browser table.

Everything else would be too complex/confusing, I think.

[AnKingMed]

@Rumo

Batch editing in particular is possible without add-ons by now, though.

Is this just done through find a replace now? Or how is it done without an addon now?

[hengiesel]

Put CSS in the Styling section of the note type. What you could do is assign a classname, and style over that:

In your field:

<table class="mytable">...
</table>

In your styling

.mytable {
    width: 100%;
}
.mytable td {
    text-align: left;
}

Table editing will probably be implemented at some point.

[Rumo]

@kleinerpirat

I would expect the action to affect all notes of the selected sidebar item, regardless of what’s selected on the browser table.

I like this option because it’s the most useful. But I’m concerned that this is in fact the most confusing way to do it, too.
Once the dialogue is open, the user has to remember how they’ve opened it to know which notes will be affected, because nothing will stop them from using it for something else than replacing the selected tag.
I would like to add another dropdown menu to the dialogue, which allows for setting the affected notes. The options would include “All” and “Selected”.
However, one problem would remain: The dialogue currently lists all fields of the notetypes of the passed notes. Would the list include all notetype fields when “Affected Notes” is set to “All” and change when this setting changes? Or would the list always only include the selected notes’ fields, allowing only to edit tags [edit: or all fields] when no notes have been selected?

@AnKingMed

Is this just done through find a replace now? Or how is it done without an addon now?

Yes, Find & Replace is more powerful, faster and supports the new undo queue. But you need Regex, so I admit that for simple edits, the add-on is more user-friendly.

[ycodet]

@hengiesel Thank you for your help.
I was puzzled because in previous versions of Anki, when the HTML editor had a window of its own, the “style” element was saved and interpreted correctly.

[dae]

@Rumo

However, one problem would remain: The dialogue currently lists all fields of the notetypes of the passed notes. Would the list include all notetype fields when “Affected Notes” is set to “All” and change when this setting changes?

Hmm, it feels like trying to solve this with find&replace is making things more complicated than they need to be. I find myself coming back to the “rename full tag” solution as a separate context menu item. It can pop up an editing box, there’s no confusion over what is selected or not, and we can hide it if the tag doesn’t have a ‘::’ in it. WDYT?

@ycodet

I was puzzled because in previous versions of Anki, when the HTML editor had a window of its own, the “style” element was saved and interpreted correctly.

It looks like you can still use inline style tags (eg <table style="...">), so there’s a workaround, but putting such styling in your template would be cleaner.

[kleinerpirat]

@Rumo

Once the dialogue is open, the user has to remember how they’ve opened it to know which notes will be affected, because nothing will stop them from using it for something else than replacing the selected tag.

Why would they have to remember? There’s still the input “Find”, which shows exactly which notes would be affected.

I see the whole idea as a useful shortcut to a prefilled Find & Replace, nothing more.

@Rumo

I would like to add another dropdown menu to the dialogue, which allows for setting the affected notes. The options would include “All” and “Selected”.

@dae That’s the only thing that would make it complicated. I wouldn’t worry about the selection at all here.

---

But I guess it’s true that it’s not the ideal solution for @AnKingMed’s request. How was it done in BetterTags? Editing full tag by default I think. Whatever it was, that’s what a lot of people are still used to.

[Rumo]

@dae

Hmm, it feels like trying to solve this with find&replace is making things more complicated than they need to be.

I would agree, but now that I’ve looked into things, I feel like an “Affect all notes” option would be a neat feature, anyway. Like @kleinerpirat has said, Find & Replace is very powerful, but underused, and presumably more users would learn about it, if it was accessible from the sidebar.
I’ll open a PR.

@kleinerpirat

Why would they have to remember? There’s still the input “Find”, which shows exactly which notes would be affected.

If you open F&R from the browser, the “Find” input will be found on all selected notes. If opening from the sidebar would search the whole collection, the difference would currently not be reflected in the GUI.

[dae]

A ‘selected notes only’ checkbox that can be disabled sounds good to me, as it does seem to be a point of confusion.