Anki 23.10 Release Candidate

[glutanimate]

@hnvy

Regarding the new native IO, I know the following might sound extremely stupid, but would it be possible to (dare I say) “simply” embed the IO addon within Anki itself?

The IO addon is mature (and is feature-rich), and has been tested by many people. So, I wonder if that would save you developement time (in the long run). I know that a lot of work has been put into the native version already, and I’m by no means disregarding it.

Not a stupid question at all

It just wouldn’t have been advisable from a tech perspective. The add-on had to work within the bounds of being an add-on, so a lot of the design decisions that were reasonable in that context would not have made sense for a native implementation. Here’s a longer read, if you want to dive deeper into the reasoning for some of the changes. Essentially, dealing with those design decisions and that technical debt would have likely cost more time than starting from scratch.

Building a new mask editor was also crucial to make IO work well cross-platform, and that’s something @krmanik put a lot of effort into. If you give IO a try on AnkiMobile, you’ll see that the touch ergonomics are really great already. The editor IOE was using simply wouldn’t have worked for that.

In terms of more features, we’ve made native IO extensible, so I’ve also been working on a completely new version of Image Occlusion Enhanced that will build on top of it, adding even more functionality.

@BEST8OY

Not sure how to explain this IO issue.

Thanks for the report, can reproduce this. Filed an issue.

[Aleksej]

I like the info FSRS4Anki Helper shows under the card on 2.1.66 (especially deck and difficulty). Will at least deck and card info sidebar during review show difficulty?

[Expertium]

You can press I key during the review to see card info.

I don’t think there is any other way. Speaking of which, it would be nice if stats from the helper add-on were integrated into Anki.

[Expertium]

Minor suggestion: currently, SM-2 retention is capped between 0.7 and 0.97, just like desired retention. However, SM-2 retention could very well be outside of those bounds for some users. I don’t think there is a good reason to cap it the same way as desired retention.

And one more thing I’m worried about: new users who haven’t heard about FSRS before won’t know what “difficulty”, “stability,” and “retrievability” mean. But I don’t know how to solve this problem. In this issue I suggested including a pre-made deck about Anki itself, so users can use Anki to learn about Anki, but it seems like that’s not planned. Updating the manual to include new terms would be nice, but not every user reads the Anki manual, in fact, I’m pretty sure the majority of users don’t. So I don’t know how to make sure that new users aren’t confused.

[Aleksej]

I made a quick & dirty change to the above add-on (using pp(card()) described in Debugging - Writing Anki Add-ons):

In card_deck_properties.py, add to the “# Card Stats as seen in Browser” section:

    if card.desired_retention:
        p["c_DesiredRetention_str"] = str( round(card.desired_retention, 4) )
    else:
        p["c_DesiredRetention_str"] = ''
    if card.memory_state:
        p["c_MemoryState_str"] = str("D: {}%, S: {}".format(int(round(card.memory_state.difficulty * 10, 0)), round(card.memory_state.stability, 1)))
    else:
        p["c_MemoryState_str"] = ''

In cardstats.py, add to either or all of the sections (depending on which modes you use)

• rows_mini_stats = [
• def mini_card_stats_with_ord(card, p, show_od):
• def card_stats_as_in_browser(card, p):

the following:

        ("Memory State", p.c_MemoryState_str),
        ("Desired Retention", p.c_DesiredRetention_str),

It shows:

Memory State	D: 100%, S: 2.6
Desired Retention	0.83

Retrievability is not there.

[jcznk]

Filtered decks: Current Card info shows Ease instead of Stability, Difficulty, Retrievability.

[jujemido]

Hello! Just pitching in to know how FSRS will works alongside with Ankidroid?

[Expertium]

Right now it’s unclear when FSRS will be supported on mobile devices. But it will be delayed compared to the desktop release, that’s for sure.

[jujemido]

So, how it works when reviewing from both devices?

[szalejot]

Just like before: you can use fsrs helper add-on, to reschedule cards, that were reviewed on the Ankidroid. This option can be set to automatic, so every time you open desktop Anki it will check if any cards were reviewed on a different device and reschedule them using FSRS.

[hnvy]

Aha, I see! Thank you for taking the time to explain this. I have already sensed that there would be some technical aspect to it which I have not taken into account.

And, thank you for the addon! If you need beta testers, let me know (I like testing things :))!

[hnvy]

Anki export error when media folder is deleted

Here are the steps. This never happened to me before, so I thought to report it just in case it is sinister:

• Delete the collection.media folder from your profile at %appdata%/Anki2.
• Export collection with media
• Error appears

Failed to read 'C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\User\collection.media': The system cannot find the path specified. (os error 3)

[hnvy]

Note: all of the issues below are minor, and do not cause much (if any, at all) hassle.

IO custom shapes not adhering to boundaries

I am not sure if this was by design, but have a look at the GIF below. As can be seen, the custom shapes do not adhere to the same boundaries as the rectangle.

Same issue with grouped rectangles.

IO custom shapes resizing outline disappears after moving the shape

Minor ‘issues’, but I thought to report them for the sake of completeness:

1. As seen from the GIF below, the custom shapes resizing outline disappears after moving the shape.
2. The resizing outline of the custom shape (hollow) looks different the stock shapes (solid). Though I assume that this was done by design (to distinguish the two).

Stock shapes cannot be rotated

Again, not sure if this is by design, but:

1. Stock shapes cannot be rotated. Yet, when you group them, you can rotate them. See the GIF below.
2. Custom shapes lack the rotation feature when they are first created. However, the rotation feature reappears when you deselect and select the shape again. See the GIF below.
3. (sorry for the GIF spam, but a GIF is worth # of frames * 1000 words).

When creating custom shape creation, you still interact with other shapes

Please have a look at the GIF below. Once again, it’s minor.

Bulk deletion of shapes: undo and redo issue

Strange behaviour outlined in the GIF below. It seems that a new shape is added when doing this (notice that the rectangle was not there to begin with).

[dae]

@AnKingMed

I may have missed this - is there a reason these aren’t on betas.ankiweb.net ?

I’ve switched over to using GitHub, as it allows people to see the release notes in the same spot as the download.

@hnvy

IO custom shapes not adhering to boundaries

Thanks, logged on Various minor I/O issues · Issue #2774 · ankitects/anki · GitHub.

@jcznk

Filtered decks: Current Card info shows Ease instead of Stability, Difficulty, Retrievability.

I can’t seem to reproduce this.

Some of the other points brought up here I will try to address before the next rc.

[L.M.Sherlock]

A suggestion: display the warning of backlog when user enabled reschedule cards on change like the warning of enabling FSRS.

Because most of users would not read the doc and the backlog is quite a discouraging blow:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/17fp1o9/new_fsrs_on_the_beta_easily_30x_my_reviews/

[jcznk]

@dae

I can’t seem to reproduce this.

I cannot reproduce it consistently either, today. Tried restoring a backup from two days ago and the problem still appears, mostly with a specific filtered deck (which contains quite an heterogeneous array of cards). I’ll keep an eye open and see if I can narrow it down.

[Expertium]

Suggestion: implement this module into Anki so that users can see a preview of what intervals they will get.

Fsrs4anki Previewer - a Hugging Face Space by open-spaced-repetition

[Expertium]

Another suggestion: add an option to switch back to the old algorithm and “un-schedule” cards that were scheduled by FSRS. Currently, if a user switches from the old algorithm to FSRS and reschedules all cards, there is no way to undo that other than restoring the collection from a backup. This means that some users won’t try FSRS because they are afraid of irreversible changes, and users who have tried FSRS and didn’t like it don’t have the option to “un-schedule” cards back. So I think there should be an option to not just turn FSRS off but also to change the cards’ intervals using the old algorithm.

[Aleksej]

In the note type’s field editor, there is a checkbox “Exclude from unqualified searches (slower)”. If I didn’t know what “unqualified searches” meant, I would have thought checking that box would make something slower.

[cqg]

23.10 is considerably slower with some built in TTS voices under Windows 10. In this example, both {{tts en_GB}} and {{tts en_US:}} are correctly installed on my system:

However, for some reason, when using any template that uses the US version, an annoyng “Precessing” windopws appears for 1-4 seconds after reviewing any card:

2.1.66 worked fine with GB and US TTS.

Nothing really serious once you find out what’s the problem, which took me a while.