Closet’s image occlusion editor is very basic at the moment. There is a lot of room for usability improvements, but for most use cases it it’s already sufficient. Regarding everything else (overlapping clozes, multiple choice, random number generation etc), Closet allows for pretty much anything you can think of. The creative freedom Closet provides is unmatched and cannot really be compared to any other addon.
Some Image Occlusion Advantages
- no external editor (you can edit the occlusions directly from the Add-dialog)
- creates multiple cards from one note - instead of an individual note for each rectangle, so Closet cards are linked like cloze cards
- you can mix image occlusions with other effects (e.g. clozes):
- show/hide specific rectangles on a per-card-basis (using the command fields)
- you will never run into the issue of a “broken” note type - a thing that happens constantly with the traditional IO-Enhanced add-on
I don’t think you’d miss this mess:
Some Image Occlusion Disadvantages
- requires basic understanding of how your actions within the editor are transformed into closet commands and how those commands affect the output → so it is not that user friendly
- grouping multiple rectangles requires more effort and planning
- advanced styling requires some coding knowledge (no out-of-the-box support for multiple colors, shapes etc.)
- no undo functionality (Ctrl-Z)
- still in early development, bugs may occur
Conclusion
I would say that Image Occlusion Enhanced by Glutanimate is a lot easier to understand and use, while Closet allows for the creation of cutting-edge Anki cards that were not feasible before and relieves you of the pain of managing multiple note types.
So whether it’s worth it for you could boil down to this question: What’s more important to you, ease of note creation or ease of note management?
The main "Selling Point"
The fact that you can use all of Closet’s features in a single note type makes Closet stand out. This is is a godsend when you use a lot of JavaScript and CSS in your template and you want to keep things consistent while adding new scripts and designs. This alone is worth the switch in my opinion.
The amount of features really depends on how you use it. It is a templating language, not a finished solution.
@hengiesel is one of the most active Anki devs, so Closet seems future proof right now.
Future versions will probably feature a lot of usability enhancements. If you have ideas and want to help in Closet’s development, you can file an issue on the GitHub repository.