Can I use the same word to describe interval and delay? Or do they carry a different meaning? As I understood interval is a time span between two reviews and delay is used to describe the next due time/date of learning card. Is delay used to describe shorter time spans?
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Interval, in this sense, means the span of time between two points. It is a measurement of time, specifically the gap in time between two points in time. For example, the interval between 2 pm Monday and 2 pm Wednesday is 48 hr.
Delay, generally means time, during which one must wait for something to occur. For example, the heavy rain has caused delays for those travelling by bus — i.e. the buses are running late because of the heavy rain.
In Anki, the general meaning of delay has a related, but particular sense of: the time that a given action (often a review) has been pushed back, or would be pushed back. This limited sense of delay in Anki might sound very similar to the meaning of interval, but interval is always merely a measurement; delay carries the idea of something being made late or pushed away.
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I searched through all the strings [1], and I agreed that these are distinct terms. It would be good if they were translated as separate words, but the most important thing is that the translations are consistent for each word.
Interval is a term of art in Anki – it’s a specific property of a card.
While delay is used for any passage of time other than an “interval” – such as the lengths of re/learning steps, the time before repeating a card in a Filtered deck with scheduling disabled, or the postponing of a card until the next day (bury). [You can see how all of those fall under matta’s concepts of something being pushed back and waiting for it to happen.]
It’s often easier to work through these meaning issues by looking at everywhere a term is used. ↩︎