Incremental Reading Add-on (unofficial clone)

Anki Add-ons
21

I haven’t used Supermemo, so I can only give a comparison from what I’ve read about Supermemo.

From what I can tell, this plugin lacks a few features:

  • Intelligent scheduling algorithm. This addon uses very basic scheduling algorithm based on priority. It doesn’t take into account when the card was created or the review history. It also doesn’t automatically adjust priority based on user review pattern.
  • Intertwine between “normal” review cards (i.e, Basic and Cloze card types in Anki) and IR (incremental reading) cards. This plugin uses a hack to order the IR cards. So a deck can’t have both normal cards and IR cards.
  • Breaking down long articles. Supermemo has a feature to break long articles down into multiple cards, but this addon doesn’t (except for the epub import, which can break a book down into its chapters).
  • No native support for PDFs. User has to open the PDF using another PDF reader and copy/paste notes back into this Anki plugin. (btw, I use Firefox to read PDFs and put a local link like “file:///Users/username/ebooks/adkins2020_build_secure_and_reliable_service.pdf#page=491” in the IR note)

That being said, this addon has the basic functionalities required for incremental reading as per this youtube video by Experimental Learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNCLLNZEtz0&t=198s, namely:

  • interleave different materials,
  • extract to new notes,
  • create cloze deletions,
  • order with priority queue,
  • and review with Spaced Repetition (using vanilla Anki).
2 Likes
22

Hi, it appears that this add-on is causing the undo function to not work when pressing the “U” key. Anki keeps displaying “No undo history for this card.” Do you have any idea why this might be happening?

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23

IR add-on uses “U” as the default undo Key for IR.
This key can be changed in Options.

  • read → Options → Basic Controls → Undo Key
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24

Thank you so much!!!

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25

I’m having some difficulty getting this to work in the latest Anki (v24.04). I was able to extract a webpage and able to extract a note from the webpage. However scheduling the cards is not working. Whenever I press “Soon”/“Later”/“Custom”, I still see the same card and manually changing their priorities also doesn’t change anything.

I’m using FSRS though, probably that might be the issue. Would appreciate any help here.

System: MacOS
Anki version: 24.04

26

Breaking down long articles. Supermemo has a feature to break long articles down into multiple cards, but this addon doesn’t (except for the epub import, which can break a book down into its chapters).

I had made a tool like that a few years ago. I’ve dusted off the project and it is now available.
This is CLI only but the docs should make it easy enough.
github[DOT]com/tassa-yoniso-manasi-karoto/irgen

On a side note, for those who are interested in incremental reading: Supermemo seems to have become abandonware. I had bought a license and in spite of my efforts to contact them throughout several weeks I never received the activation key. I had to request a refund through Paypal. I would recommend to say away from that license.

2 Likes
27

I’d recommend using Priorities Scheduling Mode. I find it a lot more useful and less buggy than the default mode.
You can find this setting in Tools > Add-ons > Incremental Reading v4119 unofficial clone > Scheduling tab > Scheduling Mode.

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I’m also using FSRS (through Anki’s scheduler v3) and they work fine together.

4 Likes
28

Any chance this addon could one day be compatible with Edit Field during review addon?

Or is there some easy fix I could implement to make them compatible?
I want to have personal writing projects as IR cards that I can mix into the queue and use for incremental writing. A functional Edit Field During Review add-on is absolutely essential for this.

Also, different question? If I study both normal cards and IR cards in temporary filtered decks will the new rescheduling hold when they are returned to the IR deck?

2 Likes
29

I’ve heard about Incremental Reading, briefly read a SuperMemo article about it, watched a couple videos on it and I still don’t understand the significance of it. My generally understanding of Incremental Reading is that you load things you want to read into it and the algorithm will show you snippets in reading order (i.e. it will show you the snippets in the order of how it would be normally read) from different articles. When presented with a snippet, you have the ability to create flashcards.

One thing I took away from Incremental Reading was to read a couple different articles/books at the same time while creating flashcards so that you don’t have to re-read to remember something and it lets the information kind of settle in your brain. So, I have 9 books in rotation. I read and make flashcards on 15 pages from book A, B, C on day 1; the same for book D, book E, and book F on day 2; and the same for book G, book H, and book I on day 3 (while keeping up with my flashcard reviews). Then, I start the cycle all over again.

What I don’t understand is what makes the Incremental Reading software more powerful than what I am doing. I get that the software will schedule the snippets you will read for you, but aren’t the snippets too small to be useful? Also I find that if you don’t read something at once you kind of forget the context and have to re-read pieces again anyway.

Any insights?

2 Likes
30

I’m interested in knowing this as well

31

You can make longer snippets if you want. Watch this.

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32

Context switching (interleaving) makes learning stronger. Once you get use to it you will not want to go back.

The order shown is different from the regular reading order (from cover to bottom). The process is not linear. The actual sort is according to “sorting criteria” which weights priority, outstanding date (due date) and element type (topics is reading, items are flashcards). So you mix reading and recalling during the session.

I was doing something similar to you and I was so desperate that I tried Supermemo out for this reason. You lose track of what you read unless you go in a linear fashion.

I covered Incremental Reading for a few hundred of videos. Feel free to check my channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCus-Fyf-I-Le1vS4tfZ_GlA

I suggest this introduction which is software agnostic https://youtu.be/V25qRwBD4CM

4 Likes
33

I should try interleaving maybe. It sounds good. By the way, do you know whetner Anki plans to add native IR eventually?

34

I asked several years ago. I am afraid the answer remains the same.

35

Isn’t this not a good idea if you want to learn something; especially something that build upon it’s self like Math? I don’t think it would be efficient to Incremental Read a Calculus book or something similar to that (you wouldn’t want to learn about integration techniques before you learned what a derivative was).

36

I don’t think he’s talking about jumping from one topic to another in the same book.

37

If it’s from different books, then it’s basically the same (plus other stuff I am probably not seeing) as what I do but automated (which does make it more powerful). The only thing that’s holding me back is the fact that I feel like Incremental Reading will make you suffer from similar problems that Anki does (i.e you won’t see the big picture).

38

For big picture, I do thinking. I think about everything I know about a topic. Kinda works!

39

If you can report the issue and error messages in Issues · tvhong/incremental-reading · GitHub. I might be able to point you to the relevant code path.

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40

Though unrelated to this add-on, these fonts may be useful for reading.

1 Like