[Parley-devel] Features in next version of Parley

[Anša Vernerová]

Hi Inge, Andres and others,

first of all, thank you very much for all the effort you put into
parley. The new parley looks great and I am very happy about the
features that have been introduced in recent versions, like the blue
and red triangles in the editor marking the entries with sound/images,
the new dashboard, and especially the sessions.


As you know, I file my ideas regularly as bug/wish reports. Here are a
few more comments.

I like the option of BIDIRECTIONAL TESTING and specifying which is the
target language (although I still will have to come up with something
for tests in which both items are "target", like translating from one
foreign language into another, where there is the risk of not
understanding the first, or understanding but not knowing the answer
in the other). However, images should not be shown for the target
language when the target language is the Question in the bidirectional
testing, while it is fine to show images for the Question when the
Question is the Known language (again, if one of the two languages is
Known). The practice setup should distinguish between "Image for
Question" depending on the direction.

Talking about the new format and related to my wish
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279512: I wonder whether the
concept of lessons could be generalized to tags and subtags instead.
The tags would form a tree, and one part of that tree would normally
be the division into lessons, but with the possibility to have one
word in several lessons. I noticed in the TODO list in the repo that
you mention thaipod101.com. I've been using finnishpod101 and
hebrewpod101 from the same company, and I noticed that you can also
look up the list of lessons that a word belongs to. This is hard to
achieve with a linear lesson structure, but easy to achieve with a
tag-like structure. Moreover, it would make it super-easy to select
for practice, lets say, just verbs describing animal behaviours from
lessons 1-10 (select tag "word", which is a subtag of "part of
speech"; tags "Lesson 1"... "Lesson 10"; and the tag "Animal" which
are subtag of "Topic"). Obviously, there would need to be further
specification of attributes that items with certain tags may have
(certain tags imply inflection) and maybe even some uniform ways of
treating words with a certain tag (like showing the subtags of the
"style" tag during practice so that the learner is reminded that a
word may not be appropriate in all contexts).


I noticed the following paraghraph in the TODO list in the repository:
35       + There seems to be no way to change the title.
      ----
36         It works in the editor but it is never saved.
37         Note: It can be changed in the menu, though.
Today, I've managed to change the title of several of my collections
so that it displays correctly on the new dashboard, so I suppose this
problem is fixed in 4.14.


SPACED REPETITION setup:
The TODO list also mentions "pregrades" (what are they?) and the need
for greater amount of practice on level 1. I still think this could be
solved simply by "require three consecutive right answers only for
items answered incorrectly on the first attempt",
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271785 I think that both that and
the "I know it well" could coexist quite nicely and complement each
other, as they do slightly different things. I am intrigued by the
idea of abandoning the levels completely, and I think both of the
above ideas could still be applied in that case, too. Do you know of
any research as what kind of "time curve" is best for training? I've
just read somewhere that it is best to keep the retention ratio at all
times betwen 80% and 95% and that some methods have the desired
retention ratio as their input parameter.
    If you have an implementation and need a real person to test the
new method before release, and if I can use my current files with
their current grades for that testing (i.e. continuing with the vocab
I have already practiced from the spot that I have reached), that
would be great. Actually it is not a strict condition, as I have just
started learning a new language, so I would not mind abandoning my
grades for that language. BTW, I use much longer training intervals
than those suggested by parley by default, my levels 6 and 7 are 10
and 12 months respectively. My retention ratio is around 80%; the
intervals may be so long partly because my entries are both words and
full sentences that contain them, so I usually practice the same piece
of information in several parley entries. I am fond of separate
"easiness" coefficient for each item as in my case, there definitely
are words which I do forget again and again, and others that I learn
easily. I do not tend to practice every day, so I might also be the
right person for testing how that influences the effectivness of the
chosen method. Dropping to 0 is fine with me.
    I'd be happy to do some reading on this topic, but I am afraid
that by the time I would learn enough to be able to suggest a training
method for Parley, version 5.0.0 would be around.


As for minor wishes, I still wish that sound files would be played
automatically during testing, which I reported as part of
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=263835; for now I assume it is
not top priority for implementation. Talking about sound, I do not
like the fact that during practice, a shadowed sound icon is shown
next to items that do not have sound attached to them; could there be
no icon instead?



I am looking forward to the improvements of the EDITOR component. In
the world of my wildest dreams, I would love some integration with
Goldendict https://github.com/goldendict/goldendict/ However, even
just the possibility to configure the "Internet" view would be great
and it's a pity that it has not been done yet. BTW, the only script
with which I've had any luck is the fetching of images. The other ones
don't work for me. Repairing them to full functionality might be a
great help. (I just noticed they are in python. If I have any luck
myself repairing any of them, I certainly will let you know!) And
maybe asking users to share their scripts just as they share their
vocabulary collections would bring about a lot of functionality. E.g.
I guess someone has to have a script for fetching sound files from
forvo.com!



Finally, the old kvtml can be converted into html or csv via xsl (this
can be run from the "File" menu in parley). If the new kvtml also is
in xml and the need for such conversion stylesheets is felt, I'd like
to give it a try.


Anša