5 ms·

My personal peeve about Anki: I don’t like its data model. It seems to me that there ought to be collections of notes (which might be things one would download

by amluto 1y ago

My personal peeve about Anki: I don’t like its data model. It seems to me that there ought to be collections of notes (which might be things one would download or generate with an LLM or make yourself or share with friends or students). On top of one or more collections of notes are the sets of cards to want to learn, and they can derive from the notes. This includes, roughly, templates plus some concept of which cards are enabled. On top of that is the spaced repetition history and model. There also ought to be a way to constrain what cards should be studied in a given session. (For example, if learning Chinese or Japanese, one might want to have a pencil and paper when practicing writing but not reading. When practicing without paper, one might want to skip the writing cards.) Anki doesn’t seem to separate these layers at all. Everything is a monolithic database. Import is unpleasant. Export is unpleasant. Sharing is unpleasant. Doing anything other than practicing and editing in the UI is unpleasant. And, every time I try Anki, I get stuck when I can’t manipulate my own data outside Anki. Is there any system out there that doesn’t have this issue?

ape4 1y ago
Yeah, if you're learning a language, have a group of restaurant words and another group about air travel, etc. Then then user will associate them.
- runarberg 1y ago
  For that I buy a vocabulary book, or a phrase book. As I read through it, and if I don‘t know a word or understand a sentence, I try to learn it using various methods, and create an Anki card to keep it in memory. Anki is just to retain the word. On a plus side, you can buy specialized vocab/phrase books, I have one just for onomonopias. Also my beginner vocab books come with recordings from actual native speaker voice actors, which I add to the deck. Much better quality than anything an LLM or speech synthesizers can give you.
echelon 1y ago
Seems like a YC business in the making. There's demand for improvements, and you already have your pitch. Sprinkle in AI and you'd be a shoe-in.
Graziano_M 1y ago
What are you talking about? Anki explicitly has the concept of 'notes' from which one or more 'cards' are derived. You can absolutely easily make custom decks that only have certain card types.
- Ajedi32 1y ago
  Yeah I'm confused too. "I don’t like its data model. I wish the data model was instead <perfectly describes Anki's data model>".
TheDong 1y ago
> there ought to be collections of notes (which might be things one would download or generate with an LLM or make yourself or share with friends or students). On top of one or more collections of notes are the sets of cards to want to learn Is that not what anki does? You have a collection of cards, each card can be in one or more decks derived from the cards. > There also ought to be a way to constrain what cards should be studied in a given session That's also decks. You can have your 'Japanese' deck, and then the 'Japanese::writing' subdeck for the subset which require you to have your writing materials handy. You can also use "Better Tags" to tag cards, and then create a sub-deck with an ad-hoc tag query to only study a subset if you want. Does creating more decks and then studying the subset you want to in a session not work for what you want? > Anki doesn’t seem to separate these layers at all. Everything is a monolithic database. Decks are separate files which can be shared, edited, created, studied, and reasoned about independently. The "spaced repetition model" in anki is obviously separate from the fact that there are multiple (FSRS and the old one). > Export is unpleasant. Sharing is unpleasant It's just files (zip files really). What's unpleasant about it? > And, every time I try Anki, I get stuck when I can’t manipulate my own data outside Anki. There's libraries to manipulate anki decks outside of anki for practically every programming languages. There are literally dozens of tools that can generate and import anki cards, such as the large family of japanese "mining" tools which create anki cards from media, dictionary entries, etc etc. It's open source, and the code has clean library abstractions you can work with, so it's trivial to nab any of the data out of it. > Is there any system out there that doesn’t have this issue? Every issue you described is something that I experienced in other software, but which anki solved for me, so for me "anki" is that system.
- amluto 1y ago
  > Is that not what anki does? You have a collection of cards, each card can be in one or more decks derived from the cards. Kind of? As far as I can tell (and I haven't spent enormous amounts of time digging in), there are decks, and a deck contains the notes, the templates (and the cards, which may or may not have any sort of independent existence outside the notes and templates that generate them?), and a deck also contains the scheduling information. One can export the textual and markup contents of decks, but not the media, into a text file, and one can re-import it, supposedly losslessly. One can also export a deck minus scheduling information for sharing purposes. I'm not sure that one can re-import it. Then there is a collection, which is the whole world: decks along with their scheduling info. > That's also decks. You can have your 'Japanese' deck, and then the 'Japanese::writing' subdeck for the subset which require you to have your writing materials handy. I'm guessing that, if I start by importing a Japanese deck from some other source (because, for example, there's a source with high-quality notes), and then I split it into a writing subdeck, and then the original source adds new notes for new words or makes changes or whatever, that merging the results is basically unsupported. > > Anki doesn’t seem to separate these layers at all. Everything is a monolithic database. > Decks are separate files which can be shared, edited, created, studied, and reasoned about independently. Yes, but only as monoliths (again, as far as I can tell). I can export an "Anki Deck Package (.apkg)", but checking that into git would result in a bit of nonsense. I can't export my scheduling information and templates separately from the underlying notes (or, if I can, I failed to find this option). >> Export is unpleasant. Sharing is unpleasant > It's just files (zip files really). What's unpleasant about it? Excel and OpenDocument sheet files are also zip files. But the respective tools are less limiting and don't expect the users to unzip those zip files. (And their merging and text import/export facilities are also weak, and that's unfortunate.) I could be wrong about most of this. But Anki doesn't seem friendly to a decomposed workflow in the way that modern programming lanuages are.
uselesswords 1y ago
It’s amazing how every single point you’ve made here is wrong as the other commenter already dove into. On top of that Anki is one of the best documented pieces of open-source software I’ve messed with. If you’re able to program, ChatGPT can basically handle any task you want it too, I data mine the sqllite database regularly for my own insights.
- ilteris 1y ago
  Where does your SQLite db sit? I have been thinking about creating a local database to save and feed into LLM but i have no experience with it
  - runarberg 1y ago
    I’m not using LLMs but I scrape open dictionary data to generate (massive) cards for learning kanji. I publish these in a specialized kanji learning app (rather than anki proper). My db just lives temporarily on my local machine, before I publish. Maybe sometime I will streamline the publishing process and create a github action for it. btw. I didn’t use LLMs to write the app, it was still pretty straight forward. https://github.com/runarberg/shodoku/tree/main/scripts https://github.com/runarberg/shodoku/tree/main/scripts
  - rahimnathwani 1y ago
    If you export a deck as an .apkg file, you can unzip it to get the SQLite files: https://www.encona.com/posts/custom-statistics-for-anki-flashcard-reviews https://www.encona.com/posts/custom-statistics-for-anki-flas...
  - yorwba 1y ago
    The SQLite database file is called "collection.anki2". Its path varies depending on the operating system: https://docs.ankiweb.net/files.html?highlight=collection.anki2#file-locations https://docs.ankiweb.net/files.html?highlight=collection.ank...
- ummonk 1y ago
  I think there is an argument to be made about the poor learning curve (ironic) for learning how to organize and use Anki
jamager 1y ago
For language learning only, but perhaps my own https://thehardway.app https://thehardway.app model suits you better (flashcards inside markdown-ish notes)
- Tijdreiziger 1y ago
  Sorry, but your landing page is really awful. I’m not allowed to learn about your app because I’m on a tablet? And I have to give you my e-mail address, even though I know nothing about your app so far? Suggestion: Allow me to browse your site and learn about your application, and I’ll decide if it’s interesting enough for me to open it on my desktop later.
  - jamager 1y ago
    You are right, I will get around that. For what is worth, I do not keep the email address.
- smnplk 1y ago
  How much will you be charging for the app? Is it using LLM ?
allenu 1y ago
You're right about the data model. I built my own flashcard app [1], so I've had to understand the database schema that Anki uses and a lot of it seems very inelegant, but on the other hand, I can see how it was purpose-built and probably grew over time and things were tacked on. (For instance, there's one table that has a single row, where several fields are simply JSON dictionaries.) On the other hand, how templates work and how cloze deletions work are really nice. With the flashcard app I built, I didn't have templates, but did have a very basic cloze deletion system where you could mark text to be "hidden" on the front. It was very limited in that you'd only ever get one front/back combination. You could hide multiple bits of text, but they'd all be hidden at the same time. With Anki, you can create multiple groups of hidden text, so that you end up with multiple flashcards from the same note (i.e. you hid three separate groups of text, so you now have three different cards to test with). I've been working on an update to my app to incorporate templates and cloze deletions like how Anki does it, so now I appreciate that aspect to it. For my own database, at least in the new version I'm working on, I've ended up creating a schema where the individual attributes for each card are thrown into their own tables, but this is mostly because I needed to support updating individual attributes separately since I use a very simple journaling system to sync across devices. With Anki's schema, I can see why sync was complicated (at least in earlier versions) since it wasn't really built for it. [1] https://www.freshcardsapp.com/ https://www.freshcardsapp.com/

by amluto 1y ago

ape4 1y ago

Yeah, if you're learning a language, have a group of restaurant words and another group about air travel, etc. Then then user will associate them.

runarberg 1y ago
For that I buy a vocabulary book, or a phrase book. As I read through it, and if I don‘t know a word or understand a sentence, I try to learn it using various methods, and create an Anki card to keep it in memory. Anki is just to retain the word. On a plus side, you can buy specialized vocab/phrase books, I have one just for onomonopias. Also my beginner vocab books come with recordings from actual native speaker voice actors, which I add to the deck. Much better quality than anything an LLM or speech synthesizers can give you.

echelon 1y ago

Seems like a YC business in the making. There's demand for improvements, and you already have your pitch. Sprinkle in AI and you'd be a shoe-in.

Graziano_M 1y ago

What are you talking about? Anki explicitly has the concept of 'notes' from which one or more 'cards' are derived. You can absolutely easily make custom decks that only have certain card types.

Ajedi32 1y ago
Yeah I'm confused too. "I don’t like its data model. I wish the data model was instead <perfectly describes Anki's data model>".

TheDong 1y ago

> there ought to be collections of notes (which might be things one would download or generate with an LLM or make yourself or share with friends or students). On top of one or more collections of notes are the sets of cards to want to learn Is that not what anki does? You have a collection of cards, each card can be in one or more decks derived from the cards. > There also ought to be a way to constrain what cards should be studied in a given session That's also decks. You can have your 'Japanese' deck, and then the 'Japanese::writing' subdeck for the subset which require you to have your writing materials handy. You can also use "Better Tags" to tag cards, and then create a sub-deck with an ad-hoc tag query to only study a subset if you want. Does creating more decks and then studying the subset you want to in a session not work for what you want? > Anki doesn’t seem to separate these layers at all. Everything is a monolithic database. Decks are separate files which can be shared, edited, created, studied, and reasoned about independently. The "spaced repetition model" in anki is obviously separate from the fact that there are multiple (FSRS and the old one). > Export is unpleasant. Sharing is unpleasant It's just files (zip files really). What's unpleasant about it? > And, every time I try Anki, I get stuck when I can’t manipulate my own data outside Anki. There's libraries to manipulate anki decks outside of anki for practically every programming languages. There are literally dozens of tools that can generate and import anki cards, such as the large family of japanese "mining" tools which create anki cards from media, dictionary entries, etc etc. It's open source, and the code has clean library abstractions you can work with, so it's trivial to nab any of the data out of it. > Is there any system out there that doesn’t have this issue? Every issue you described is something that I experienced in other software, but which anki solved for me, so for me "anki" is that system.

amluto 1y ago
> Is that not what anki does? You have a collection of cards, each card can be in one or more decks derived from the cards. Kind of? As far as I can tell (and I haven't spent enormous amounts of time digging in), there are decks, and a deck contains the notes, the templates (and the cards, which may or may not have any sort of independent existence outside the notes and templates that generate them?), and a deck also contains the scheduling information. One can export the textual and markup contents of decks, but not the media, into a text file, and one can re-import it, supposedly losslessly. One can also export a deck minus scheduling information for sharing purposes. I'm not sure that one can re-import it. Then there is a collection, which is the whole world: decks along with their scheduling info. > That's also decks. You can have your 'Japanese' deck, and then the 'Japanese::writing' subdeck for the subset which require you to have your writing materials handy. I'm guessing that, if I start by importing a Japanese deck from some other source (because, for example, there's a source with high-quality notes), and then I split it into a writing subdeck, and then the original source adds new notes for new words or makes changes or whatever, that merging the results is basically unsupported. > > Anki doesn’t seem to separate these layers at all. Everything is a monolithic database. > Decks are separate files which can be shared, edited, created, studied, and reasoned about independently. Yes, but only as monoliths (again, as far as I can tell). I can export an "Anki Deck Package (.apkg)", but checking that into git would result in a bit of nonsense. I can't export my scheduling information and templates separately from the underlying notes (or, if I can, I failed to find this option). >> Export is unpleasant. Sharing is unpleasant > It's just files (zip files really). What's unpleasant about it? Excel and OpenDocument sheet files are also zip files. But the respective tools are less limiting and don't expect the users to unzip those zip files. (And their merging and text import/export facilities are also weak, and that's unfortunate.) I could be wrong about most of this. But Anki doesn't seem friendly to a decomposed workflow in the way that modern programming lanuages are.

uselesswords 1y ago

It’s amazing how every single point you’ve made here is wrong as the other commenter already dove into. On top of that Anki is one of the best documented pieces of open-source software I’ve messed with. If you’re able to program, ChatGPT can basically handle any task you want it too, I data mine the sqllite database regularly for my own insights.

ilteris 1y ago
Where does your SQLite db sit? I have been thinking about creating a local database to save and feed into LLM but i have no experience with it
- runarberg 1y ago
  I’m not using LLMs but I scrape open dictionary data to generate (massive) cards for learning kanji. I publish these in a specialized kanji learning app (rather than anki proper). My db just lives temporarily on my local machine, before I publish. Maybe sometime I will streamline the publishing process and create a github action for it. btw. I didn’t use LLMs to write the app, it was still pretty straight forward. https://github.com/runarberg/shodoku/tree/main/scripts https://github.com/runarberg/shodoku/tree/main/scripts
- rahimnathwani 1y ago
  If you export a deck as an .apkg file, you can unzip it to get the SQLite files: https://www.encona.com/posts/custom-statistics-for-anki-flashcard-reviews https://www.encona.com/posts/custom-statistics-for-anki-flas...
- yorwba 1y ago
  The SQLite database file is called "collection.anki2". Its path varies depending on the operating system: https://docs.ankiweb.net/files.html?highlight=collection.anki2#file-locations https://docs.ankiweb.net/files.html?highlight=collection.ank...
ummonk 1y ago
I think there is an argument to be made about the poor learning curve (ironic) for learning how to organize and use Anki

jamager 1y ago

For language learning only, but perhaps my own https://thehardway.app https://thehardway.app model suits you better (flashcards inside markdown-ish notes)

Tijdreiziger 1y ago
Sorry, but your landing page is really awful. I’m not allowed to learn about your app because I’m on a tablet? And I have to give you my e-mail address, even though I know nothing about your app so far? Suggestion: Allow me to browse your site and learn about your application, and I’ll decide if it’s interesting enough for me to open it on my desktop later.
- jamager 1y ago
  You are right, I will get around that. For what is worth, I do not keep the email address.
smnplk 1y ago
How much will you be charging for the app? Is it using LLM ?

allenu 1y ago

You're right about the data model. I built my own flashcard app [1], so I've had to understand the database schema that Anki uses and a lot of it seems very inelegant, but on the other hand, I can see how it was purpose-built and probably grew over time and things were tacked on. (For instance, there's one table that has a single row, where several fields are simply JSON dictionaries.) On the other hand, how templates work and how cloze deletions work are really nice. With the flashcard app I built, I didn't have templates, but did have a very basic cloze deletion system where you could mark text to be "hidden" on the front. It was very limited in that you'd only ever get one front/back combination. You could hide multiple bits of text, but they'd all be hidden at the same time. With Anki, you can create multiple groups of hidden text, so that you end up with multiple flashcards from the same note (i.e. you hid three separate groups of text, so you now have three different cards to test with). I've been working on an update to my app to incorporate templates and cloze deletions like how Anki does it, so now I appreciate that aspect to it. For my own database, at least in the new version I'm working on, I've ended up creating a schema where the individual attributes for each card are thrown into their own tables, but this is mostly because I needed to support updating individual attributes separately since I use a very simple journaling system to sync across devices. With Anki's schema, I can see why sync was complicated (at least in earlier versions) since it wasn't really built for it. [1] https://www.freshcardsapp.com/ https://www.freshcardsapp.com/