First all deepest thanks for making Smouldering Durtles and literally carrying on the flame of Flaming Durtles - it is by far my favorite Wanikani app and its features are a life safer and I’m truly thankful you’re maintaining it!
That said, I’ve decided to write because it seems I encountered a bug:
The required reading of the rice plant Kanji 稲 is different in Wanikani than in Smouldering Durtles, the app asks me to input とう (Onyomi) instead of いね or いな (Kunyomi) as its primary reading. This is a bit frustrating since the mnemonic is for the Kunyomi reading but SD doesn’t accept the Kunyomi readings. I also wonder if this is a “tip of the iceberg” phenomenon and more Kanji with differing readings will pop up from here on - in that case my notice might serve as a heads-up. It never happened before so its rather curious o.o
This was a bug with Wanikani’s API a few months ago. You’re still seeing it because your app downloaded that kanji’s data while the bug was active. You can fix it for that one item by selecting “sync this subject” from the dropdown menu while viewing it in the app. Or, you can use the “reset database” option in SD’s main settings menu to fix it for all items at once, but it’ll take a bit longer.
I’m sorry I’ve not been able to work on adding features lately. With my new job and a lot of school holidays, etc. I’ve been finding myself bereft of the spoons required.
I’m happy to say though that after what seems like months of back and forth trying to work through weird stuff that was cropping up, Smouldering Durtles is now available from the F-droid repo as well:
Hello. First of all, loving the app. I literally wouldn’t have paid for a WK sub if it wasn’t for your app!
Question: On the review forecast chart, some of the columns have a green arrow with a number above them. What do they mean? Is it the number of cards that will progress to Guru if answered correctly?
That confused me too when I started out. It’s the number of current-level, not-yet-passed radicals and kanji. These are the items that must be passed in order to level up, so if your goal is to level as fast as possible you should avoid delaying those reviews. If that’s not your goal (and it probably shouldn’t be), you don’t really need to worry about them.
I noticed a bug with this combination of settings:
Quiz both on and kun readings for kanji
When entering a correct answer, show a toast with the alternative answers
It seems that regardless of which reading is being quizzed, the list of alternative readings is treated to be the primary one. So for example:
富
On (primary): ふ
Kun: と、とみ
When quizzing kun, upon entering と, no alternative answer is displayed
拳
On (primary): けん、げん
Kun: こぶし
When quizzing kun, upon entering こぶし, both けん and げん are displayed as alternative readings
So basically the current behavior can spoil not yet quizzed readings.
I always learn all readings at once with the kanji item, so I thought I might give this setting a try, but might not stick to it anyway (regardless of the bug), since it obviously has an impact on review times. But I wanted to let it known, because it’s a bit dangerous right now.
Hello Joeni, first of all thank you so much for ongoing updates of the app, I’ve used the original one for three years, and it’s great that someone picked up!
I have a feature request, not sure if a hard one or not. Basically I’ve dabbled into German on Duolingo, because the project I’ve been working on my job got weirdly popular in Germany specifically, so I have a lot of contact with localization team.
I’ve noticed that streak reminders and specifically widgets are incredibly effective (and somewhat funny) and I hoped it existed in Wanikani in some form…
Basically it could be just a reminder that you didn’t do your reviews today and maybe some sort of turtle crying on app icon. Streak could be ignored, just whether or not you did your reviews today.
How hard would it be to implement? Thanks for reading all this
I don’t know how hard or easy it would be to implement but I find my reviews available account to be enough motivation to try to keep up. A reminder isn’t terrible as a concept, I suppose, but I doubt I’d use one personally.
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t call this a bug as both settings are doing what they’re intended to do. It’s likely the person who did the PR for the alternative answer toast didn’t consider every possible setting combination, which is entirely understandable as there are a lot of permutations of setting.
Theoretically a tweak could be made to ensure the logic is conditional and that it checks whether the item is on or kun and only display those alternatives, but that would require another setting toggle added in, further increasing the number of combinations. With an already fairly fragmented range of settings and code fragments, I’m a little reticent to do so.
As @xxllua mentions, there is a widget with data already available - as far as adding in a motivational creature, I don’t think I’ve got the spoons to look into that as it would require more art creation than I’ve got ability for, unfortunately
That’s fair, I just find that the notification gets buried in my work e-mail and other stuff, also I think it can stop coming if you don’t open the app for a week (yes, I’m guilty… life happened). I found that a dedicated widget is more effective this way, because I personally can’t skip or lose it.
…Wait, it does? How did I miss it
Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I had a hard time finding the widget (thanks, Android), but eventually I did, this works for me Though, would it be difficult (and would you be willing) to add a small text message to it about whether or not the user did their reviews today? There seems to be a lot of free space between “L:R:” and “next in” lines, at least on my phone. I tried searching “widget” in Settings of Smoldering Durtles, and nothing was found regarding it.
I don’t think another setting would be needed. The toast should display the alternative readings belonging to the quizzed type, and not the primary one. This change would have no impact on the app’s behavior when the require on+kun setting is turned off.
But I agree that this is a marginal case. I also turned off the on+kun setting after a day or so, because it really has a big impact on review times and progression. It could be a useful setting though when e.g. self quizzing burned items.
In all fairness I still use SD on an older andriod for setting up a daily review deck of things that need reviewing but I switched to iOS for reasons so my input isn’t directly applicable, but I hope my thoughts are of use. The ability to see that I have available reviews (preferably with number) does more than a streak does for me. Especially to know I have ones I need for advancement. I’m a lot more willing to let something in Master sit until after dinner than I am to want to let one sit that will get a new timer towards a new level. That, I think, is the most useful kind of notification for me - an Apprentice III is something I absolutely want to hit ASAP to start that next timer. I frequently open Tsurukame and unless I have “Next level-up review: Now” I will let it rest. If I have that, I jump in immediately.
Unrelated note, if I did a feature that added a toggle for the search that only gave you the items in the lowest mastery level for each level, would that be something anyone else would find useful? I daily like to review the leeches in the lowest mastery level of each level. The current utilities don’t offer that kind of search. I find it offers me a little flexibility to not absolutely flood myself out on the review deck and also allows me to focus on whatever has dropped for lingering levels. I don’t know if I’d be successful but if others might find it useful I might take a look and see how much effort it’d take to implement.
Once you start a batch of lessons, you have to either finish them or use the abandon session option in the menu before you can start a new batch of either lessons or reviews.
Thanks for mentioning this option to ‘sync this subject’.
[Not sure how the threading handles a reply to a post from May]
I have has the situation with 2 or 3 kanji that SD was asking for the Kun reading when I had only learnt the On or vica versa.
There seem to be some changes rolled out in this area - tbc.
Warning to anyone using the ‘sync this subject’ option, this put me in a situation where SD would not accept either reading as correct
Only solution was to discard the current batch so that SM could start afresh. Ok if your batch size is modest.
