Re: How do I create flashcards with furigana in the latest Ankidroid?

[Ebisumartin]

... so, does silence mean what I'm trying to acheive is still not possible?

[iniju]

Hi Ebisumartin,

And by latest ankidroid, I presume you mean the 2.0betas?

You're right that your text should be like 日本語[にほんご].

But you also need to tell AnkiDroid to interpret the text as furigana (otherwise everyone that uses square brackets for any other reason would also see furigana).

That is done in the template eg instead of {{Front}} it should be {{furigana:Front}}

There are also 2 other filters iirc: {{kanji:Front}} and {{kana:Front}} that will show only the kanji or only the furigana respectively.

I don't think we have this in TFM (although we should) so no worries :)

Not sure if and how it is working in the market version of AnkiDroid, I only worked on it for the 2.0beta version where implementing/reimplementing/fixing it just few months ago:

http://code.google.com/p/ankidroid/issues/detail?id=708#c17

There were few more changes in the code of this feature by others since then, so if you find that what I described above is inaccurate, please let me know.

This is not a well documented feature, although it works in the same way as in Anki Before the 2.0betas it was either working differently, or it was working way back but got broken later. I believe that's why there was no response to your post for a while.

Cheers,

Kostas

On Friday, 28 September 2012 07:27:04 UTC+1, Ebisumartin wrote:

I'm sure someone will tell me to RTFM for this question, but I've looked all over the place, and done dozens of Google searches by now, and I have not found the answer to this simple question.

I want to create a deck and a flashcard in Ankidroid, and have it display furigana above my kanji. From what I've read, it should be as simple as writing the kanji word followed by the furigana in square brackets, like so: 日本語[にほんご]. However, this doesn't work. What I see is just what I've written there - kanji followed by hiragana in square brackets. What I hope to see is the hiragana moved over top of the kanji.

I read another place that one has to go to Settings-Display and enable ruby text. But there is no option for enabling ruby text in the latest Ankidroid. So it appears a some online documentation might be out of date.

I actually used a previous version of Ankidroid, vesion 1 I think, and basically gave up on it because at the time, to enable furigana, one had to get a PhD in how to set up all sorts of fields and card templates.

I've got Ankidroid v2.0beta17, just downloaded minutes before writing this. I'm hoping the furigana situation has been simplified since version one. My cards only have two components, a question and answer. I want to be able to enter kanji with furigana in both. I don't need any other formatting, or the ability to show/hide the furigana or anything else. I just need furigana, that's it, nothing else.

Can this be done, or is it still something only for those who have mastery over arcane methodology?

Thanks for any help.

-- 

Martin

[iniju]

Actually someone replied this already, it just ended up in different thread:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/anki-android/33SxvZlJY0c

[Ebisumartin]

Thank you for replying. It has taken a while for me to find the time to give this a go, but I have made progress.

I have Anki version 2 on my desktop (Ubuntu), and Ankidroid 2 on my Android.

I created a new deck on the desktop, ensured that the template was set to use {{furigana:Front}} and {{furigana:Back}} as needed, and I created a test card. I saved the deck and copied it to my Android and opened it in Ankidroid.

The test card has this on the front:

時間[じかん]

However, when I view the card in Ankidroid, it looks like this:

時間じかん

... in other words, the square brackets have been removed. So I hope this at least means I'm close. However, I have no idea how to progress from here.

I also notice that nowhere in the preferences for Ankidroid 2 is there a setting to toggle ruby text on, like there was in the previous version. At least, I couldn't find it.

Google groups won't let me attach a file, so I made my deck available here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3668332/Japanese.apkg

I hope that either someone will tell me what's wrong with it, or what setting I need to change to make it display correctly.

Also, I hope that once I get this deck going, it will be possible to add new cards using furigana directly on my phone.

Thanks for any advice.

[Houssam Salem]

Your deck and template are both fine. You must have the "Simple Interface" option enabled since I get the same output you describe if I enable it. 

Turn it off: Preferences -> Reviewing -> Simple Interface (untick).

[iniju]

I agree, your deck and setup is fine, furigana shows up beautifully.

A bit off topic, I normally don't use simple interface. When I turned it on, it crashed the application. I should debug this.

Kostas

[Ebisumartin]

Wow... I have actually attained furigana in Anki. I pretty much assumed it would never happen. But there it is.

Turning off "Simple interface" was the final key. Thanks so much for helping.

One note: The system for getting furigana is really, really complicated. If a more simple interface can't be developed, then some clear, current, and consistent documentation would be awesome. Just putting that out there.

But, it looks like I'm finally able to make some decent Japanese study cards!

Thanks again for all the help!

[iniju]

Yeap, I know it's not very straightforward setup.

I had the following idea for furigana that would simplify it a bit without breaking compatibility with anki:

In the card editor, for every field of a note allow the user to long-click and enable or disable furigana for this field. A small indicator would appear or disappear respectively overlayed on that field. That's what the user would see.

In the background it's more convoluted and goes like that:

By setting furigana ON for a field, the editor would search any card template where this field is used and change the {{FieldName}} to {{furigana:FieldName}}. Similarly when disabling it.

Of course it's not as flexible as editing the templates by hand, but at least it would let you make a field appear always as furigana.

A more powerful solution would be to implement a template editor in ankidroid, which is a "slightly" more complicated task and probably won't help in simplifying furigana for the average user.

Kostas