Why have an alpha version?

[Noam Yorav-Raphael]

Hello,

I'm participating in an Arabic language course, and I have created an Anki deck based on the course material. I want to share it to the other participants, and instruct them on how to learn with ankidroid. The course is divided into lessons, and my method is to first suspend all cards, and then unsuspend all the cards in a specific lesson after learning it. In order to do this with ankidroid 2.8, you need to go over each card in a lesson, long-press it, and the press "unsuspend". I wanted to try to implement this feature, so I cloned the git repo, and discovered that this feature is available in the master branch. So I downloaded 2.9alpha36, and I have been using it happily for several months and haven't encountered a bug.

So, in order to allow the course participants to use ankidroid with my deck, I have to instruct them to download the alpha apk.

I would say that the master branch is in production quality (otherwise I wouldn't have used it for months without encountering a bug), and it's certainly not in alpha state. Why not release it to the Play store? You can use the Play store "beta tester" feature to allow more people to find bugs before you mark it as production. After, say, a week of not finding any serious bugs, release the version as production. I understand not wanting to release a buggy software, but I don't see a reason to treat a version I have used for months without encountering a bug as "alpha".

Needing to download an apk, which most people aren't aware even exists, means that less people get to enjoy your great work. That's a shame.

Thank you very much for your great work,

Noam

[Nicolas Raoul]

Hello Noam,

Thanks for using AnkiDroid!

As you can see at https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/releases new alphas appear every few days.

Pushing them all to production directly would force Google Play and F-Droid to download each update, costing all users many precious megabytes (potentially of mobile data) every day.

Also, while you have not found any bug, only a lot of testing by many people allows us to find the last hidden bugs.

More about the release procedure: https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/Release-procedure

Cheers!

Nicolas Raoul

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[Mike Hardy]

Hi there!

You can get alpha updates automatically by allowing the play store to
give you beta builds through the play store GUI, and joining the alpha
testers google group via the link here:

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[Mike Hardy]

Sorry :-), hit send too quickly. A perfect illustration of why we have
alphas before release! We make unexpected mistakes.

That said, here's the link to getting alphas installed an updated
automatically:

https://docs.ankidroid.org/#betaTesting

We would love any feedback on the alphas as they are fairly stable now
but there are still issues discovered semi-frequently.

You can track the 2.9 milestone to see what's planned for the next
release and our progress towards it:

https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/milestone/11

-Mike

On 11/9/18 5:39 AM, Noam Yorav-Raphael wrote:

[Noam Yorav-Raphael]

Dear Nicolas and Mike,

Thank you very much for your reply. I want to stress again that I think you've made great software, and I just think that the release process could be changed to allow more people to enjoy it.

Thanks to your advice, I joined the alpha channel. This solves my main concern - I will instruct my fellow students how to join the alpha channel as well.

I think that these days installing an update is nearly cost-free for users. I just wake up and my phone notifies me that installed updates over wifi overnight. This means that I think that most users would prefer to have, say, a monthly update, if it improves the app they are using. Since the current master branch seems to me better than the 2.8 branch in any way, I think it should be pushed to users. Note that the 2.8 branch that most users are using was branched from master over 2 years ago.

I don't see a reason to define a list of milestones, and wait until all of them are reached to release a new version. Since the master branch seems to be in a state of constant improvement, something like a monthly release schedule, where a release branch is created every month, sent to beta testers, undergoes bug fixes, and after a week without major bugs is pushed to general users seems to me like a better process. Especially since even if a major bug is discovered after the beta stage of each release, a fix can be pushed to users quickly. This periodic release process becomes very popular (Chrome is a great example), and I think that for good reasons.

Again, thank you very much for your great work,

Noam

[Noam Yorav-Raphael]

I'm sorry, I thought of another reason for having a periodic release process. Currently, the app developers are using is significantly different from that used by most users. This means that developers are not aware enough of the pains of regular users - they don't really "eat their own dogfood". A periodic release makes regular users and developers use a more similar software, which also helps to improve it.

Thanks again,

Noam

[Mike Hardy]

I'm glad the alpha group solves your main concern, I like the classroom
style you're intending to implement - seems like a good way to
distribute new material

I also would like to see more frequent releases, but that's a
philosophical issue and I'm not in charge of releases (a good thing -
I'm still early enough in my learning curve that I make significant
errors pretty frequently).

More software is moving to rapid releases for the reasons you mention
and maybe we can adopt that in the future. It is worth noting that even
the rapid release groups I've been a part of track milestones though, so
I don't believe they are mutually exclusive - just that the milestones
can be only one or two features, a couple bugs, then release it. Not
5-10 features and 50 bugs

In the meantime I do think we are just a month or two away from a real
2.9 release so for now this will resolve shortly

Best of luck in your class -

-Mike

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[axel.m...@gmail.com]

I would like to ask where I can find a list of changes and new features in version 2.9 compared to 2.8? I read parts of the 2.9alpha manual already, but what exactly was changed and which features are new?

[Mike Hardy]

I'm not aware of a full friendly list, but the data to build one starts
with a scan through all merged pull requests since March 14th 2017 (when
the 2.9 Alpha series started)

https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/pulls?q=is%3Apr+sort%3Aupdated-desc+closed%3A%3E2017-04-14

There have been 179 separate pull requests merged, and 321 issues closed
since the 2.9 alpha series started

On a quick scan it looks like a *mountain* of fixes, many which could
cause crashes, and:

- insert cloze option
- multi-select in the card browser
- a few TTS changes (unsure what the affect)
- feature usage reporting
- move to minimum API 15 (KitKat, Android 4)
- use standard file picker for import/export (great for Chromebooks)
- deck-group level notifications
- card repositioning (to go with reset, and reschedule)
- compatibility with Android 8 and 9+
- Adaptive icon

For the developer experience:
- forward ported to current version of all library dependencies
- integration with current best-practice tools for Android testing
- feature usage reporting
- HTML/Javascript debugging
- Crash testing, and crash report de-duplication
- Coverage reporting, and broader continuous integration support

Some things that aren't done yet but hopefully (?) will get done:
- Selecting non-system language (use to work, Android updates broke it)
- A statistics provider so other apps may query AnkiDroid stats
- Reschedule whole deck as new
- Add audio clips from local file

I'm sure I missed something and in particular if anyone who actually
coded something up is listening and I missed yours I humbly apologize


-Mike

[axel.m...@gmail.com]

Great, thanks! I would like to try the alpha niw cause I want to implement some of the new features in my decks.

Short question: is it OK just to download and install the newest alpha from github or do I need to join any beta/alpha testing programs on Google Play or your own alpha group?

[Mike Hardy]

You can certainly just install it from the releases page on GitHub - that will always work, but if you have a device with the Play Store on it (most do but some don’t) then I highly recommend using the beta program with membership in the alpha testers group to get the alphas (and betas). The reasoning is then that with no action required on your part you’ll get updates. From the GitHub site you’ll have to manually update

https://docs.ankidroid.org/manual.html#betaTesting

If you see anything wrong in the current alphas do let us know - we’ll be beta / general release soon so the feedback will help

Thanks -
-Mike

On Nov 24, 2018, at 9:01 PM, axel.m...@gmail.com wrote:

Great, thanks! I would like to try the alpha niw cause I want to implement some of the new features in my decks.

Short question: is it OK just to download and install the newest alpha from github or do I need to join any beta/alpha testing programs on Google Play or your own alpha group?

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[Axel Merboldt]

Ok, I joined the Google Play beta program and the google alpha tester group. My App is now 2.8.5beta1. How to update to the 2.9 alpha?

[Axel Merboldt]

Ok, in order to update to the alpha it's necessary to manually press the "scan for updates" button in Google play and then update via the update button in the app list (not in the app details screen).

Works fine now, I already found some issues but I'll collect everything first.

[Mike Hardy]

Ah - thanks for the details on how to get the alpha version quickly, our previous advice has been that you “have to wait a while”, which wasn’t great

As for the issues - that is great! And terrible (that you’ve already found a “few” ;-) ). I would rather have something double-reported than not reported so please do log something if you are not sure, but also do try to search the issues first, with 300+ open ones it’s possible that what you’ve found is already logged somewhere (against 2.8.x or earlier for instance and just not fixed)

Thanks -
-Mike

On Nov 25, 2018, at 8:19 AM, Axel Merboldt <axel.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ok, in order to update to the alpha it's necessary to manually press the "scan for updates" button in Google play and then update via the update button in the app list (not in the app details screen).

Works fine now, I already found some issues but I'll collect everything first.

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[Mike Hardy]

Axel - I attempted to capture your steps for getting alpha releases
immediately in this documentation PR, please let me know if I got it
wrong somehow

https://github.com/ankidroid/ankidroiddocs/pull/38

Thanks!
-Mike

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[Axel Merboldt]

That's correct. After pressing the "check for updates" button manually, an update button is shown next to the app in the list. That button is NOT shown in the app details screen.

[Axel Merboldt]

Ok, here my observations:

Issues:
- Checking database at first start takes a long time (around 2 minutes on a fast phone). I thought the app crashed because there is no progress bar or percentage, no detailed information of what Ankidroid is doing at the moment. You should at least present some information similar to the sync dialogue so that the user can see what's going on.
- Android notification bar disappears in note/card editor. Instead, just a white bar is shown (see screenshots). Happens during reviews in edit card screen (I am using fullscreen during reviews, but that didn't happen in 2.8) and when opening the note editor from the deck page.

Other observations and suggestions:
- very slow font rendering in reviews when implementing fonts via CSS from the collection folder (please find a way to load these fonts into cache so that not every card needs a long time to render it)
- edit card screen: please add buttons for bold, italic and some other very frequently used formats (as in Anki desktop). It's such a struggle to type html tags on Android keyboards
- note editor: the possibility to select fields for the "browser view" is still missing, users have to go back to Anki desktop to set it.
- note editor: the 3 fields for html and css are to small. With open keyboard one can hardly see a single line. Please "extend" the selected text field and "shrink" the 2 others. Not necessary to see all 3 fields at a time when I just want to edit one of them
- reverse cards are still shown just the next day, even if the interval for the forward card was several months (please let the user choose how many days should be between forward and reverse card. I know, it's a general Anki problem, but on desktop I can use Add-ons to prevent this.)
- the new TTS feature is great and works as expected! But is it possible to add a speed setting for the tts voice? Android supports different speed and pitch so that should be possible.

Questions
- what does the setting "HTML / JavaScript debugging" do? The description in the 2.9 manual is missing.
- dictionary lookup - how does it work? Copying text doesn't show any buttons or translations (as default for me, copying any text will bring up a Google Translate hover button, so maybe that interferes with Ankidroid?)

[Mike Hardy]

This is fantastic Axel - thank you!

I’m going to give you some quick one liner responses on things I know a little about, but I’ll go through them all thoroughly over time and either distribute information to relevant issues, log new ones, or ?? -

On Nov 26, 2018, at 7:38 PM, Axel Merboldt <axel.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ok, here my observations:

Issues:
- Checking database at first start takes a long time (around 2 minutes on a fast phone). I thought the app crashed because there is no progress bar or percentage, no detailed information of what Ankidroid is doing at the moment. You should at least present some information similar to the sync dialogue so that the user can see what's going on.

I noticed this myself. We have an issue we are working on right now that has the potential to corrupt the database, but in a small way that a database check can fix, so we trigger the database check on the upgrade. It’s necessary but the user experience is no good - before this rolls out to a lot of people, I’ll see if I can at least throw a popup explaining and asking for patience

- Android notification bar disappears in note/card editor. Instead, just a white bar is shown (see screenshots). Happens during reviews in edit card screen (I am using fullscreen during reviews, but that didn't happen in 2.8) and when opening the note editor from the deck page.

I have also noticed this, not sure why - I’ll research but will probably have to log an issue...

Other observations and suggestions:
- very slow font rendering in reviews when implementing fonts via CSS from the collection folder (please find a way to load these fonts into cache so that not every card needs a long time to render it)

This is something that happened outside our control - Chrome did an update, and we use Chrome in our WebView, and now they load fonts slowly. Not sure what we can do about it unless Chrome decides to fix it or we figure out a way to cache things. We use a new WebView each render though, so that would have to change for us to work around it 

There is a saga here: https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/issues/4856

- edit card screen: please add buttons for bold, italic and some other very frequently used formats (as in Anki desktop). It's such a struggle to type html tags on Android keyboards

Very true and a popular request - a WYSIWYG editor or something close - check the last comment on the tracking issue for a solution at least for new cards:

https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/issues/1377

These next few I’ll have to research:

- note editor: the possibility to select fields for the "browser view" is still missing, users have to go back to Anki desktop to set it.
- note editor: the 3 fields for html and css are to small. With open keyboard one can hardly see a single line. Please "extend" the selected text field and "shrink" the 2 others. Not necessary to see all 3 fields at a time when I just want to edit one of them

This one is different:

- reverse cards are still shown just the next day, even if the interval for the forward card was several months (please let the user choose how many days should be between forward and reverse card. I know, it's a general Anki problem, but on desktop I can use Add-ons to prevent this.)

If Anki Desktop doesn’t do it, we won’t do it as a general policy. We are an extremely small team at the moment (though always happy to have people help :-) ), so going past Anki Desktop features when we’re still missing big ones Desktop has (v2 scheduler!) is a call we have to make. 

There is a feature request to make the scheduler itself a pluggable feature as we add the v2 scheduler - if we did this, then people could layer on a different scheduler similar to the desktop plugin, to alter scheduling how they like. I don’t believe this will happen any time soon though unfortunately.

- the new TTS feature is great and works as expected! But is it possible to add a speed setting for the tts voice? Android supports different speed and pitch so that should be possible.

Interesting suggestion - I did a quick search and this is something new - could you log a new enhancement request on GitHub for the feature? Ideally with a full description of how you would alter the setting (globally? Per deck? I think TTS is per deck I’m not sure…) etc.

Questions
- what does the setting "HTML / JavaScript debugging" do? The description in the 2.9 manual is missing.

I should add a section in the manual since it is something that people debugging cards and templates (as opposed to the AnkiDroid application itself) would be interested in. Right now it is only in the Development section of the wiki - https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/Development-Guide#html-javascript-inspection

Basically, if you are trying to work on card templates and render something complicated with special HTML and Javascript, AnkiDroid exposes a lot more information to you now, so using regular (or, alpha at this point) releases you may easily find problems and get your templates working

- dictionary lookup - how does it work? Copying text doesn't show any buttons or translations (as default for me, copying any text will bring up a Google Translate hover button, so maybe that interferes with Ankidroid?)

If I understand correctly (and I don’t use this feature so I probably don’t) I think you have to turn on gestures in advanced preferences first (for some reason?), then you can configure dictionary lookups and use them? Check under here: https://docs.ankidroid.org/manual.html#gestures

The general problem is that there are a lot of dictionaries out there and instead of letting users add new ones with the URL format required, we have to add them manually in the app.

Then following that, we only handle text, even though Android as a platform has a clipboard that can handle images and sounds now (it did not until recently, long after AnkiDroid was born and became stable and popular).

So my thinking is eventually (hopefully soon?) we can let users specify a URL like ‘https://my.dictionary.com/?query=%s' where AnkiDroid will put the selected text in place of the %s and send it out to the system, opening the URL. Then the user can browse around and find the thing they want, copy it, and go back to AnkiDroid, then ‘paste’ it in and we will handle the paste correctly (even if it is an image or sound)

We’ll see!

Thanks again - I’ll look through the ones I skipped over later - head over to GitHub yourself for the TTS speed thing though.

Cheers -

-Mike

Am 25. November 2018 23:41:27 GMT+09:00 schrieb Mike Hardy <mi...@mikehardy.net>:

Ah - thanks for the details on how to get the alpha version quickly, our previous advice has been that you “have to wait a while”, which wasn’t great

As for the issues - that is great! And terrible (that you’ve already found a “few” ;-) ). I would rather have something double-reported than not reported so please do log something if you are not sure, but also do try to search the issues first, with 300+ open ones it’s possible that what you’ve found is already logged somewhere (against 2.8.x or earlier for instance and just not fixed)

Thanks -
-Mike

On Nov 25, 2018, at 8:19 AM, Axel Merboldt <axel.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ok, in order to update to the alpha it's necessary to manually press the "scan for updates" button in Google play and then update via the update button in the app list (not in the app details screen).

Works fine now, I already found some issues but I'll collect everything first.

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<Screenshot_20181125-220647.png><Screenshot_20181126-094856.png>

[Axel Merboldt]

Thanks for your answers. That's clear now. With "dictionary lookup" I was asking about the "Lookup in dictionary" feature in the advanced settings where you can choose one of many dictionaries (see screenshot). Is this just a setting that is not yet in use? Or where and when and how can I perform a lookup with the choosen dictionary?

The 2.9 manual says:
Lookup expression
When the lookup feature is enabled (in advanced settings), lookup an expression in the selected dictionary. Note: the expression needs to be copied to the clipboard before this action will work

...but I don't see any button "lookup expression" during reviews. That's why I was confused about that feature

[Mike Hardy]

I just used this feature for the first time, figuring this out!

There are a couple ways to do it.

First you have to enable gestures in Advanced Preferences, then you can
select lookup dictionary in Reviewing preferences.

Now, while you are reviewing a card, if you select text you'll see a
"Toast" (a little message on the bottom) saying something like "After
you copy the text to the clipboard, touch the card anywhere to see the
search icon".

If you do that, you'll see a little search icon show up top right, and
if you tap it you'll go search in your configured dictionary immediately.

A second way to do it that can get rid of the last tap is to assign a
gesture to "Lookup expression", so if you make it "Swipe Right" then
after selecting text and copying it to the clipboard, just swipe right
and it does the lookup.

Pretty nifty.

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[Axel Merboldt]

1) I think you mean to enable gestures in the Gestures menu and select lookup dictionary in Advanced preferences, not the other way ;-)

2a) I tried everything like you wrote, but it didn't work. Then I realized that choosing the dictionary only works if the app is installed (when I chose a web dict it worked). So you need a error message or such if the user performs a lookup but the dict app is not installed.

2b) I highly recommend to add the takoboto app and web dict ( http://takoboto.jp/) as Japanese dict. I compared dozens of apps but this one is by far the best one (and completely free and no ads). Also, takoboto makes perfectly use of the Ankidroid api already. Every day I'm sending words from takoboto to Ankidroid with just a single click.

3) I don't see any buttons or explaining text like you wrote. Maybe because im using full screen. I strongly recommend to add the steps to enable this feature to the manual.

4) unfortunately I'm using most gestures already (I wouldn't switch back since it's so comfortable to just swipe left/right to go to the next/previous card and swipe up to play sound etc.). Is there another way to enable the dict lookup?

5) actually, I'm using buttons in all my cards to open web dicts and apps to perform a lookup (see screenshot). As you can see I have different buttons for different dicts, so I'm quite independent from a single dict that I select in the preferences. So rather then to choose a single dict it would make more sense to let the user "add" buttons to his cards (same as I did, but without the need to write any html). This "add dictionary" button would be an enhancement of the template editor and the user can select a field as search string and a website/app to perform the lookup. That makes more sense, because it is deck related and not global for all decks (which probably have different languages).