Switching SRS Software
Submitted by robrobbery on Sat, 10/04/2008 - 06:12
I've been using Supermemo for quite a while now but I want to change to Mnemosyne. The problem is that I have a Supermemo collection which has close to 10,000 items. I think it may be possible to import the items into Mnemosyne as a text file, but as far as I know, there is no way to keep the learning history. In other words, I would just be importing a huge list of words and starting at scratch with the learning process. Do you know of any way to import the learning history?
Are you still using Supermemo?
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No, you cannot import the learning history
No, you cannot currently import the SuperMemo learning history into Mnemosyne. This is, of course, an enormous drawback. If you knew Python you could write an importer, but that is not trivial.
When I switched from SuperMemo into Mnemosyne, I simply started over on the categories I thought were most important. For the rest, I just abandoned the old cards, because at that point I had made a lot of English -> Japanese and Japanese-> English cards, which I scrapped and replaced with Japanese-> Japanese only.
It's a tough decision, but for now it might be easiest to simply use both programs together. Do your daily reps in SuperMemo, but only add new material to Mnemosyne. After several months, once you have a significant amount of material in Mnemosyne, you may not need your SM collection anymore, depending on the progress of your learning.
Or, unless you're really unhappy with SM, you might just hold out for someone else to write an importer. There's a chance (small) that one will get written at some point, and you can just keep your eye on the Mnemosyne release announcements.
That's a shame. I really
That's a shame. I really want to switch to a simpler interface, but I have so many elements in Supermemo that I fear I would damage the learning process. I suppose I could start adding the new stuff to Mnemosyne, but having 2 SRS programs seems a little complicated. At some point a switch over is going to be necessary.
Another question I have about Mnemosyne is about swapping the Q and A. Is it easy to just switch them? I have always drilled from Japanese to English, but I think it would be a good idea to start doing English to Japanese too. Ideally, I want every single word or phrase to have a Jap-Eng element and an Eng-Jap element.
Also, do you happen to know what font the JLPT is written in?
Right, at some point a
Right, at some point a switchover will be necessary. But if you try using Mnemosyne for awhile first, it might be smoother, and you can make sure you actually want to switch.
In Mnemosyne, it's easy to add a mirror card. In the add cards windows, simply check the 'add vice versa' option and you're done.
I wouldn't recommend doing much English to Japanese though. The reason is that if you're aiming for the JLPT 2 or above, the grammar and vocabulary is complicated enough that the translations aren't going to be very exact, and spending a lot of time to memorize those pairs probably won't be as rewarding as simply learning more Japanese-> English pairs.
I have no idea about the JLPT font.
Kaeru