Studying pinyin on the ipad just doesn't work for me because of not being forced to write the tone numbers.

Is there any way I can set it so reviews are carried out on both the computer and the ipad but the ipad never gets pinyin reviews WITHOUT having to manual set it to "review only, not adding"...

-M

No; this is what the Advanced Study part limiting is for, and the reason we don't let words be added during temporary part-limited study is that you either get a lot of extra items added that you can't see, or you have to skip those parts and then they may be lost until you go through the whole list again.

Related to M's question:

I want my writing to lag significantly behind my definition, pinyin, and tones. Therefore in Study Settings / parts studying I leave the writing section off for significant amounts of time as I study only the other parts.

I finally figured out that the SRS software also turns off. Is this correct? It makes no sense since my forgetting curves don't change. Even if it's off for a month, when I turn writing back on there is no queue waiting for me.

Also, as a improvement idea: I know that a word is "learned" after it crosses 12 hours and then is "unlearned" if it drops below 12 hours. I think it should also go to unlearned if the percent goes over 500% (or similar). That way if I have a word right at 12 hours, and I haven't used Skritter in 2.5 days, it would go back to unlearned. This gives the advantage of allowing us to "get credit" when we come back from vacation rather than watching our stats drop.

This would fit very well with my usage of Skritter because I could watch my "characters writing" drop day after day and I would be motivated to turn the writing back on.

Mark

- I don't want to get pinyin reviews on my ipad.
- I only want to get them on my computer.
- The iDevice way of doing pinyin reviews doesn't work for me. Even marking them as 'so so', they still don't stick as well as when I do pinyin reviews on the computer.

Right now I'm using the iPad and the computer at the same time (switching back and forth between devices) with the computer set only to review and the iPad able to add words. This is very clunky.

Nick, you previously (http://beta.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=239589112#239606036) mentioned the possibility of having pinyin inputs typed on iOS.
Still as an idea? Conceptually, it's obviously simple, but still a lot of code to write...

On the other side, it was at the bottom of that list. I've recently started doing non-writing study on the web during lunch (in addition to iPod to/from work), and it's a much better method for remembering things.
Can we hope to push this up on the "to do" list?

markschow, if you turn off writing then when Skritter adds words it will not add the writing part for those words. Later, when you turn writing back on, Skritter will not go back on its own to add the writing for those words. You must manually restart adding words from the very beginning of your list. This is not so bad though: When you do this, Skritter will see that you have already added the tones, definitions and pinyin and it will only need to add the writing. Skritter will go through the list in order again and so you will get a stream of new writings as you desire. If you like, you could then turn off writing and repeat the whole cycle.

It may be helpful to switch to manual adding of new words. This way you can study all parts of words, including the writings of "significantly" old words.

Dependable, thanks for the tips, I this is how I already do it - although it's clunky, I'm able to maintain my word list exactly as I want. Most lists I don't learn the writing, but a few specific lists I do lean all four parts. Up until now I always left writing off unless I had my Fire and then I would turn writing on, study for an hour, and then turn it off.

I finally figured out that when I have writing off the SRS software turns off. So, when I come back all of my words are still at <100% - not 500%. So, personally, I think that part is broke and needs to be fixed. It's the same for banned words. If you ban a word and then later unban it, then it comes up as only 100% due (assuming you banned it right at 100%). Obviously it should come up as a "new word, 10,000%"

To compensate, I just started leaving writing on all of the time except when I'm studying, then I have to turn it off since I don't want to draw with my laptop.

It would be super cool if Skritter could add two buttons to their system (if only it was so easy). One where you select the device you're using -- on my lap top I would say "don't give me writing" and on M's iPad she could say "don't give me reading". The second (and less important) button would be for each list you would select which parts you're learning from that list. Then people could have two types of lists: ones they know the writing and lists they don't. For most people it would be only a few lists that the choose to not bother learning the writing. For me it would just be a few lists that I do learn the writing. As a "surviving in rural China" person I need to recognize characters far more than I need to write them (even if this isn't Skritter's claim to fame).

Mark

Mark, the SRS doesn't actually turn off for either case (writings being turned off, words being banned). You might see that some of the items aren't due because you recently studied some other items for the same word and the writing items are being spaced back to avoid interference, but that's about it.

nomadwolf, thanks for the suggestion, but it's still unlikely that we will add the typing for reading prompts on the iPad.

Huh, I had my writing off for about 2 months. After I turned it back on all of those characters came up pretty quick, but they all said studied 2 months ago 100%. Then when I would check the stats after getting it right it would say next review 2 days. Indicating that the SRS software was mostly unaware of the time lapsed.

Can you give me some examples of words where this happened so I can check them out?