Friday, January 4, 2013

Anki woes

For years now, Anki has been my go-to-app for learning Japanese vocabulary. Now, however they have pushed the upgrade to version 2. This sounds just fine, but my largest deck failed to import from the previous version of Anki, and now (despite the fact it exists on both my tablet and phone) I can't use it. I downloaded the 2.0.3 client for windows, which gave me an error telling me to use the 1.2 client to try rectify the problem. What kind of stupidity is that? Backwards compatibility, guys. Yes, its not always easy, but yes, it is necessary! It shouldn't be necessary for a user to download an old, and likely soon-to-be unsupported version of a program to rescue 5-6 years worth of hard work. The data of the cards must still be intact, because the decks were working fine with all my devices just hours ago.

Anki 2 had better be eye-wateringly spankingly good. Either that or bin 6 years of diligent deck-making and start a new one.. Though if it comes to that, I'll use the competing apps.

EDIT: After experimenting with Anki 1.2 and Anki 2.0.3 on windows, and getting nowhere, I've given up with this. Anki 1.2 still happily reads the deck, but refuses to do a database check to completion, and the old Android and web client was perfectly happy with it too. That just leaves me wondering, do I dare continue using Anki after it corrupted several years of work, or do I try something different? Or is Anki 2 sufficiently different to warrant experimenting with? Either way, its now installed itself on both my android devices, it would seem defeatist to not give it a go.