Zyzzyva 1.0.3
I just released Zyzzyva 1.0.3. This is not the large update that will be coming in the (hopefully near) future. But it does have a couple of features, including a Collins lexicon and the Cardbox Shift feature. Many thanks to olaugh for the Collins lexicon! I've been using the Cardbox Shift feature quite a lot lately, since I've been too busy to study much, but not too busy to keep adding words to my cardbox like an idiot. Cardbox Shift is just too useful to withhold until Zyzzyva 1.1.0, so I threw it into 1.0.3. It's under Tools->Reschedule Cardbox Contents.
If you're not familiar with Cardbox Shift, it's basically a better way of rescheduling the contents of your cardbox if your backlog becomes too large. The only way to do this in Zyzzyva 1.0.2 is to completely reschedule questions according to their current cardbox. For example, questions in cardbox 4 will be scheduled for 15-25 days from now, regardless of when they are currently scheduled. This has some usefulness, but big drawbacks too. The worst disadvantage is that questions in high cardboxes are always scheduled for a long time in the future. If you find yourself having to reschedule, say, more than once every two months, then you'll never see any words higher than about cardbox 5 or 6.
With the Shift function, you can just tell Zyzzyva how many questions you want to be currently available for quizzing, and it will shift the entire schedule forward or backward in time to make that happen. Every question will be seen in the same order it was previously scheduled to appear, but you can make your current backlog as small or large as you like. It's almost like going backward in time to a point when your backlog was manageable. Ah, the nostalgia. Some advantages of this method are that missed questions will still be seen in the near future, and high-cardbox questions will also be seen in their original scheduled order. You're just delaying the schedule a bit instead of completely reordering it. Much more friendly and useful.
Now that the bug-fix and Collins release is out of the way, it's time to start cranking on Zyzzyva 1.1. I've got some cool ideas for it, some of which probably won't make it, but I'm excited to start working on interesting new features.
If you're not familiar with Cardbox Shift, it's basically a better way of rescheduling the contents of your cardbox if your backlog becomes too large. The only way to do this in Zyzzyva 1.0.2 is to completely reschedule questions according to their current cardbox. For example, questions in cardbox 4 will be scheduled for 15-25 days from now, regardless of when they are currently scheduled. This has some usefulness, but big drawbacks too. The worst disadvantage is that questions in high cardboxes are always scheduled for a long time in the future. If you find yourself having to reschedule, say, more than once every two months, then you'll never see any words higher than about cardbox 5 or 6.
With the Shift function, you can just tell Zyzzyva how many questions you want to be currently available for quizzing, and it will shift the entire schedule forward or backward in time to make that happen. Every question will be seen in the same order it was previously scheduled to appear, but you can make your current backlog as small or large as you like. It's almost like going backward in time to a point when your backlog was manageable. Ah, the nostalgia. Some advantages of this method are that missed questions will still be seen in the near future, and high-cardbox questions will also be seen in their original scheduled order. You're just delaying the schedule a bit instead of completely reordering it. Much more friendly and useful.
Now that the bug-fix and Collins release is out of the way, it's time to start cranking on Zyzzyva 1.1. I've got some cool ideas for it, some of which probably won't make it, but I'm excited to start working on interesting new features.