|
 |
Super Memo Vs. Memosyne? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Sulis Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6454 days ago 60 posts - 66 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 11 25 May 2007 at 6:56pm | IP Logged |
|
Supermemo and Memosyne seem to be two of the most popular flash card programs around. Any thoughts about which is the best? Pros, cons? Before I choose one and start adding lots of vocab I thought I would seek some advice. Thanks in advance.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 11 25 May 2007 at 7:01pm | IP Logged |
|
I use Mnemosyne (occasionally) as it's open-source and cross-platform, so it runs on Linux, which is what I use.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6475 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 3 of 11 03 June 2007 at 12:45pm | IP Logged |
|
Mnemosyne is free, whereas recent versions of SuperMemo are not. Mnemosyne probably has proper Unicode support, whereas SuperMemo's support is still a little sketchy with a couple of pretty severe problems. (I don't know what the problem is... I don't think professional software released in 2007 should still have Unicode problems.) Mnemosyne is probably nice and stable, whereas SuperMemo is buggy and full of badly-designed misfeatures. I'm actually writing up a big text file with all the problems I perceive in the software and I'm going to give it to them. Professional software simply doesn't have these kinds of problems.
But for all its shortcomings, SuperMemo does have a lot -- a lot -- of features that Mnemosyne lacks, whereas Mnemosyne is the bare bones minimum. You can use SuperMemo in the same way you use Mnemosyne and probably have few problems if you don't use Unicode. That said, many of these features really aren't necessary, such as having flexibility with fonts or being able to use images... I need them myself, but other people don't. If you don't need them, go ahead and give Mnemosyne a try. You can give SuperMemo a try, too... there's always a free demo version, and the earlier versions of the software are free as well. (EDIT: I've found that Mnemosyne supports HTML, including images and presumably adjusting font sizes and things. This makes Mnemosyne a lot more powerful, but SuperMemo may still be easier to work with in this regard if you're going to be doing this sort of thing a lot.) - Kef Edited by furrykef on 03 June 2007 at 2:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Leibniz Groupie United States Joined 6533 days ago 40 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish | Message 4 of 11 03 June 2007 at 2:57pm | IP Logged |
|
SuperMemo offers detailed statistics (retention rate, time spent per word,
etc.) which Mnemosyne unfortunately does not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6553 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 11 03 June 2007 at 3:11pm | IP Logged |
|
I've heard supermemo has a lot of scheduling options that mnemosyne doesn't. And supermemo is supposed to have a better algorithm.
But I agree with kef - if your needs are served by mnemosyne, go for it. I've got so much time invested in supermemo, I'll probably never switch, but if I had to do it all over again I'd certainly try mnemosyne first. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 24karrot Diglot Groupie United States speakingboricua.blog Joined 6387 days ago 72 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 11 03 June 2007 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
|
Well, I think you can import SuperMemo files into Mnemosyne.
I like free things, and Mnemosyne certainly does the job. Simple as that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6843 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 7 of 11 08 June 2007 at 5:41pm | IP Logged |
|
If you start from scratch with your own lessons, I'd go for Mnemosyne out of the two. I did try SuperMemo many times (various versions), and every version gets more and more features. I can't think of any flash card/memory program more complete than SuperMemo, but it's also cluttered and to me unintuitive.
Mnemosyne is much cleaner, and that's why I'd chose it. It offers similar basic functionality. If you also want support for mobile phones/mobile devices, you might try out Pauker (Java based), but there you might run into problems if your mobile device doesn't do proper unicode (depending on the language you learn; Pauker is also more basic lacking pictures). I wouldn't pick any software (free or paid) if you're not completely happy with the features as they are offered. Don't count on bugs being ironed out (free and paid programs both may or may not quash the bugs that annoy you). Whatever you chose, you'll end up with serious manufacturer lock-in. Different packages are not compatible, and currently your options are at best importing data without keeping your progress (i.e. starting from scratch again)... The SuperMemo algorithm is based on trial and error, as well as theories of learning. From the little research I have done into the topic, very little is actually known. It has never been empirically tested, as far as I know, whether these never versions on SuperMemo's algorithm are actually any better. I'm convinced that there are other factors that are much more significant, such as the formulation of questions, learning motivation, and regular use of flashcard programs. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cidacit Diglot Newbie Poland Joined 6382 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1 Studies: FrenchA2 | Message 8 of 11 09 June 2007 at 3:23pm | IP Logged |
|
In my opinion, the website http://lingopronto.com can be a nice alternative to both of these programs. I would like to share with you my reflections:
- as for unicode, it fully supports it. Furthermore, national characters than aren't available on the keyboard can be easily accessed. - its algorithm is quite optimal (that is my humble opinion :)) - it's much easier, more intuitive and comfortable than SuperMemo - as it works on-line, you can access it everywhere. Moreover, they've recently informed that mobile version is being created. I highly recommend it - http://lingopronto.com. And the more users will be, the more features they will offer, as they say. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
