Is there any way to use renshuu without WiFi? I usually can't acces the whole app without it even though I just want to learn regularly without using any online features.
There is not. All of the data in Renshuu lives in a server instead of being saved locally to your device, so everything the app does requires an internet connection even if it doesn't seem like it's an "online feature".
It is something that I hope to do one day in the future, but renshuu is somewhere along the lines of 500,000 lines of code, and I'm the only developer! Even limiting it to just the quizzing system would be a pretty daunting feature, but one that I hope becomes possible one day.
It's an old post, but I still hopes it gets read. I'm finding extremely usefult the Japanese Lessons and Grammar Library, if that couls be used offline would be awesome
If I understand correctly, it would require writing new code for almost the entire app? That would be extremely difficult and time-consuming (unless that's something else I'm thinking of)
Nope, that's exactly why - I am the only dev for renshuu (the entire company is just my wife and I), so at the moment, a complete (or even partial) offline rewrite is not possible.
Is this something that a motivated Renshuu user with programming experience could write? An offline version of the quizzing, at least. (not necessarily me in particular, but I'd love to help with something like this if I can, and it's a feature I'd find helpful)
We think (see sticky thread) that a technically sophisticated user could probably write an anki-sync-server using renshuu’s API on the back end. So far no takers.
@ポールおじちゃん How exactly do you want the Sync server to function? If it just pulls data from your schedules and shoves it into Anki, that's not too difficult (famous last words). With the current API it won't be able to sync any of your "offline progress" back to Renshuu. Do you want it to (try to) sync SRS intervals (one-way to Anki)? Do you want any custom Anki functionality?
I just want to get a sense of the scope and general idea.
PS: "An offline version of the quizzing" is impossible, because we don't have any access to the quizzing functionality.
Edit: I don't see the API Key anywhere (searching Settings), so I can't really even test anything. Who knows, maybe I'm blind.
Hey, I’m not managing this project. ;) I’m just sharing ideas. Personally I think that an offline mode is an outdated concept. Everything else is 100% online nowadays. Why should renshuu be any different?
However, if I was going to do it, I’d probably start as small as possible. Build an MVP, as we used to say. Treat it as another kind of focused review.
I know you're not managing it, I was just checking to see if you had a clearer idea, so I could gauge difficulty and expectations better :) The offline mode (full quizzing and SRS) isn't happening anyway, so it's no use thinking about it. I don't see Renshuu going open source.
Are they API Keys not available, by the way? As I said, I can't find mine. I have Pro, if that matters. Is it something you need to opt into? I'd love to tinker with the API a bit.
Yea - I can absolutely see the benefits of an offline mode, I just (with more details here: https://app.renshuu.org/forums...) don't have the time and resources to do an offline mode.
Why is it not an option to introduce section downloading? Like in other language learning apps eg busuu, Babbel. You don’t have to make the entire app offline, just the sections the user needs.
The system is simply not set up that way to be separated out into chunks. You're comparing renshuu to much larger companies with many more employees, I'm guessing. It simply isn't possible for me to do when the code base was largely made 15 years ago, at least the core that runs through everything.
My main focus recently has been to improve my reading level, particularly by studying kanji. Renshuu is great, but if I find myself without internet, I'm pretty satisfied testing myself on two other particular apps, which work great offline. The first is Japanese Kanji Study by Chase Colburn which I installed on various android devices. (It was definitely worth the $20 or so it cost me, but it's completely free if you're still learning kana or the kanji radicals.) The second is Renshuu's crossword game app, J-Crosswords, which I found to be helpful and fun, and is also completely free.
The system is simply not set up that way to be separated out into chunks. You're comparing renshuu to much larger companies with many more employees, I'm guessing. It simply isn't possible for me to do when the code base was largely made 15 years ago, at least the core that runs through everything.
Hm yes I do and i also understand that your code base is quite old.
While I do not know the code base at all, so I’m just making assumptions, to me it currently looks like this. You got the learning plans, which I’m currently working through e.g Kanji / Hiragana. This data has to be fetched from somewhere when working on those sections. I do not assume you have to fetch 500k words / grammar rules or what ever just for those plans / sections (hopefully)?!
In that case, my idea was to simply store the data for those learning plans in idk a local db compressed. One could do that for all his learning plans. This is no which craft and has nothing to do with big companies. They also just cook with water.
But again just making assumptions and brainstorming :) Btw I really enjoy the app! <3 thank you for making this free to use!
As an engineer myself setting DB is not difficult part, but rewriting renshuu stack from a browser app into installable thing. So it wouldn't be just quizzes it would also be packaging the code itself, all the progress stats, all srs logic duplicated (online mode still needed for multi-device handling) . And then rewriting things is easy but ensuring they work is not :)
The way big companies solve this is by completely rewriting the whole thing once in ten years when old abstractions no longer work and then switching to users displeasure of having their workflows changed
As an engineer myself setting DB is not difficult part, but rewriting renshuu stack from a browser app into installable thing. So it wouldn't be just quizzes it would also be packaging the code itself, all the progress stats, all srs logic duplicated (online mode still needed for multi-device handling) . And then rewriting things is easy but ensuring they work is not :)
The way big companies solve this is by completely rewriting the whole thing once in ten years when old abstractions no longer work and then switching to users displeasure of having their workflows changed
I don’t think you have to create a full mobile application, especially in this case.
Renshuu is just a browser wrapper on the mobile app, so why can’t we make use of local storage saving the sections on the device and then reading and loading those sections data when the device is offline and cannot pull data from online sources? It justs needs an offline interface, you can also strip big data if needed, eg lots of example sentences.
I’m also not a mobile engineer so not too sure how that works in detail. But generally the concept should not be that different from simple web infra. So unless I get something fundamentally wrong here, I don’t see the issue in exporting sections and simply loading them in the app.
I mean this would be completely enough for me at least for a ~13hr flight to work through some vocab and grammar.
