The Reading buddy is basically a blend of the dictionary, word list, and word list maker. It lets you easily and quickly look up words as you consume Japanese media and add them to a list for further reference and/or studying.
Instead of the usual:
1. Look up word in dictionary
2. Press + button
3. Find lesson
4. Add to lesson
5. Have to go to the lesson to see the list
This does everyone on one page. Feedback is wanted and welcome - it is still very much alpha-level, and there may be gaps in functionality.
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2 years ago
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I love the reading buddy, but it would be nice to instead of having to select what lesson we want, have a menu to select from.
I love the reading buddy, but it would be nice to instead of having to select what lesson we want, have a menu to select from.
I understand if it is hard to do.
What do you mean by a menu?
Also, I made a small change - if you change to a new set, it will automatically load up the first lesson in that set (in some cases, there was not a way to load the lesson in a set if there was only one lesson)
I love the reading buddy, but it would be nice to instead of having to select what lesson we want, have a menu to select from.
I understand if it is hard to do.
What do you mean by a menu?
Also, I made a small change - if you change to a new set, it will automatically load up the first lesson in that set (in some cases, there was not a way to load the lesson in a set if there was only one lesson)
as in, there is a menu on the side with your groups and lessons.
I like the idea of Reading Buddy. It's definitely something I can see myself using a lot, provided one major issue (for me) could be resolved.
I have a set of lessons and I want to avoid adding the same term to multiple lessons in the same set. This is both to limit the size of each lesson, and to keep it more organized. (The context is I have a set of lessons where each lesson in the set is a chapter. If I have a term in a lesson for chapter 2, I don't want to see it appear later in a lesson for chapter 5)
When I use Reading Buddy to look up a term it only tells me if the term is in the current selected lesson within the set. So, there's a very good chance I could add a term to the selected lesson, despite the term already being in my set (in an earlier lesson).
So, if there was some way for Reading Buddy to tell me that while the term isn't in my lesson, it is contained within the set, that would resolve the issue.
2. @Anonymous123 - this should be present in the search results.
With regards to the layout, I would be hesitant to placing everything out because what is 2-3 lessons for some people is 200 lessons for another person, and I'd prefer not to hide them within select boxes if and when the user crossed over some max number of ones that can be viewed at once.
This is just a gut feeling, but I think that users are not going to really be jumping to/from lessons that frequently (but more likely going back and forward between lessons in the same set).
Schedules don't appear here, although they can be removed in the Manage your Schedules page (on the dashboard). Sets/groups cannot be renamed or deleted, but that will be added before this feature is released formally.
Finally had the chance to try this out over the weekend, it's such a great tool! Definitely makes lookups and adding to lessons while playing a game way more natural, and the hint that words already appear in other lessons when you look them up is a great feature for reminding you where the word has come up before.
I was going to mention that the dictionary lookups in the reading buddy load a bit more slowly than in the dictionary sidebar, but when I tried it again this morning I didn't notice any difference, so it may have just been a connection issue?
I really like this feature! One thing I'm finding is that when I'm looking up a lot of words in a row, I have to backspace my previous search each time to enter a new one. One of the features at jisho.org that I'm fond of is that when you do a search, your old search query will be automatically marked as "selected" (as if you had selected it with the mouse cursor) on the results page, so you can immediately start typing your new query without having to delete the old one. Could such a thing be added to Reading Buddy? It's a tiny thing, but it would streamline usage if you're making multiple searches. (It would be nice if the main dictionary did that too, but it would be especially helpful here.)
I'll probably start using this more as I consume more media for study, but I was hoping I could also add grammar and sentences too. I'm assuming that might be added later, or maybe I'm missing something.
Right now, it's only vocab. Depending on usage, I may expand it to other areas in the future. Do not want to put too much work into it, though, without gauging usage.
Hmm... Unfortunately, I'm still seeing the same issue i.e. parser tries to break search word into chunks it doesn't seem to check if those chunks are in the lesson (it gives you the "No results were found in the below list." message, and instead of only displaying the matching chunks in the list, it shows the entire list)
