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If you want to help improve SuperMemo for Windows, add your ideas to the bottommost section (<b>Your suggestions</b>). This section will be reviewed periodically and classified into the following groups:
If you have a feature request and do not want to edit SuperMemopedia, please see [[Contact via mail]]:
* [[Suggestions Implemented]] - ideas submitted that have already been implemented
 
* In design - incomplete ideas that are likely to be implemented if their design gaps are closed and the design becomes coherent
* [[Your Suggestions]] - submit your new suggestions here. Be sure you read the lists below to avoid submitting multiple times
* [[Suggestions In Consideration]] - ideas that have been placed on the implementation tasklist (they may or might not be implemented depending on importance, feasibility, cost, etc.)
* [[Suggestions In Consideration]] - ideas that have been placed on the implementation tasklist (they may or might not be implemented depending on importance, feasibility, cost, etc.)
* [[Suggestions Not In Consideration]] - ideas that cannot be implemented, e.g. not possible, prohibitively expensive or complex, bug-prone, or ideas that quarrel with some basic tenets of SuperMemo
* [[Suggestions Not In Consideration]] - ideas that cannot be implemented, e.g. not possible, prohibitively expensive or complex, bug-prone, or ideas that quarrel with some basic tenets of SuperMemo
* In implementation - ideas that are currently being implemented (some implementations might be rejected at later stages even if completed successfully)
* [[Suggestions that are too general]] - suggestions that need to be more specific to be acted upon (e.g. ''Please make SuperMemo easier to use'' should be expanded with details on what specific improvements could make it easier for you)
* [[Suggestions Not Understood]] - ideas that need your further comment or explanation
* [[Suggestions Not Understood]] - ideas that need your further comment or explanation
* [[Suggestions_for_future_versions|SuperMemo for Pocket PC]]
* [[Suggestions Implemented]] - ideas submitted that have already been implemented
* [[Suggestions for other platforms]]
* [[Options_to_remove_from_SuperMemo|Options to remove or restore in SuperMemo]]
 
* [[Suggestions for SuperMemo UX]]
If some of your ideas linger at the bottom of the suggestions list, you can move them up in "Your suggestions" section. Do not move them to classified sections.
* [[Suggestions for SuperMemo for Android]]
 
* [[In design]] - incomplete ideas that are likely to be implemented if their design gaps are closed and the design becomes coherent
= Unprocessed suggestions =
* [[In implementation]] - ideas that are currently being implemented (some implementations might be rejected at later stages even if completed successfully)
 
Those should be reviewed and formulated as individual propositions:
 
* http://supermemo.org/users/samson.pdf - suggestions by Samson, some are controversial and would best be summarized and commented on: [[Samson on SuperMemo 2006]]
* http://homepage.ntlworld.com/contactnathan/Supermemo/doc/Supermemo-0.htm


= Too general to address =
== Suggestion polling ==


* improve the documentation
* [[Suggestions poll]]
** you need to specifically say what changes you would like to see - improving the documentation is always a high priority job
* more windows and wizard in GUI design - So many functions can be grouped onto one window or wizard, and prevent the frustration of not finding the function I need
** simplicity is a serious consideration, but for this to be addressed, you need to specifically list functions that should be handled by wizards (and preferrably: how)
***{search element, search text, search string, search template, search catogaries, search registry etc, search and replace}--> one search window with each option on a drop down list, mouseover the list will give an explanation of the function and possibly examples. Once selected,the window will go to next tab, which allows people to search. Of course, leave two popular search function ready for acess on that search window, and leave other less used ones in the dropdown list. A tab for search and replace function, like the one in IE. Similar things apply to import {import file, Q&A, email, bla bla}: a window with dropdown list, a directory selector and an explanation of what will happen. Anyway, some "pro" may not like it, but those kinds of silly bloated menus have to go. Otherwise, it will remain awfully ugly.
* Supermemo Assistant - don't have to be a cartoon character as in MS office. It just change colour whenever it has a tip to tell the user. For instance, if a user is changing the content of an old item, the tip includes "radical change may affect the difficulty rating, you should reset history for that item" Context-based assistance or advice is really important since 99.9999% users can't be bothered to read through the manual or retain it in the memory. Supermemo 2004 just sits there dead, expecting users to rummage through tons of functions and be expert to themselves. The material called up by "F1" is useless because most of the time it only tells you what this button does, no SHORT and CONCISE information on how to use it effectively, and neither does it give important tips or point out common mistakes.
** SuperMemo always attempts to provide as much assistence for hard-to-understand tasks; however, it is also being criticized for providing too much assistance or bombarding user with choices instead of defining a default action. In your example, it seems easier for the user to understand the need to rememorize elements that have changed than to understand ''radical change may affect the difficulty rating, you should reset history for that item'' where he or she might wonder about the meaning of ''radical change'', ''difficulty rating'', ''reset'', ''history'' and even ''item''. Your will find many examples of similar criticism in reviews of SuperMemo posted on the net!


= Your suggestions (add new ideas here) =
== Website suggestions ==
* I strongly agree with "http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/supermemo/message/2118" message. The program designer should use supermemo to memorize Windows application GUI guidelines before starting next version of supermemo. It's about what customers like, not about the designer's personal preference. and "Then they should memorize the places where their program conflicts with the standard Windows user-interface conventions, which will become evident as they undertake this process."
*  There should be a separate page allowing people to specifically discuss the hopeless GUI. The functions in Supermemo are already numerous and what bothers user most is the design. Among current versions for PC, PALM etc, the one for Windows has the worst GUI. "Basic, Middle, professional" level and a long list of shortcuts are just ways to hide this problem. It's time to deal with it since its GUI has changed little in the past ten years. Advanced users usually stop complaining that much because they know the GUI will not get better anyway. None of them will say they LIKE it, they simply say they find a way to COPE.
* One Low-cost way of solving option clutter in supermemo is to fully implement option windows or wizards wherever possible so that several similar functions can be neatly grouped together. You don't have to change any code, just reaarange some items. "Find text, string, unicode etc" you can simply put them on one window with radiobuttons. Plus a brief explanation and several example for exactly what the program will look for on the left side when that option is selected. =====> More options does not mean more mess, it depends on how you present them. ====> by the way, I'm talking about "professional" level. I just find other lower levels lacking too many features. I think the program designer should aim to allow beginners to use higher levels without having to refer to help file if they want more options


* "Paste As Object Here" in the context menu --> when I copy a picture and want to paste it as an object, I don't have to go thru "edit==>add components==>image" all the time. If I have text on the clipboard, a html object will be created and so on.
* [[Website suggestions]]
* Options confusion needs to be solved. I once accidentally used "links -registry member" function on a html text field, thinking that I could create a html hyperlink to the selected member. I ended up having to recreate the item. After that, I realised that "links" refer to that component, rather than to the highlighted text. I'm sure this kind of ordeal won't end here


* I would like to see predefined Item templates or an Item generation assistant. Like selecting basic layout (Single Choice, Multiple Choice, Q&A, Grafic Component, etc.) then select options according to the first selection (2, 3, 4 choices, option field, grafic to be displayed as question, grafic to be displayed as answer, etc.) and have the Item autmatically generated according to my selection
== Unprocessed suggestions ==
* Make Supermemo Databases portable - use relative links
  I cannot easily use Supermemo elements on another computer other than the one I have created it on.
  The reason is that images that I have downloaded are given absolute links in the html elements.
  Those absolute links don't work on another computer.  What I wind up doing is using Notepad
  to replace absolute references with relative references.  This is very time consuming and tedious.


  Another possible way to fix broken links is to have a "Find References" command.  Invoking that
Those should be reviewed and formulated as individual propositions at SuperMemopedia. Please help converting those ideas into suggestions:
  command would require Supermemo to search the local Supermemo folder for unresolved links and then
  change the element file accordingly.
  I apologize in advance if there is a current easy way to do what I want or if someone else has
  posted a similar suggestion


*Add and Swap Option. I use SuperMemo mainly for languages and I often have to swap items. More often than not I already know that I am going to swap that particular item, so it would be useful if SuperMemo could automatically create a separate swapped item when requested.
* http://supermemo.org/users/samson.pdf -- '''all suggestions in source pdf transcribed to wiki page:''' [[Samson on SuperMemo 2006]]
* If you cancel a merge (I was merging a subset, in fact), it just goes ahead and merges what had been written into the temporary file up to the point of cancelling rather than aborting the entire merge operation.
** suggestions by Samson, some are controversial and would best be summarized and commented on.
* Merging does not carry over all statistics, so that historical repetition counts, retention etc. are lost.  This could be considered design rather than flaw.
* http://web.archive.org/web/20070802000101/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/contactnathan/Supermemo/doc/Supermemo-0.htm
* Searching does not work with accented etc. characters, which limits its utility on non-Roman language searches or even accented Indo-European languages.
** see [[Nathan on SuperMemo 2002]] -- (processing incomplete)
* In supermemo2004, you can only paste in 1 image.  When I paste in a second image, it would replace the previous image with the second one.  It would be great if you can create new feature that allows me to paste in an image to the Question box and a second image into the Answer box.  I need this since OCR does not recognize these organic chemistry reactions with arrows and stuff, so it would be neat if you have it available.  Supermemo is great for text, but it doesn't work well with paste image, I'm trying to find a software just for that.  I was going to write a new software for it, but instead, I thought it will be faster if you just add this feature.  Thanks.
* it would be great if some sort of complexity level could be implemented in the learning process, making deeper knowledge available (possibly even automatic), after the broader concepts have been understood and say successfully repeated for a configurable number of times. Often I have excerpts that include the big picture as well as detail level information. So i have an item (overview) with a number of childs (detail). It would be great, if I could set my learning course from first knowing the top-level items and then, regarding my progress for each item dive into the details on an automated basis.TIA, Dirk [comment: ''The big picture'' problem is formulated here as borderline-AI, but present [[incremental reading]] tools are all targetted at sensible progression into the depths of complex knowledge]
* Support for the 7z compression algorithm ([http://www.7-zip.org]) for backup purposes. I noticed that by switching to .7z my backups are about 20/30% lighter than before. I was using RAR which is already more efficent than ZIP, but 7-zip is even more, and also opensource.
* JPEG2000 Support
* Now that I'm using SuperMemo every single day, it would be great if I could add my goals and affirmations to appear daily or on a scheduled cycle.  For instance, at the beginning of (or end or randomly throughout) my review, it should show me each of my goald and affirmations one page at a time.  The point is that it would show these daily, unlike the current elements.
* From a users point of view I don´t really care what type of document I extract my knowledge from. Incremental reading of docs, presentations (ppt), sometimes even exelfiles, http or for most scientific papers (yes, it´s pdf [again ;)] is what I would find very usefull. Seeing the comments on how specific requirements can be accomplished I should add, that I prefer it the convenient way (one click - finished)... So comments like: 'click here, set for this case that option, open this kind of component and then mess it all up by not having selected a third option hidden in another menue' are not the direction my suggestions are heading for.
* I´d like to make extracts from live:pages in incremental reading
* It would be cool if the format (CSS) of extracted texts would remain
* Have you ever thought about importing a text only once. If extracts or clozes are made this information could easily be stored as offsets reducing the overall data to keep in the collection. This way you would have the data (text), regarding my last recommendation a related style information (format), metadata for reading / extraction and metadata for learning and that´s it.
* I would appreciate a standard window setup like windows explorer for instance. left would be what now is named "content". in the detail window one would see, well the detail of the selected item in the tree-window. on top of the application window a menue bar with selectable toolsbars -like in word for instance (except for the standards [file, edit, view, etc.]) on bottom of the window the edit-toolbar would reside (again like in office (e.g. powerpoint) or concerning the mode I am in the rating buttons.
* Make extract-functionality available in IE / Firefox via plug-in technology => as part of the contextmenue one could simply select interesting text and export / import it to SuperMemo
* implementation of RSS streams in IR, conveniently making text-extracts possible from the presented live pages
* I get various errors regarding javascript when reading imported pages
* following links on imported pages I somehow get into reading mode again (live:page I presume), preventing futher import from linked page
* synchronize content and other window by default (who needs this to be turned off?)
* provide a GUI mechanism to rate the importance of a text (or it´s extracts)
* fill out the references tags for imported webpages automatically. At least URL and Date can be filled out this way per default. As an add-on the author could be filled out if stated in the meta-part of the webpage (wow looking at the suggestions 14 from the last 15 suggestions are from me, but none answered yet)
* Possibility to predefine learning days. I have my copy of SM installed on my corporate machine. Thus I will definitely not learn on saturdays and sundays. It would be helpful if the computation of spacings could be accomodated with regard to a predefined availability schema. Adding holidays to this would be even greater!
* An option to repair a collection which is impossible to open for some reasons. The current "Repair Collection" option can only repair a collection which is already opened. I recently encountered an unexpected "range check error" which probably  ruined a year of costant daily repetitions (partially, thanks to a relatively recent backup). I really don't know why this error showed up, nothing strange happened in the meantime and SuperMemo was correctly closed the day before. I think that something should be done to improve the reliability (or at least the recoverability) of a collection. After all we are talking about collections which, ideally, should last for a lifetime.
* Collection mirroring. An user may specify a secondary directory (ideally on an another hard disk) where a "mirror copy" of the collection is written each time something is modified. So if the "main" collection gets ruined for some serious reason such as hardware failure there is always a recent backup available. To avoid delays and errors replication the backup collection may be write-only.
* Get rid of those annoying tabs in the menue bar. Yes I want to be able to click "Text extract" and in the same process re-format my extraction. So why do I have to switch the tabs each time? Make the menue bar as flexible as in Office, where I can select which icons from which section are shown. Most of the icons are no use for me, I would like to turn them off.
* It would be cool, if the plan function could integrate with Outlook. Appointments and Tasks from Outlook could be imported to plan and vice versa. So both applications are synched and the plan function in SM could help more granular prioritize the tasks in Outlook (which is an annoying limitation in Outlook compared to the flexibility of SMs plan function).
* display a coloured border as a warning for images that are not registered in image registry, so that when I move the whole collection, I won't be surprised that all the pictures are gone. Alternatively, you can put a translucent icon at the corner of the image components, such as IE icon to indicate that the image is linked to internet, and trash icon to show that image is still stored in temporary folder.
* I hope the shape object is fixed onto the picture object depending on the settings. I rarely use stretch option for display pictures because it will affect the look. If I add shape object onto the picture that is set to normal and then resize the window, the shape object will no longer cover the required area!!
* restore the crtl+shift+enter to dismiss, but not remove all text.  As it stands, I have to go to the content, and select dismiss from the menu functions.
* Element priority dialog box: Position: -> Position [1 - Total]:
* RTF rtl to HTML rtl conversion: If the font controls (type/size/style) as well as the rtl command was available by keyboard shortcuts, then at least it would be possible to create a macro to quickly fix an item, or a group of items using a program like Hotkeyz.
* Firefox toolbar & Firefox-compatible Wikipedia import for SuperMemo 2006.
* Compatible to other browsers like: Opera, Firefox, etc (for web-import).
* The template behavior needs to be changed. Here's what usually happens when I try to create a new template: I create another card using another template, I move stuff around, I save the template, and I discover that all the other cards that used the base template had been changed. Yes, I know about "impose template", but I tend to forget that step. The problem is that this can have ''disastrous'' results. What happened if I deleted the question and answer fields? Years of work could be undone! Even if I had a backup, it could mean the loss of a significant amount of work. Yes, it's technically my fault because I didn't impose the template, but I don't remember to impose the template because it's not reasonable to expect the application to behave that way. Proposed solution: ''don't'' allow the user to edit a template that has not been imposed without unlocking it first. There would be a lock/unlock button on the toolbar or something to that effect. Unlocking the template will remind the user that changes will affect other items that use the same template. The template will always be locked unless specifically unlocked, and will become locked again upon taking an action such as moving to another element or exiting the program. This doesn't sound unreasonable to me because I don't expect the user will want to fiddle with templates here and there all the time; it should only be needed occasionally. I don't really care if my particular solution is implemented or not, but I think this problem needs to be addressed one way or another. I don't know of any other program that makes it so easy to shoot yourself in the foot.
** Possibly a better solution would be to make editing a template a separate function, something you do in Search->Templates, perhaps. If you try to resize things, a box will pop up saying that you must impose the template if you want to edit ''this'' item, or else go to the template editor.
* Upon opening a new window, the system will rearrange the windows, including opening new windows, to the way they were the last time that window was closed. I know of no other app that does this and find this very annoying. If you want to keep this behavior, it should be optional, and it should not be the default.
* Keyboard shortcuts should never have the form CTRL+ALT+key. These are reserved for systemwide actions, not app-specific actions. Using these shortcuts can break other apps or even keyboard layouts that use these for their intended purpose.
* Right-clicking the toolbar to open a menu that is unrelated to the toolbar itself is very unintuitive. These menus need to be integrated into the main menu bar or something.
* Having to use "move target" and "replace target" in the Contents window is unintuitive, and these functions have unintuitive names. In most apps, to distinguish between moving something into an element and moving something between elements, the control simply uses the mouse's position: is it on top of an element or between them? Also, when trying to move these elements, the mouse cursor gets a little box with an arrow in it in the corner, indicating a behavior like creating a shortcut in Windows, but the actual behavior is nothing at all like creating a shortcut. This icon does nothing but confuse.
* If you shut down your computer with SuperMemo running, it'll run again when you start it back up. But I also have my computer configured to launch SuperMemo when my computer boots. This can result in two instances of SuperMemo trying to launch, and naturally one of them fails. I can see the current behavior being desirable, maybe even the default, but it should still be optional.
* [[Strongly support the implementation of text to speech (in the under consideration section) some comments on nuances applicable to supporting incremental reading with text to speech]]

Revision as of 23:40, 15 August 2016

If you have a feature request and do not want to edit SuperMemopedia, please see Contact via mail:

Suggestion polling

Website suggestions

Unprocessed suggestions

Those should be reviewed and formulated as individual propositions at SuperMemopedia. Please help converting those ideas into suggestions: