Org-drill doesn't work...

Org-drill doesn't work...

[Joost Kremers]

hi all,

i'm trying to set up org-drill for learning some russian vocabulary, but i'm not
very successful... i've created an org file that meets the requirements of a
proper org-drill file. i have a bunch of entries that look like this:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE

** Nomen							      :drill:

   :PROPERTIES:
   :DRILL_CARD_TYPE: twosided
   :ID:       9927d8c4-1692-4784-9afc-9e4a770a62c8
   :END:

*** Deutsch

    Herbst

*** Russisch

    о́сень (f)

*** Beispiele

    im *Herbst*
    о́сенью

    nächsten *Herbst*
    сле́дующей *о́сенью*

    letzten *Herbst*
    про́шлой о́сенью

#+END_EXAMPLE

of course, the ID was added by org-drill, not by me. after creating the file,
the first run of org-drill seemed to be fine. i was prompted for a couple of
items, maybe five or so, and after i had finished, emacs told me the results.

however, trying to run org-drill the next day, i got the following message:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE

0 items reviewed. Session duration 0:00:00.
Recall of reviewed items:
 Excellent (5):       0%   |   Near miss (2):        0%
 Good (4):            0%   |   Failure (1):          0%
 Hard (3):            0%   |   Abject failure (0):   0%

You successfully recalled 0% of reviewed items (quality > 2)
0/1 items still await review (0 failed, 0 overdue, 0 new, 0 young, 0 old).
Tomorrow, 0 more items will become due for review.
Session finished. Press a key to continue...

#+END_EXAMPLE

i wasn't prompted for any new items and the message "tomorrow, 0 more items will
become due for review" worries me.

also, running org-drill-again gives me the same message.

i'm sure i'm doing something wrong, but i can't figure out what... would
appriciate any help pointing me in the right direction.

Org-mode version 7.8.02 (and org-drill included with it), GNU Emacs 23.3.1.

TIA

Joost


btw, i noticed that some of the customize items in org-drill.el are incorrectly
defined. for example, the :type declaration in
org-drill-spaced-repetition-algorithm is:

  :type '(choice (const 'sm2) (const 'sm5) (const 'simple8))

but the symbols shouldn't be quoted:

  :type '(choice (const sm2) (const sm5) (const simple8))

there are one or two more cases like this. they're labelled in the customize
buffer as "MISMATCH".

-- 
Dr. Joost Kremers
Georg-August-Universität
Seminar für Deutsche Philologie
Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3
D-37073 Göttingen

Re: Org-drill doesn't work...

[Bastien]

Hi Joost,

Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm> writes:

> i'm sure i'm doing something wrong, but i can't figure out what... would
> appriciate any help pointing me in the right direction.

Sorry, I'm not familiar enough with org-drill.el to help you here,
hopefully Paul can have a look.

> btw, i noticed that some of the customize items in org-drill.el are incorrectly
> defined. for example, the :type declaration in
> org-drill-spaced-repetition-algorithm is:

This is fixed, thanks.

-- 
 Bastien

Re: Org-drill doesn't work...

[Milan Zamazal]

>>>>> "JK" == Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm> writes:

    JK> however, trying to run org-drill the next day, i got the
    JK> following message:
    
    JK> #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE

    JK> 0 items reviewed. Session duration 0:00:00.
    JK> Recall of reviewed items:
    JK>  Excellent (5):       0%   |   Near miss (2):        0%
    JK>  Good (4):            0%   |   Failure (1):          0%
    JK>  Hard (3):            0%   |   Abject failure (0):   0%

    JK> You successfully recalled 0% of reviewed items (quality > 2)
    JK> 0/1 items still await review (0 failed, 0 overdue, 0 new, 0 young, 0 old).
    JK> Tomorrow, 0 more items will become due for review.
    JK> Session finished. Press a key to continue...

    JK> #+END_EXAMPLE

    JK> i wasn't prompted for any new items and the message "tomorrow, 0
    JK> more items will become due for review" worries me.

    JK> also, running org-drill-again gives me the same message.

This is all right.  You've just learned all the items and there is
nothing to learn/repeat now.  Nor tomorrow, there is minimum amount of 4
days by default before you are prompted for the same item again (I
believe you can customize the interval with
org-drill-sm5-initial-interval).  In the meantime you can add and train
new entries. :-)

Re: Org-drill doesn't work...

[Joost Kremers]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 10:21:30PM +0100, Milan Zamazal wrote:
> This is all right.  You've just learned all the items and there is
> nothing to learn/repeat now.  Nor tomorrow, there is minimum amount of 4
> days by default before you are prompted for the same item again

ah, i see. silly me, i should have read that in the docs...

> (I
> believe you can customize the interval with
> org-drill-sm5-initial-interval).  In the meantime you can add and train
> new entries. :-)

but org-drill isn't picking up the new entries. i've added a bunch of new
entries to the file and they've all been given an :ID: property, but they are
not being drilled. i'm sure i'm doing something wrong here, but i can't figure
out what...

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments

Re: Org-drill doesn't work...

[Milan Zamazal]

>>>>> "JK" == Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm> writes:

    JK> but org-drill isn't picking up the new entries. i've added a
    JK> bunch of new entries to the file and they've all been given an
    JK> :ID: property, but they are not being drilled. i'm sure i'm
    JK> doing something wrong here, but i can't figure out what...

It may happen if there is some problem with the contents of the entries
("unrecognized" items are silently skipped).  I was hit by a similar
problem but once I realized what's wrong, org-drill started to work
perfectly for me.

If you've successfully learned some entries previously, make sure the
new entries are of the same format.  If you're not successful, post some
of the ignored entries here.

Re: Org-drill doesn't work...

[Joost Kremers]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2012 at 09:27:53PM +0100, Milan Zamazal wrote:
> It may happen if there is some problem with the contents of the entries
> ("unrecognized" items are silently skipped).  I was hit by a similar
> problem but once I realized what's wrong, org-drill started to work
> perfectly for me.

thanks for you reply. it prompted me to look a bit closer at the ignored items
and i've now figured out what was wrong with them... it turns out that it is
absolutely necessary that there is some text after the header of a drill item,
before the first subheader. most of my items lacked this, however. my items
looked like this:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE

** Verb                                            :drill:

   :PROPERTIES:
   :DRILL_CARD_TYPE: twosided
   :END:

*** Deutsch

    <some German verb>

*** Russisch

    <Russian translation>

#+END_EXAMPLE

however, they need to look like this:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE

** Verb                                            :drill:

   :PROPERTIES:
   :DRILL_CARD_TYPE: twosided
   :END:

   <some text here>   <===== absolutely essential!

*** Deutsch

    <some German verb>

*** Russisch

    <Russian translation>

#+END_EXAMPLE

what is inconsistent about the way org-drill handles these is that even though
it doesn't use these faulty entries for drilling, it *does* provide them with a
unique :ID: property. so initially it doesn't look like there's anything wrong
with them...

i also didn't find an explicit mention of this in the docs, so perhaps i should
send an email to paul sexton...

but yes, now that i've figured out what i was doing wrong, org-drill works great!

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments