I frequently get unwanted help when I'm writing out a character I'm a little rusty on when I do a stroke out of order (and it flashes the stroke I should have taken to let me know). Is there a way that can be set to a toggle where it would notify you to the bad stroke order without showing you which stroke it should have been?

You're not alone in this. Haven't come up with a best solution yet.

Would it work for you if the maximum strictness stroke order made it so that it wouldn't accept any strokes out of order, or do you want it to still accept the strokes but not tell you the proper stroke?

I want to be able to write strokes out of order. For example, I always write the upright xin radical shu (long vertical) stroke first followed by the two side strokes. That's what I was taught and that pattern persists. I would prefer a toggle that allows me to choose whether or not I see the earlier strokes that I "missed" because I wrote it out of order.

The answer to your question, Nick, is: No, that wouldn't be best (for me) since I don't want the hint and I do want the out of order strokes to be accepted.

I think the ideal would be if it would accept the strokes out of order without correcting you (though, with notification). That way it wouldn't give you the answer without asking (esp. since you can get the next stroke with the hint button).

Different users have different goals... I do want (at least to have the option) to be corrected if I persistently do a stroke out of order.

I agree with the original poster, it would be nice to have Skritter treat out of order strokes the same as incorrect strokes.

@mikethatguy312 - I'm with you 100%

James

Mike: I should clarify; it's not the notification that I'm objecting to, it's the fact that when you do a stroke out of order you're shown what should have been the proper stroke - which is tantamount to a hint that you're not penalized for in any way.

Yes, I agree - maybe some warning could happen before the stroke is shown.

I like the way it is now. At times, I up the stroke strictness so it doesn't let me use poor strokes. At the same time, I think seeing where I should have drawn the stroke helps me out next time.

I'm a big fan of the new practice feature of grading how well you know a character. Now, even if Skritter says you wrote it wrong, you can grade your own work on a four point scale - you can still say you knew it perfectly. Isn't that enough?

Sometimes I don't mind - the 车 character's stroke order as a single character versus as a radical is a case in point - I write them both the same way and don't care that it's out of order. For most characters, however, out of order is not good and I want skritter to keep on correcting me. The current solution (ignoring 车 radicals out of order message) works fine for me). The bigger deal is when skritter flashes the next stroke and I'm not sure if I remembered it or not (part of me wants the ability to do character-level recognition once in a while so I know that when skritter moves the squigs around it is not helping me too much).

It seems to me that if you write stroke 3 and it shows stroke 2, if it didn't show stroke 2, you still have enough info in stroke 3 to pretty much jog the character. What would really fix this is doing recognition on a component basis, where the recognition doesn't kick in until you've completed a radical, so none of your squigs get converted until then. That'd also make the recognition work better.

Unfortunately, we won't have that for a while. I would like more opinions as to whether you get significantly less accidental hint if it still accepts the out-of-order stroke.

I read two themes here:
1) out of order is *wrong* and shouldn't be accepted or the correct, earlier stroke should be shown; then eventually the correct order will be learned.
2) order is a preference and strokes should be accepted in any (or some limited definition of any) order; therefore traditionally earlier strokes shouldn't be shown.

I think you currently have some chars where different orders are okay, 孕 is one that comes to mind. That argues that there is some room for flexibility. From what I read, the sanctity of stroke order is mushy.

Those of us in the second camp ( I think that includes zsheffler) don't want earlier strokes flashed but do want the out of order stroke accepted.

Those in the first group (James) want to be reminded/penalized for wrong order strokes. They want the correct one to be flashed.

I am not sure about others, maybe there's another category. It sounds way-complex to wait for entire radicals before adjusting squigs so I would not suggest that approach... but I haven't seen things from your end.

@sarac - Sorry if my previous post wasn't clear, but I actually don't want the correct one to be flashed. I am in agreement with the original post, that flashing the correct one gives too much of a free hint.

James

I wasn't too clear either, partly because I haven't yet figured out whether I prefer to be given stroke order hints or not. If I am given hints, I definitely don't want incorrect stroke order to be accepted.
I think recognition on a component basis would be pretty cool, although I'm afraid my 书法 is so poor that I might end up redrawing more strokes just to get each component completely correct.

I agree too. I want the notification, but not in a form of a helping hint. If it can be turned off or obscured (like turned into that "tone cloud flash" maybe), it would be great.

I've put it on my list to think up another way of doing this that will be visible, but not in your face, while not giving you a hint. It may end up being as dorky as a "Wrong stroke order" message like the oh-so-reliable "Stroke backwards" and "Should hook" messages.

I like that idea, I think it would help me be more strict about which characters I KNOW, and which characters I can guess at which of three variations it might be and only sorta know...

It might still be nice to have the stroke order hints for characters that are in the still learning stage - but that could be way too complex to try to do.

I think there should be an option for whether an out-of-sequence stroke should result in a prompt of the correct stroke that comes next; I agree with those that say this is a freebie.