Author: Damien Elmes
Updated:
A flashcard wrapper to make it more friendly
This file contains a bunch of convenience routines for flashcard
and flashcard-sm5 to make the user interface friendlier. It
includes English and Japanese user interfaces, but can be used to
study anything.
See http://ichi2.net/flashcard for a screenshot.
Terminology:
C-g Control+g
M-x Alt+x
M-x foo bar Alt+x, foo [Enter] bar
Installation
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Win32: simple answer, download win32 binaries from
http://ichi2.net/flashcard/. Long answer, download meadow 3.0 and
follow the instructions below.
Unix/Mac: emacs22+ is recommended. It's possible to
use flashcard in emacs21.4 (the stable version available in most
cases), but you need to install mule-ucs and make sure it's
enabled. On Debian, it's not enabled by default, but you can enable
it by doing 'export DEB_MULEUCS_UNICODE=on' in a shell before
starting emacs. If you get messages about unsafe encodings and
being unable to convert to utf-8, it's because you haven't got
mule-ucs installed properly. In debian, you're better off with the
'emacs-snapshot' package instead.
Next, download the following two files, and along with this file,
place them in a directory somewhere - maybe c:/meadow on Windows,
~/jp on unix
* http://ichi2.net/emacs/flashcard/flashcard.el
* http://ichi2.net/flashcard/flashcard-sm5.el
Now create an empty .emacs in c:/meadow/_emacs or ~/.emacs
For Meadow, at the bottom of the file, add these lines, and make
sure to remove the leading semi-colons.
(setq fc-base "c:/meadow")
(setq fc-default-lang 'en)
(add-to-list 'load-path "c:/meadow")
(load "c:/meadow/fc")
For unix, add the following lines
(setq fc-base "~/jp")
(setq fc-default-lang 'en)
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/jp")
(load "~/jp/fc")
If you want to see the Japanese user interface instead of English,
change `en' to `jp'.
After you start emacs again, the following files will (eventually)
be created:
* tango.deck: The main file which flashcard uses
* tango.pending: Stores entries which haven't been imported yet.
This is easy to hand-edit.
* tango.imported: Stores entries which have been imported, for
future reference. This file has been largely
obsoleted by the deck editor, but it serves as a
rudimentary backup.
Usage
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fc is configured for studying Japanese by default. When you hit
[F7], it prompts you for a kanji compound, the hiragana reading,
and an English description. If you want to use fc to study
something other than Japanese, try and create your own version of
`fc-add-entry'.
[F7] Adds a new word to tango.pending. If you make a mistake in the
entry you can hit C-g to abort, or you can edit tango.pending
before you start a quiz, to change your entry.
[F9] Starts the quiz (automatically importing any pending words).
When you want to stop the quiz, just close the window. Saving
should be automatic. You may be prompted to save the deck - just
say yes.
When the quiz begins, you'll see a question. You can type the
answer if you want, but you don't have to - I just say it aloud.
When you're ready to see the answer, hit enter. You'll be shown the
answer and prompted to enter a number from 0-5, indicating how well
you remembered. The numbers are as follows:
0: didn't remember at all
1-2: remembered a little/half remembered
3: almost remembered (made a mistake, but was close)
4: remembered (maybe after thinking for a while)
5: remembered easily
Customizing colours and fonts
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To make the question & answer faces bigger, put the following lines
in _emacs/.emacs:
(set-face-attribute 'flashcard-question-face nil :height 1.5)
(set-face-attribute 'flashcard-answer-face nil :height 1.5)
You can change the number to make the font bigger or smaller.
The default colours and fonts are pretty difficult to see,
especially under Meadow. To change the foreground/background
colour, type: 'M-x customize-face default'. Select a different
foreground and background and 'save for future sessions'.
To change the colours of the question and answer face in the same
way. Type 'M-x customize-face flashcard-question-face' or 'M-x
customize-face flashcard-answer-face'. You can change the height
(try 1.5), and the colours (HTML colour codes like "#cca" work).
Automatically starting the quiz
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If you don't use emacs/meadow for anything else, you can get it to
start quizzing automatically when you start it up. Add the
following lines to the bottom of _emacs or .emacs:
(setq inhibit-startup-message t)
(find-file "/path/to/tango.deck")
JLPT word lists
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I've generated word lists for the four JLPT levels - you can
download them from http://ichi2.net/flashcard/
Note that I really recommend entering your own words, as words
learnt in context tend to be remembered a lot easier.
To use the word lists, unzip the files, place them somewhere, then
type C-x C-f /path/to/one-file, instead of hitting [F9].
Comments/questions/problems
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The fastest way to reach me is as `resolve', on
irc.openprojects.net, channel #nihongo. You can also email me if
you'd like.