how do I simulate tags in flashcards

[sfrrr]

I'm sure this is obvious to everyone but me, but...

My categories tend to be theme-based (body, emotions kitchen tools...). I also have a few (very few) categories that label the sources for each vocab word (ChinesePod, my Chinese Teacher, movies...). For my Chinese teacher's category, I'd like to be able to mark each card according to the date of the lesson my teacher gave that word to me. Tags would do it, but I don't think PD does tags. I have been searching by date of adding the flashcard, which works, but that requires me to remember the actual dates of my lessons. I could also add a sub-tag under my Chinese Teacher's name-category, but that will quickly become a very long list (lesson 1, lesson 2, lesson 3...lesson 94, lesson 95...)

Anyone have any ideas for pseudo-tags? My category hierarchy is very well established and I don't want to start from scratch, so I have to work within what I've got.

Thanks.

 

[mfcb]

unfortunately there is no better way to do it, you do it already quite well. we all hope for the next bigger release of pleco, where we should get the long-awaited annotation feature, right, mike? :wink:

 

[sfrrr]

Thanks, mfcb. I'll just continue doing what I'm doing. Even though it feels like a kluge, it works perfectly well. Thanks again.

 

[mikelove]

Categories are meant to do the same thing as tags - which particular feature of tags are you not able to get with categories? Is it that you want to be able to type in words that something relates to without having to create / link to an explicit category, or is there something else you can't do?

 

[sfrrr]

Mike--categories would work beautifully for what I need. However, I'd wind up with hundreds of sub and sub-sub categories and I consider really cluttered tree arrangement to be ugly design.

The problem: I've recently resumed studying with the teacher I previously spent 12 years studying with. And I have a ChinesePod guided subscription. In the past, my category tree structure was purely by context--mostly categories such as body, with sub categories of bones, digestive, emotions, skin; edifices with subcategories of rooms, furniture, architectural elements; Food with subcategories of menus, ingredients, kitchen utensils and appliances...)

Now, however, I have to add a new categorizing system based entirely on which teaching source gave me which vocab words. But I still need to use the old categories too. I.e. a category called New Grace (for the resumed lessons) and another named CPod. The New Grace category words need to be labeled and studied by the week. I could just make a subcategory of each week's date, but then New Grace will get to be very long very fast. In addition, I must also be able to pull up all the flash cards used during the New Grace period by context, say, office equipment.

I'm not keen to start a new filing system for my flashcards after all this time. So, I was thinking that if I could tag the New Grace lessons by the date of the lesson, I could filter that way without having to slog through that long, long list of categories and subcategories every time I want to add, say, a word to the lesson on Feb 26.

Right now, I'm doing this be filtering by create date and it works. It just seems inelegant. On the other hand, I don't suppose that having a complicated category tree would be all that bad if I didn't have to scroll through them in order. I.e. if I could type into a category window, Feb 26 and go straight there, at least it would be faster.

Don't pay to much attention to this. I've found that things that are inefficient or inelegant often force me to learn better because they force repetition that I otherwise wouldn't have endured.

 

[mikelove]

Hmm... so really all you need is a search-for-categories-by-name function, right? That doesn't seem like it would be too difficult, actually, just a little search box (with the results checkable / un-checkable just like categories in the full tree).

 

[sfrrr]

Mike--maybe it's because I haven't slept for two nights, but I don't understand what you mean.

 

[ciaocibai]

My idea; repost from the iPhone/iPod beta forum. Guess we should keep the discussion in one place.

True, good point. Yeah, it's hard to envision a perfect way to implement it, what I was thinking was if you want to create a flashcard from whatever word you are looking it, if you tap and hold or tap the + symbol, once you are in the category menu, there could be another + symbol, or something saying new category or whatever, then if you choose that, maybe another menu pops up where you can name the category, and choose if it's a top level category, or the child of another category (I guess this could go several layers too), perhaps from a drop down menu or something.

For example:

At the dictionary definition tap and hold or hit +
----->
Choose category from current list or add a new category using + symbol or 'new category' text
----->
Name new category; choose what level it is from drop down list with all categories/levels (although this might be a bit long)
----->
Done. New category becomes default (since it's probably the one you are currently working on).

I guess the other question is how you'd display that on the add flashcards category list, if there were too many there it might get complicated as well. I guess for top level categories you could scroll up and down, and if they have child categories, it will take you through to a further menu with the child categories listed. It sounds complicated when I right it down, but I kind of think it'd work in practice.

Just my two cents anyway!

 

[mikelove]

sfrrr - I meant that the aspect of tagging you really were interested in seemed to be the ability to type in a list of tags rather than having to choose them from a menu; I had figured originally that that was the case, just wanted to make sure.

My worry with that system, however, is that particularly given our new focus on iPhone it's a) kind of labor-intensive to type out the names each time, and b) way too easy to make typos and end up with a bunch of slightly-mistagged items. Even if we launched a flashcard-equipped version of Pleco for Android, we'd be dealing with an awful lot of devices that have iPhone-like text input; people with slide-out hardware keyboards generally only seem to use them for typing out long messages.

ciaocibai - creating categories from the category selection screen makes a lot of sense; we already have a Settings option to bring up the multi-level category prompt when you add a card, so it would just be a matter of letting people add new categories from that screen too really. (doing it from the simple top-level-only popup would add too many options to what's supposed to be a really simple interface)

 

[mfcb]

people with slide-out hardware keyboards generally only seem to use them for typing out long messages.

then i wonder whats the problem with their keyboard/operating system/hardware???? i slide out the keyboard whenever i have to type, even single numbers ... anyway, i still wonder why MS would kill something that is at its best version ever...

 

[mikelove]

Certainly might vary, that's just what I've observed lately - capacitive screens and their superior finger-keyboarding capabilities might also have something to do with it, it's a more common thing on Android than on WM.