I need to design a special set of flashcards.

sfrrr

状元
I want to make a few sets of flashcards so I can drill myself on words I frequently mix up or can't keep the tones straight on. Take, for example, all the different words for break/broken, depending on what is getting broken. (Huaile works for furniture, for example, and dong (I think) for holes in clothes, and pole for glass, and ...) I already know that the meaning is going to be some form or synonym of broken, so a traditionl card won't work for this. I want to see the English, hanzi and pinyin for a noun (such as clothes). Then I want to be able to check if my memory of the broken verb is correct (dong or whatever).

I tried making a category for broken, then making a subcategory for each verb (suile, huaile, pole, etc.) but this is awkward. I look at the yifu card and I select (in my brain because there's no way to offer it as a choice), say, dong.
Then I click on the i to see the subcategory and see whether I am correct. This is a lame setup.

Anyone have any better ideas? It would be nice to be able to use these cards the way one uses regular flashcards and be able to keep score of which ones I got and which I keep flubbing. However, it's essential that I test myself by the English noun's word/definition--I need to know how to think "clothes/yifu" and then say dong yifu.

Tenx.

By the way, I don't have to do this with flashcards if you have a better method.
 

sfrrr

状元
OK--let me try this from another angle. I want to be able to drill myself and homophones, etc. but I want to drill myself by reading the English word and guessing (and preferably knowing) which homophone with which tone is correct.

E.g. I want to drill myself on all the wans. So, I want the English word late to come up and then I click on wan3 to find out whether I'm right or wrong.

Another e.g. There are three thousand seven-hundred and fifty-six ways to say broken. I want the English word for, say, glass to come up and then I write in or choose pole, and click to get the answer.

Can anyone think of a way to do this?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Still not sure if I entirely understand what you're looking for, but at the moment, about the only way to get anything like this is to do it by using flashcard fields for things they're not designed for: put the part you want hidden in the headword field of a custom flashcard and the part you want shown in the definition section, then do a Self-Scored session with "Show" set to "Defn."

We may eventually add the ability to create custom flashcard fields (or at least a separately-revealable "Notes" section), but that's yet another item in the list of Cool New Features Which We'd Like To Be Working On But Aren't Because We're Spending All Of Our Time On The Blasted Iphone Version, so it won't be happening for a while.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Could also do that in reverse, of course, or put, say, the Pinyin part of the thing you want shown before in the Pron field and the English / character part in the Head field, with the revealed bit in the Defn field, but basically you're just using the selective showing / hiding of fields as a way to pull this off.

Bear in mind, though, that if we eventually add a system for extra fields / more complicated custom flashcards, it's unlikely there'd be any automated way to translate flashcards from the format you use to that, so you'd have to re-make them (or deal with them working rather awkwardly).
 

sfrrr

状元
Mike--thanks. I can't wait for the notes field/s, but this will keep me busy for a while. And your reply was just in time--I'm going to be locked up with an eight-year-old tomorrow and, believe it or don't, will have stretches of empty time--perfect for learning the difference between wan3 and wan4.

Thanks again.
 

sfrrr

状元
After a blitz of oddly formed cards, as Mike suggested in his previous two replies, my sets of cards (with the answers put into the wrong fields, with their own profile, are working well. However, for the last part of August and most of September (until two days ago), I haven't studied at all. I think I've forgotten how to use PD, or at least one part of it. Wo3 xiang3 wo3 de nao3zi huai4le I just don't remember making custom dictionary entries to be such a pain in the whatever. (I mark a word as a flashcard, then go to the i (Information) button at the bottom of the screen, and select custom entry from the dropdown box. Once I've saved the card as a custom dictionary entry, I get out of the editing mode and go back to the main screen, where I type in the word, locate it in my custom dictionary, and then add it as a flashcard (again). I can't believe that I did this for every flashcard in my special groups.

And while I'm at it, is there a fast way to combine user dictionaries (without having to convert each dictionary to a csv or text list, then combining them, then reconverting them back into a single user dictionary)?

I told you my brain broke. Thanks for any help.

Sandra
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It's definitely not that complicated - once you've selected "custom" from that box, just tap on the "To User" button at the bottom of the screen and that will do the rest of the work for you. You can also do this for multiple cards at once with the "Custom -> user dict" command in the Batch Commands screen in Manage Cards.

There's no fast way to merge user dictionaries at the moment - hadn't really been planning on people having more than one :) Though we're considering a number of improvements on that front - we're actually toying with the possibility of letting you convert a user dictionary to a fixed dictionary from within the software (code that a few years ago was far too memory / time-intensive to run on a mobile device may not be that way anymore), or at least of releasing a desktop utility to allow that; I'm increasingly pessimistic that SQLite will ever be able to compete with our own database engine performance-wise, though it could certainly get a lot closer.
 

sfrrr

状元
Mike--I wouldn't have so many dictionaries if PD didn't create a new one each time I have to reinstall PD (usually, these days, because an SD or CF card has failed.) You may have thought that now that PD is so stable, I'd get off your back. Shows just how wrong you can be. :lol:

Sandra
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It should only create a new dictionary if you try to add a user dictionary entry and there isn't already a user dictionary available - is that not the case?
 

sfrrr

状元
Mike--now I can't remember. Since my most recent hardware problems have been with the cards on which I store Pleco, among other things, I think that's as good guess: I have to restore everything to a new card, but, since I use PD very frequently each and every day, I probably use PD before I've restored some of the dicts, including the user dict, so I make another user dictionary without thinking. And probably don't even notice it for a day or so. But, as I said somewhere else here, there probably aren't that many people besides me that have this problem. Yeah, I'd love a merge dictionaries function, but I'd rather have a Chinese-English TCM dictionary. (Unless I can get both, heh heh.)
 
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