Exercises in a deck

An exercise written in a document can also be studied: copied into an exercise deck, the toolbox’s Anki-like store, it comes back when it is due and is rated as a card is. The deck keeps the exercise exactly as it is written — the same :::exercise block — so everything on the other pages of this section holds there too. This page is about the way in and the way back, and about what each family looks like on the study page; the decks themselves — their scheduling, options, export and import — are the Exercises door’s, described in its own section of this guide.

1. Into a deck#

• One exercise. On a document’s reading view every exercise, those in a > box included, has a + Deck button in its head. It asks for a deck of the document’s language — the one used last is already chosen, and + New deck… makes one — and Copy puts the exercise into it with the document’s tags. The copy brings along the footnotes the exercise cites and every picture and recording it names, wherever the name is written: an image: or back-audio: field, a line in a Jolly field, a footnote. A file whose name the deck already uses for a different file is stored under a new name (name-2.png, name-3.png…) and every mention of it in the copy is rewritten to match; the same file is never copied twice. An exercise the deck already has asks before it goes in again.

• All of them. + Add all exercises, beside Edit at the top of the reading view, lists every exercise of the page, each ticked; when the document has glosses, Show gloss flashcards (N) — N is how many — adds them to the list as vocabulary cards. Untick what you do not want (Select all, Select none), choose the deck, and press the button that counts what is ticked: Add 3 exercises, say. What the deck already holds is left out unless Add again the ones this deck already has is ticked.

• Straight into the deck. A deck’s own page has Add exercise…, which opens the same grid of types and the same form as the editor, with Paste markdown… at the grid’s foot for an exercise copied as Markdown. What is saved there must be exactly one :::exercise block, with nothing round it and no errors.

• From a book or a video. A word met in a book or a video goes into a deck as a flashcard: see where cards come from.

• A flashcard’s side. A flashcard’s direction: says which side appears first, and a deck reads it as a document does — with two more values. Both (random) is copied as it is, and the study page draws a face for the card each time it comes up. Both (repeat) becomes two linked cards: one front first, one back first, each written out with its own direction:, each scheduled on its own, and asked about together when one is edited or deleted (more).

The deck’s copy is a snapshot: it is made once, at the moment of copying, and changing the document afterwards — its words, or a card’s direction: — changes nothing in the deck, as changing the deck’s card changes nothing in the document. That is also why the two cards of a Both (repeat) exercise exist only in the deck: the document keeps the one exercise it always had.

An exercise that needs attention has no + Deck button and is not offered by + Add all exercises: a deck always refuses it. Nor does the editor’s preview have the button, nor this guide — only a document’s reading view, and the notes a document is attached as, beside a book or a video.

2. Back into a document#

Exercises ▾ → Load from a deck…, in the editor, lists the decks in the page’s language and, under the chosen one, each exercise with its kind and its opening words. Insert puts it into the document at the cursor, exactly as the deck has it, and copies its pictures and recordings into the document’s own images/ and audio/ (renaming them where a different file already has the name) and the footnotes it cites among the document’s own. The deck is left as it was: this copies out of it. The document must have been saved once, since the files go into its folder.

3. On the study page#

Study now shows one exercise at a time, unsolved, and each family is answered the way it is on a page:

After the check or the turn, a bar of four ratings appears — Again, Hard, Good, Easy, or the keys 1 to 4 — each saying how long the exercise would wait. The check never rates for you: a wrong answer only moves the focus to Again, and a right one to Good. Once checked, an exercise’s answer is locked, so the explanations stay beside what was answered.

What else the study page does with each kind:

• The other side of a pair waits a day. When one of two linked cards is answered, the other is not offered until the next day begins — as Anki does with the cards of one note. Cramming ignores it.

• Recordings. A flashcard plays the first recording of its front when it appears and the first of its back when it is turned, as Anki plays a card’s sound; an exercise’s audio: player never plays by itself. Whatever is playing stops when the exercise is rated or skipped.

• The ✥ dragging switch of an ordering exercise is there too, and says the same as on every other page of that browser.

• An exercise with errors — should a deck hold one — offers only ✎ Edit and Skip.

• ✎ Edit corrects any exercise in the same form, without touching its schedule. The form writes the exercise afresh as it saves, so a fill-in exercise comes back with its blanks renamed and its answers first.

Cram exercises, on the deck’s page, goes through the selected exercises in random order without changing their schedule: a scored exercise is checked, a flashcard revealed and then marked Correct or Wrong by you, and whatever was wrong comes round again until it is right.