ﾊﾊﾊQuickLearner is a simple little text-based flashcard application. The application displays a window with two boxes and some info. The Question box will display a question to be answered. The Answer box is where you type in your answer. The application checks your typed answer against the answer in the source file and automatically goes on to the next question if you get it correct. There are some messages in the window to tell you what to do at any particular time and some status info to tell you where you are in the source file and the source fileﾕs name. If you decide that you donﾕt know an answer and want it to be shown to you, you can press the <return> key before entering any text. QuickLearner will then display the answer for the amount of time set in the Preferencesﾉ dialog under the File menu. The length of time can be made infinite by selecting ﾒUntil next keypressﾓ. This delay time is saved in a resource inside QuickLearner, so it will be used until it is changed again. QuickLearnerﾕs window is placed approximately in the center of the screen when it opens. If the window is moved, the new position will be saved and the window will appear in the new location each time QuickLearner is opened. QuickLearner does a sanity check on the position of the window when it opens. If the window does not fit completely on the screen it will be repositioned to the center of the screen.
ﾊﾊﾊWhen QuickLearner opens a text file, the order of the questions and answers is scrambled randomly so that they will appear in a different order each time. After answering all the questions, you will be given a status message that tells you how many questions were missed out of the total. At this time you are given the option of reviewing the missed questions. If you choose to review the missed questions, they will be scrambled to make things a little more difficult.
ﾊﾊﾊYou can create your own source files if you wish. The source files are plain text files in the following format:
Question 1
Answer 1
Question 2
Answer 2
etcﾉ
Each question and answer ends in a carriage return. The questions should be limited to approximately 50 characters, which is about all that will fit inside the Question box, depending on the width of the characters. Any text that does not fit inside the box will be invisible, which is not very useful. The answers should be fairly short, as the application does a check for an exact match. It is case sensitive and checks for diacritical marks. This means that the answer has to be EXACTLY right or it will be judged to be incorrect. It is convenient to have 100 question/answer pairs in the source file, as you can then get a good idea of how many you missed on a percentage basis. The source file can contain any kind of question and answer that you want, but obviously must be limited to only one line of text. QuickLearner uses the Geneva font, so if you create your text file in a different font, some special characters may not appear as you planned. If you change the Creator of the text file to "QkLr" with ResEdit or some other utility, the text file will get a little mortarboard document icon and will open QuickLearner when it is double-clicked.
ﾊﾊﾊI have included some sample files with the application. They include the multiplication tables up to 10 x 10, the capitals of the U.S. states and 24 English to Spanish translation files. You can examine these files with SimpleText or another text editing application to see how they are formatted. If you create a QuickLearner file for your own use, please send me a copy so that I might include it with future releases of QuickLearner.
ﾊﾊﾊIf you have any questions, criticism, bugs, praise, etc., please send them to:
