documentation for the Flashcard program, version 1.1
What is Flashcard?
Flashcard is a repetitive-enforcement learning aid, designed to be similar in many ways to those decks of flashcards commonly used to teach mathematics and other skills to children.
Flashcard provides a means by which any set of pairs of associated words or phrases may be learned, in any of several different formats.
How do I use it?
To create a new deck of flashcards, run the program and choose Cards… from the Edit menu. A dialog box will appear. Inside the two long edit boxes type the title card, the two titles for what you wish to study (for example, if you wished to study the Spanish equivalents of English numbers, you might put English Numbers in the top box and Spanish Numbers inside the bottom one). Hit RETURN and your titles will appear above the edit fields.
Then click the check box marked Insert New Cards. While this box is checked, the Next and Previous buttons will make new, blank cards whenever pushed. Push the Next button, and fill in the boxes with your first flashcard. Hit RETURN or push the Next button again, and fill in your second. Continue until done. When you are finished with your last card, click the Finished button.
You can also create a deck of flashcards using MacWrite‚Ñ¢ or any other word processor or editor that allows the creation of text files. Write the text of your flashcards, one phrase per line. Every pair of lines will make one flashcard. The first card in the list, called the title card, defines what names will be used for the cards. For example, the following sequence of lines defines a deck of cards that allows the user to study the Spanish numbers up to ten; the title card tells that, out of each pair, the first is the English numeral and the second is the Spanish numeral, and the other cards follow.
English Numbers
Spanish Numbers
one
uno
two
dos
three
tres
four
cuatro
five
cinco
six
seis
seven
siete
eight
ocho
nine
nueve
ten
diez
Remember to save the file as "text only!" Note that there are ten cards in the file, plus one title card, with two lines per card. To load the file, run the Flashcard program, choose Open… from the File menu, and choose the name of your file.
Once your cards are loaded, you can edit them by choosing Cards… from the Edit menu. You can move around in the deck with the Next and Previous buttons, or by changing the card number in its edit box. You can insert more flashcards wherever you wish by clicking the InsertNewCards check box, and can delete cards with the Delete button. You can also edit the title card (card number 0).
Now that I have my cards, what can I do?
Using the Options menu, set up any way you wish; you can review your flashcards "forwards," "backwards," or a random combination of the two. You can choose either to repeat the cards you miss until you get them correct, or to review each card only once. You can also choose how strict the review should be: you can specify that only an exact match is counted, or you can ignore case (upper and lower case make no difference), diacritical marks (i.e., accents, tildes, etc.), or both. You can also specify whether the card number is to be shown in the question box or not.
After all your options are set as you would like them, you can choose the type of question from the Test menu. You can use short answer-type questions, where given one item, you must type in the corresponding item correctly; or you can try the easier multiple choice-type questions, where you are given one item and must choose the correct corresponding item from a random list. You can even specify how many choices to give during the multiple choice part.
Then you can choose, from the same menu, how to study. OrderedReview means that the cards are reviewed, one by one, in the same order that they are in the deck. RandomReview means that the cards are reviewed in a random order. Quiz… simulates a test situation; a certain number of questions are chosen randomly from the deck, and you have one chance to answer correctly.
After everything is set, choose Go from the Test menu to begin. You will be presented with a question dialog box, in the formats you requested. At any time you can click the Score button, for your percentage correct up to that point, or the Stop button, to display your score and then cancel any remaining questions. The Next button and the RETURN key both tell the program that you are done with the current question, and want the next.
After you have answered a question and hit either the RETURN key or the Next button, underneath the gray line at the bottom of the dialog box a message will appear, telling whether you are "Correct!" in your last answer or "Incorrect." If your answer was wrong, the program also will tell you what the correct answer was. The next question will appear above the gray line, and you will be ready to continue.
After you have answered all the questions (or clicked the Stop button) the program will show you the score. Click the mouse to return to Flashcard.
What if my flashcards need a different font than the system font to work correctly?
Simple. Choose the font you wish the questions to appear in from the Font menu; all questions and answers after that will be in the 12-point size of the selected font.
Anything else to note?
Open in the File menu doesn't remove the old deck before opening the next; it appends the new deck to the old, title card and all. To remove the old deck first, choose Close from the same menu. To merge two files, open them both, then edit the cards and delete the second file's title card.
A file that has been saved by this program will have a special icon in the Finder, and can be opened from the Finder by double-clicking or by the Open command; however, it still can be edited by other text processors.
Multiple Flashcard files can be opened from the Finder;
all will be loaded as said above (one after the next).
The program will not let you exit without a chance to save your work, if you have made a new deck or changed an old one; choose Save or Don'tSave from the dialog box as matches your intentions, or choose Cancel to return to the program.
Limitations of the program.
Due to restrictions on the amount of memory a data structure can occupy, flashcard items are limited to 50 characters maximum (which is about all that will fit in an edit box, anyway), and a maximum of 300 flashcards is allowed. Those with special needs may contact the Rice Macintosh Support Group.
Customization information.
All information on the appearance of the menus and dialogs is stored as resources, as well as all strings (in an indexed list--STR#, ID 300). Note that some information on the ways menus change is also stored in the string list.
Menu defaults can be changed by changing which item is initially marked. The default number of choices in a multiple choice box and the default number of questions on a quiz, as well as the maximum and minimum number of choices in a multiple choice box, the maximum number of flashcards, and the maximum length of a string, are "hard-wired," however, and cannot be changed without recompiling the program. The two former will be changed in a later version.
