Abstract

Anki is a powerfull app for remembering things via flash cards. But creation process of the digital flash cards can be very slow and boring. To speed up this process I started developement of the qankiadd. This app allows very quickly create flash cards by only pressing the user defined shortkeys - qankiadd itself searches and stores all needed information based on the currently selected text and user defined patterns. Current implementation is still far away from production stage, but it already helps me a lot with creation of the flash cards.

Few words about Anki

If till now you don't use Anki - you miss a lot! Shortly saying this app allows you very easily create digital flash cards for remembering various things. And, from my point of few, flash cards is one of the most efficient ways to remember new information. For example, have you ever had a situtation when you wrote down some important information to learn, but later you either forgot where this information is written, or you are on the way and don't have access to the written information? I personally had these situations very often. But in one day I discovered one wonderful app: Anki. By using very user-friendly interface I started create flash cards with the information I wanted to learn. E.g. if I wanted to learn new english words, I was creating cards with the following fields:

• Question: (some russian word)
• Example Question: (some example with the russian text)
• Answer: (english translation of the russian word)
• Example Answer: (english translation of the russian text)
• Image: (image related to the english word)

When I wanted to repeat these words -> few mouse clicks -> and Anki was already showing me the question from some random flash card. Using some algorithms Anki does not ask questions in the same order. Moreover after each question you have to specify how easy was the question. Later easy questions are asked less and less (e.g. every 1 week), but hard questions are asked every 10 seconds/1 minute/1 hour and etc.

After discovering this app I improved my english very quickly. Later I started create not only flash cards with english words, but also flash cards with programming notes. E.g.:

• Question: name most popular sorting algorithms
• Answer: (some answer)
• Code snippets: (some code snippets)

And even if I was outside the home, I could open Anki on my smartphone and start repeating flash cards.

What is wrong with Anki

As though learning via Anki is a great experience, I always had one big problem: it was always a challenge for me to create new flash cards. E.g. when I was reading some german book and saw some german word I wanted to remember, I had to do the following steps:

1. open Anki
2. select proper deck (e.g. "German Words" deck)
3. press "create flash card"
4. select and copy the german word to remember and paste it into the the first field
5. find translation of the german word and paste it into the second field
6. find some example sentence which contains the german word and paste this sentence into the third field
7. translate the german sentence and paste it into the fourth field
8. find some image in google which is related to the german word for better remembering, and add it into the fifth field

Doing all these steps helps, of course, remember german words, but, on the other hand, distracts from reading the book. Wouldn't it be better to perform only the following steps to create flash card:

1. select german word to remember and press the first shortkey after which the following steps will be done automatically:

   1. flash card will be created
   2. the german word will be automatically added into the first field
   3. the german word will be automatically translated and added into the second field
   4. the image which is related to the german word will be automatically found in google and added into the fifth field

2. select some example sentence which contains the german word and press the second shortkey, after which the following steps will be done automatically:

   1. the example sentence will be automatically added into the third field
   2. the example sentence will be automatically translated and added into the fourth field

Only two steps which can be performed within only few seconds! To make possible such fast creation of flasch cards I develop qankiadd.

Quick Anki Addition

The main idea of the qankiadd is to simplify and speed up the creation process of the digital flash cards. All latest news and articles about the project can be found in this blog under the link https://mugoft.com/category/qankiadd.html.