question about zdt and other flashcard programs

[Southernjohn]

Hi- I have been using the zdt flashcard program for a while. It has been very useful, but I would really like to be able to sort out flashcards... repeat ones I don't know, discard ones I know, etc. Does anyone know of a good, relatively simple, program that will allow me to do this? I have searched a number of programs and haven't seen anything yet.

I have found programs that allow this, but without the ability to add your own cards... there is just a set of cards already built into the program.

Thanks.

p.s.- I understand zdt has the "smart filter"... but the way I tend to use zdt is in the "self-review" mode.... I have found that more useful than testing for definitions or pinyin.

[bogleg]

I just wanted to clarify, but do you mean you'd like to have some sort of function to mark a card as learned? And then have these marked cards excluded when you do a flashcard test?

Chris

[Xiao Kui]

The best flashcard I've found is SuperMemo which is available for PC or pocket PC. It measures how well you know words and decides when you need to repeat them for review. I like it a lot, and it claims you will retain 95% of learned material if you use it everyday. I have been using it about a month and I'm very satisfied with it so far, I'm remembering all those literary words that i used to immediately forget after learning because i only encountered them in books. (Why do I bother learning those words at all? Because I save lots of time and read faster when I'm not looking stuff up in the cidian all the time or constantly mousing over in NJStar) You can also import some flashcard lists from other programs into Supermemo. I never tried importing from zdt so I don't know if it supports that- maybe Bogleg can fill us in. But I can tell you that you can drag and drop directly from the zdt category list into Supermemo. (Which is pretty cool since you can't always drag and drop within the zdt program itself.)

The bad thing abt Supermemo is the price: $39.95, but I think it's definitely worth it. I spent money on other programs before and tried some free ones, but I don't even use them since I got Supermemo. The exception is zdt, because it's awesome for learning stuff from the net, reading articles,etc, especially if you use the adso database. Maybe if I wasn't so lazy I'd learn to import my zdt files to Supermemo, but my Supermemo is pretty new so I haven't figured that out yet, so in the meantime I'm dragging and dropping to my heart's content.

The current Supermemo version is 2004. An older version, Supermemo 98, is available for free, but I haven't tried that earlier version with Chinese fonts or zdt so I don't know how the two will work together. If zdt flashcard program incorporated the Supermemo method of calculating the need for repetition, it would definitely be the ultimate, mother flashcard program.

[bogleg]

Hi Xiao Kui,

Actually, I'm really interested in allowing the ZDT to be able to export to the SuperMemo format. I know they have an xml format but I didn't see any sort of schema published anywhere so I could figure out which elements are required, etc. I tried emailing the SuperMemo guys for help but I never got a response.

If you would be willing to provide details on the format and maybe provide some testing help, maybe we could put out a plugin that supports this. Interested?

Chris