More than one flashcard database

Hi Mike, I use Pleco Flashcards for both Modern and Old Chinese. I try to use Custom flashcards to keep Old Chinese definitions separate from Modern Chinese ones (since the characters are the same), but it still happens that a Modern Chinese card is changed into an Old Chinese one if I add an OC card using the "+" button. The only solution I can see for users of both OC and MC is to use separate Flashcard databases for each. Do you see another way? Thanks!

Best option I can think of at the moment is to set duplicate cards to prompt instead of update text - that way you can check Card Info and see if the current card is for the other type of Chinese (in which case you'd create a new card instead of updating the text).

This will help. With Brill's "A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese" coming up, the problem of having flashcards for different languages in one database will probably become a more critical one. Maybe the flashcard database change could be accomplished by a switch similar to the one between Simplified and Traditional characters, a switch that might also change the search order of dictionaries preference so Old Chinese dictionaries appear at the top. Perhaps only users who bought at least one Old Chinese dictionary and Flashcards may be offered this option. Maybe there's a cleaner, more user-friendly way, but I can't think of any right now.

The problem is that a lot of people may not want that precise classification - they might want it for Cantonese instead, for example. Or for TCM if they've got a TCM dictionary and are studying some of the same words in a general and a TCM-specific context. So I think it requires a more general solution - either a way to cluster categories for duplicate checking purposes (though this really complicates duplicate checking in a lot of other places) or a way to indeed keep multiple databases as you say.

EDIT: Or perhaps something related to the same card having multiple definitions, which we plan to do anyway - it would still be a single card but it would show up with one definition from one category and another definition from a different one. Though this would complicate scoring somewhat.

Yes, maybe to set up different Pleco "environments", with different Flashcards databases (or just the ability to pick a specific flashcard database for a particular environment--it can also be the same database), different dictionary search order and different Dictionary Search Histories, and perhaps even different general settings for each environment may be a cool thing to have. Then users who do not like a precise distinction could go on with one Enviroment, while others, like me, will appreciate the clean separation between environments, to have in one place what belongs together.

I think your last suggestion of having multiple card definitions seems harder to master, because then the user would probably have to set up which flashcards categories allow different definitions and which categories don't. But having different Pleco "Identities" would be like having more than one Pleco--a very familiar concept that also exists with multiple user accounts on Mac OS X/Windows, for example. The File Manager file hierarchy could still be shared amongst different Identities.

It's a bit unwieldy to switch between them, though, that's the problem - have to remember to toggle between modes before you start doing your Old Chinese stuff.

Another option is to tie definitions to profiles - we've got a whole bunch of other arguments for letting you mix multiple profiles in the same test session anyway, so if a card can have multiple definitions depending on the current profile (also useful if, for example, you want one definition in multi-choice and another one in self-graded) then we cover it through that system. You'd define multiple 'display profiles' or something similar, attach a particular 'display profile' to a given test profile and then be able to customize which parts of a card displayed in which way for each 'display profile', including the option to override the default definition with an alternate one - this is also how we can accommodate things like custom fields, embedded images, etc, without having them get in the way in test modes where you probably don't want them.

That would surely work, too. (using default definition fields that Pleco adds new definitions to) Having all of Pleco in one environment also has its merits, I also wouldn't like to switch between Identities just because I'd like to look up a word in the other identity's flashcards. So I scrap this idea.

The custom fields and embedded images idea seems interesting, however. Would it also allow multiple user-picked example sentence fields in a flashcard? I'd love that.

Oh yes, the idea is to have a flashcard essentially be a collection of all of the data you want to keep about a word (examples, usage notes, custom audio recordings, you name it) from which you can then mix and match bits and pieces to form the thing you want to see during a test. The biggest single advantage of our flashcard system over the many other fine SRSes out there is that ours is built into a Chinese dictionary, and we want to do even more to take advantage of that

Is it possible with custom flashcards and both simplified and traditional character, to show only the traditional character during testing (show character) and to reveal the traditional character afterwards (and vice versa)?

Not at the moment - wouldn't be hard to add but we've had very few requests for it.