Pleco: Installing Premade Cards

[jasoomren]

I'm running Pleco for iOS 3.2.4. I have created several categories of flashcards from a couple of books, in some of them the definitions are not English.

Now, when I install the premade cards (2012 HSK), if a card already exists no duplicate is created, but the existing card gets classified into an additional category and retains the non-English definition. If the card does not exist yet, it is created and gets the definition from a dictionary. This leads to much confusion when some definitions are non-English, some from dictionary A, and others from dictionary B.

Remapping the category where the premade cards belong won't work as it also messes up the already existing categories.

What I ended up doing was exporting the 2012 HSK levels (all six) separately without the category information, deleting the 2012 HSK category, recreating the 2012 HSK categories, and importing the files one by one making sure that the import procedure creates duplicates, and moving the cards from Uncategorized to the proper 2012 HSK subcategory.

I'm just wondering if there would have been an easier way to do this? Which settings apply to importing the premade cards, specifically, how to force duplication?

 

[mikelove]

We use a single default set of settings for the premade list, mostly in the interest of simplicity - this isn't something we expect a lot of people to want to override, it's mostly used by people who are new to Pleco flashcards and the last thing we want to do is intimidate new users with a bunch of arcane questions about duplicate card handling. When we add more lists to that system, we probably will put in a little additional customization potential, though our updated flashcard system should mostly eliminate this problem anyway (by allowing the same card to have multiple definitions).

But for now in your situation I'd suggest importing an HSK list from a text file through the Import Cards screen instead - an up-to-date HSK list in Pleco format is available here. If you want to use the exact list in Install Premade Cards, the best bet would probably be to back up your flashcard database, erase it (Settings / Flashcards / Erase Database), then Install Premade Cards, export the entire contents of your flashcard database to a text file, restore your backup, and reimport those exported cards.