Tags for Vocab Source-E.g., Native Speaker, Menu

[Susan]

Hi, One of the reasons I've stayed with Anki for so long is because it has a very robust system for user defined fields and tags. Hong Kong Cantonese uses a lot of words differently than might be expected. (Pekingese Noodle Soup, anyone? It's a nickname for a certain shape of fish paste. Not the dog.) Many dictionary definitions are inadequate or laughably wrong (as in, people laugh at me when I use these words.) So when I enter new words, I use tags to note the source: native speaker, menu, protest sign, etc.

I'm experimenting with Pleco flashcards because I want to start using more audio. (I've mainly used Pleco as a dictionary source, for which it's awesome. Audio--and images, btw --can be added to Anki, but I find the process extremely tedious.)

In Pleco it seems that the only tag system is the flashcards, and while it's excellent for organizing flashcards and tests - nested layers, colored labels, pretty easy to use--it's much less robust than I'm used to. I also wondered how it worked for multiple tags. So I set up a new test using two flashcard groups: one with 6 cards, the other with 4 cards, and two cards in each group have overlapping tags, i.e., they are in both flashcard groups. My new test has ten cards. I think it should have only eight, because two of the cards are in both groups. How does this work?

I searched the forums looking for this topic, and found several requests for user defined fields and tags - for nouns, medical terms, place names, etc. Is this something we can look forward to in Pleco's future?

 

[mikelove]

There should only be 8, yes. Are you sure that the overlapping cards are actually in both categories, rather than being separate cards? (if you tap on one of them in Organize Cards does it list both categories in its detail screen?)

For tags, our intent / expectation was that our category system would be fully adequate for that; aside from this issue with cards seemingly coming up in a test twice, have you found any other ways that categories are unsatisfactory for tagging?

For user defined fields, yes, those are fully supported in our new 4.0 update, the only thing still up in the air is how much customization we'll be able to deliver over how they're parsed in the first release. (ultimately we'd like this to be flexible enough so that one could add a totally unknown-to-Pleco pronunciation system - Hokkien, e.g., or even Hiragana - and nevertheless be able to perform a fill-in-the-blanks test on it, but that may not happen until a later update)

 

[Susan]

I'm not sure what you mean by the detail screen. Is this it (below)? I call it the dictionary entry. There are two colored tags:


Regarding tags, one major difference is that in Anki, I can highlight/select many items at once and bulk tag. In Pleco - please correct me if I'm wrong -- I have to select each individual card to move it to another category.

 

[Shun]

Hi Susan,

I'm not sure what you mean by the detail screen. Is this it (below)? I call it the dictionary entry. There are two colored tags:
View attachment 2632

He means the detail screen of a card, when you tap on a card in Organize Flashcards. In the detail screen, you see all the categories a card is in, which are similar to, or even superior to, tags. (because they are hierarchical)

Regarding tags, one major difference is that in Anki, I can highlight/select many items at once and bulk tag. In Pleco - please correct me if I'm wrong -- I have to select each individual card to move it to another category.

You can also search for cards and perform batch operations on the search result, like adding them to a particular category.

Regards,

Shun

 

[Susan]

Ah, it's a long press. I found it, and it shows one sub-category. I think you are correct, and I created a new card instead of copying to a new cat.

I also found a screen that allows some bulk operations. I'll check it out and see how it goes. Thanks!