Excellent! I'm using this to learn Chinese, and I've easily created files showing hanzi (Chinese characters) to pinyin (phonetic translation)/English. Both hanzi and pinyin have peculiar fonts, and so long as I save the file as Unicode there are no problems. I just create my file using Open Office, and save as encoded text. Oh, for any of you who might be interested in Asian languages (using Windows), just be sure that you've installed language support for the Asian languages -- a standard part of Windows.

Like other people have asked, I would REALLY like a larger font choice. This is really critical when I'm trying to see the _small_ Chinese characters on the card.

Also, I would really like the ability to set other colors for the background. The dark green (every 4th card) is particularly difficult for me to see (poor contrast). In fact, why four colors (and not two for front/back)?

Other than this, great job making something so versatile as to eve

When I first downloaded it, I found it to be a great Widget and used it quite often. However, with the new Yahoo! Widgets Update for version 4, there seems to be a bug in it. Not only the "shuffle" or "refresh" button in the flashcards no longer functions, but also it makes the whole thing to disappear when you click on it. This was very disappointing.

I have tried to create my own cards but it won't create more than one card, I put two lines of text but it only made one card and with only the first line's text. Very weird.

I just found Yahoo Widgets and found Flashcards. This seems like it has great potential especially if it can be made user friendly (as simple as pie). One problem is that I can't figure out how to make my own cards. Sorry. It probably is very easy. I am a bit user challenged.
Also, how about a widget that keeps track of Widget favorites and saves the file to a "safe" file so that it can not be lost.

Thanks for the really cool widget. A few additional suggestions:

(1) the ability to set front/back or back/front views in advance with a toggle would be nice instead of having to go to the end and work backwards for the back/front option.

(2) others have already mentioned the fixed window size; I tried putting in longer text (say, a vocab word with three or four different definitions), and the card simply couldn't handle all of that data.

(3) also, have you thought about making a premium version, such as a version with the ability to set expiration dates for the default card set (such as 30 or 60 days from time of purchase) so that content providers can offer fee-based sets where the default set (with a hidden txt file) will expire after a given time to prevent rampant pirating of unlicensed content? I'm thinking that some people would want to be compensated for content they have created by selling it at a reasonable price, and if you could make some too by providi

Cool application, it does not, however, handle some characters like accented vowels.

Cool! I hope we'll get to see a bunch of interesting datafiles...

If anyone has any datafiles they feel would be useful to others, I'm happy to include them in future releases. (The different datafiles would be a pulldown menu in the widget preferences window.)

Creating your own flashcards is simple. Here is a sample datafile:

http://www.sober.dk/sample_datafile.txt

Enjoy!

It's a good idea and I'm not having any problems with it. I think exchanging the card files is a good idea and I hope I'm not too much of a dillweed for starting a group on Yahoo to swap them. I just wish there were more of us swapping these things and encouraging the author to keep up his good work.

wow i have no idea how to use this! instructions would be very nice, but it seems like an awesome widget!

This is a very nice Wiget but could use a few fixes.
Examples: 1. Make window and or fonts sizeable
2. Use a font that can utilize accents on letters
for foregin word translation.
3. find a way to use any directory for your data

without too much investigating I'm thinking a load of cards shared by others in a download collection would make this useful. Sorry just not that motivated to sit and assemble a ton of cards myself. My fingers hurt just thinking about it. Larger cards, I think I see flashcard 2 posted somewhere? Random cards like -deck mode- until all cards are exhausted then loop shuffle and repeat would be a nice addition.

I really like the idea, but the readme and sample data file didn't explain the purpose of the flashcards widget enough. When I made the widget, I didn't know what the square thingy/unix new line was so I copied and pasted it from the sample data file. When I had completed, the same problem as Tentons. I read through these comments, and I realized that my file had been capitalized. I made the file in lowercase. But still, the same problem arose. This version has many bugs that need to be fixed, or, you need to make a better readme.

I am consistently getting this bug no matter which .txt file I use. The widget says there are 5 cards, the fronts are always blank and on the back they say, "C:Program FilesPixoriaKonfabulatorUnixtilsusrlocalcat.EXE:
then it runs out of space.

What am I doing wrong?

I am consistently getting this bug no matter which .txt file I use. The widget says there are 5 cards, the fronts are always blank and on the back they say, "C:Program FilesPixoriaKonfabulatorUnixtilsusrlocalcat.EXE:
then it runs out of space.

What am I doing wrong?

OK
Now it's working
To create a unix newline just press enter/return
The name of your file should have no space in it and maybe it is useful to use this _ instead of this - in the name of the file
And also I put an empty line at the end and now everithing works perfectly

Sorry for this silly question but I'm a newbee with unix and don't know what to type to create a unix newline
Is it the enter/return tab?
Thanks

this is very useful, cuz ive been taking German up for a while. Some people say that it doesn't work for Windows, but I am currently running Windows XP, and it works just fine! No problems at all! Danke fur die Flashcards!

~Mack

Does this widget not work for windows??

Takes a little time to set up, but it's worth the trouble to set up. Beaut of a widget. Bravo.

I'm using the flashcards to study right now, but sometimes they AREN'T BIG ENOUGH! Correcting this problem would be awesome (and easy, I imagine). Thanks

I don't see any point in restating the problem, so I won't. I /will/ say: this is a good widget. All it needs is for it to work on Windows properly.
I have one suggestion, which is for a button to take you from wherever you currently are to the first card.

Dosen't work for windows (even the sample.txt) which really sucks because this was like the perfect application for me. German flash card work. Very dissapointing.

I put in C:/ drive and I got a partial stuff, blank cards everywhere. Couldn't you just make this like a note app...I really want to love this app! :'(

If you are getting an error when trying to load a custom datafile, try to make sure the filename (and all the directories that hold it) don't have spaces.

e.g.
C:Documents and SettingsDesktop est.txt [BAD]
c: est.txt [OK]

I'll look into a proper fix in the next release.

I am also having issues in Windows. I tried converting my file using DOS2UNIX and it still didn't work. Automatic resizing or just being able to change the size would be great.

The strange thing is the default German vocab cards do work, so it must be something minor that needs to be fixed. In the meantime I guess I'll just study German ;)

As Marc just said, this doesnt work on windows.

I'm trying out this hopefully very useful widget in its Windows version, and I've tried everything to get the textfile working, including saving as UTF-8, changing the font, etc. The sample file doesn't work either. The included German file does, but I can't find it anywhere on my hard-drive (and I'm guessing control-click is a Mac thing). I assume it's the Unix newline
command (or whatever) that's at fault, and would appreciate any hints as to how to input it, or if that's not the problem, then just how to get this thing working, because it looks really useful.

very nice, but sometimes the definition won't fit! how about an automatic resize?

to check out the author's german/english text file, do a control-click on the widget's icon, and then select "show packet contents", then scrounge around the window that opens and you should find what you're looking for... it would be cool to eventually create some sort of library for all the user contributions. i know i have friends that would use an english/french text file, and i'd like an italian/french or italian/english dictionary...

A four star widget - there are just a few small bugs left to sort out. The most noticeable is a file name glitch, data file paths containing spaces don't work. Also, the arrows could use a discreet background, their clickable surface is rather small.

I've a problem;
I can produce some cards, but it doesn't work to make comments...
I copied the sentence “# this is a comment. It starts with a hash.“, which is written in "Readme.rtf", in my text file, but it still doesn't work...
what can I do?? Can someone give me some advice?

Although I have not been able to get a datafile to function. I can tell you that all you have to do to save a TextEdit file as a ".txt" is to check the appropriate box for 'to save a new file as a textfile 'in the preferences window that is under "File"

The readme file suggests you can use Textedit to create the text file, however in OS X 10.3 Textedit only saves in RTF or word format. It would not work with a text file from Appleworks either. After about 30 minutes I finally used pico from the Terminal to save in the correct format.

sorry about the double comment, but i want to address Alf van der Vliet's question.
The answer: you're making it to hard :P. all that you have to do is front|back.

i.e. ab absurdo|from absurdity
or
id est (i.e.)|that is (:P)

great widget! i don't love the colors, but the functionality is great!

Hello!

Seems a nifty app, now I just need to get my text file working...

Here's what I have now:

[hash][Portuguese --> English][
]
[gato]|[cat][
]

I tried many combinations; with or without brackets, hash or # - but still it doesn't work! What I am doing wrong? The example given in the Readme could be a tad more precise... ;-)

I just can't seem to get the code right. When you say what do you think I am doing wrong? Can you send me a copy of the deutsch_english file so I can look at it?

Thanks

I downloaded the widget intending to use it to study Ancient Greek for school. It would be nice to have a way to force the widget to use another font set. For example, if I typed in a raw text data file, could the program render it in a Symbol Font or one of the Greek fonts?

schwerd: make sure you have a newline at the end of your last card. (i.e. one blank line)

Thanks for the excellent comments, Kajiki.

Yes, randomize (or "shuffle") is something I planned. I just got lazy because I didn't know what to display on the screen to visually indicate shuffling. But, the shuffle might be so fast, that it can just be instantaneous.

I also thought about a rating system, but i was thinking much simpler. Basically, just "pull" a card from the deck that I know the answer to. Again, I got lazy with this feature, because I couldn't come up with an elegant way to get a rejected card back in the deck. Maybe I'll have a mini "reject pile" which can be moved though like the regular cards. (that actually might be real easy, since I would just need another instance of the Deck class...)

As for the mistakes in the cards, thanks for your corrections. I'll also have a native speaker look over the deck. I'm planning on adding a deck of just plurals (e.g. Hund, Hunde) Plus more verb conjugations. Yes, german is hard.

If anyone else has some cool decks, sen

Fine idea! Some ideas to make this perfect: I'd like to be able to randomize cards, add one picture in each card where neccessary (which would be a way to get around the Mac Roman limitation) and "rate" each card as to how well I remembered the answer - cards with a low rating would then show up more often than those with a high one. The ratings would only need to be stored as long as a set is active in the widget.

The enclosed word list however needs some work. "Gendanke" is spelled "Gedanke", "Schlanger" should be "Schlange", "suß" should be "süß", "Schrabenzieher" is spelled "Schraubenzieher", "stinkern" should be "stinken" and "irren" should be completed with "to ramble, to be lost". Also, while it's good that the gender of each noun is noted, noting also what verbs are strong, weak or irregular and whether a preposition governs the dative, the ackusative or both would help students immensely. Yep, German is tough...

trying to work on my own data file...widget seems to always read one card short...9 cards in file, widget shows 8. 20 cards in file, widget shows 19. what am I doing wrong??? love the flashcard concept...working on Brazilian Portugese deck.

Definitly the coolest thing i've seen in a long time, nice for finals next week!