I’m in the process of learning Anki, I’m a new user, and I am using the official manual as a learning source.
I’m having trouble understanding the option “Limits start from top”. From what I understand, the “Limits start from top” option makes it so the Review/New card limit options will only limit the amount of cards gathered from sub-decks when studying from the most top level deck, but will apply the top level deck’s limits when studying from the sub-decks.
I have a deck called “Test Deck” and a sub-deck called “Test Deck::Subdeck 1”, and they both have 10 new cards (10 in “Test Deck” and 10 in “Test Deck::Subdeck 1” for a total of 20 new cards)
They both use a preset called “Test”.
In “Test Deck” the new card limit is set to 200 (default), in “Test Deck::Subdeck 1” the limit is set to 5 with the “This Deck” option. The “Limits start from top” option is enabled on both (as it affects the entire collection to my understanding).
When I study from the parent deck “Test Deck”, I see it has 15 new cards to study, this behavior is expected.
But, when I study from the sub-deck “Test Deck::Subdeck 1”, I only see 5 new cards due.
If you can tell us what you’re expecting to happen instead, we might be able to help you get there.
The limits are taken from the deck you click to study, which interacts with the limits of its subdecks (described in more detail at the link Keks posted). When you click on Subdeck 1 to study, it has 10 New available, and it obeys its own limit of 5 per day.
With Limits-from-the-top turned on, a higher-level deck’s limit will be impacted (“eaten up”) by any studying you start at the subdeck levels, but it doesn’t force a larger limit on any of the subdecks.
I’ve explained what I expected it to do in the original post, but it seems that I am wrong.
I originally thought that when the “Limits start from top” option is enabled, if a sub-deck has a card limit smaller than the limit of the top-level deck, the sub-deck’s limit will be ignored and the top-level deck’s limit will be used instead.
Not only that, but I’ve tried again, and it’s totally different from what I thought!
What “Limits start from top” seems to do is actually enforce the top-level deck’s limit upon sub-decks when they’re the ones being studied, sounds familiar, but it only does so if the top-level deck’s limit is smaller than the sub-deck’s limit. I wasn’t aware of that. But am I the one to blame for not understanding? That’s what’s written in the manual:
Limits Start From The Top
By default, the daily limits of a higher-level deck do not apply if you’re studying from its subdeck. However, if this option is enabled, the limits will start from the top-level decks instead, which can be useful if you wish to study individual subdecks, while enforcing a total limit on cards for the deck tree. Enabling this option for any preset will affect all decks and presets in your collection.
It states that a sub-deck may have more pending cards than the limit of the top-level deck when “Limits start from top” is disabled, my bad, I missed that, but it does not say that the sub-deck’s limits still apply! I thought that it straight up ignores the sub-deck’s limits, and applies the top-level deck’s limits in any situation.
It works the same whether the higher-level deck has a larger or smaller limit than the subdeck (or total of all of the subdecks). But the fact that it has control over the subdecks – even though you are clicking the subdecks to study – will probably only be noticeable when it has a smaller limit.
