Memrise card template [support thread]

[Eltaurus]

Another update is here. Now the template has a functional on-screen keyboard with the hint button, the option to change an input mode from typing-in answer to multiple-choice, as well as some styles for images:

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1. On-screen keyboard

as requested by

@Windance

So, I was hoping that as in Memrise, I can have the foreign characters below the box for clicking to type, Spanish and Hebrew as in Memrise when typing character is required.

The keyboard is set up at the top of the card’s front. There are two complementary settings, which determine what keys will appear on the screen:

1. Static Keys:
   

   All characters entered here will always appear on each card of this type, the order is fixed:
   

   It can be useful for specifying special characters, such as letters with diacritics, to work as a supplement for a physical keyboard, that doesn’t have some of the needed characters.

2. Random Keys:
   

   Basically, this is an alphabet for the target language (or any reasonable-sized subset of characters the language uses – it is probably a good idea to include only the most often-used characters for languages such as Chinese). If not empty, the keyboard will be filled with all characters necessary to spell the answer + a number of other unique characters selected from this set, the order is randomized:
   

   This option can be used to make cards self-sufficient – every answer will be possible to type using only the on-screen keyboard.

The two options can be used in combination (or left empty, in which case the keyboard will not appear on the screen).

The sets of characters are defined for each Card Type individually because in some cases one might want to have different keyboards for different cards within the same Note Type (such as typing with kanji for translations into Japanese, and with pure kana for word readings).

There are also many little fixes relative to the Memrise keyboard layout...

1. Buttons react when being pressed:
   

2. Better character centering on the keys (baseline instead of middle of the bounding box):
   

3. No aliasing artifacts in the corners of the buttons:
   

_{Unfortunately, there is currently an issue in AnkiDroid which, in some cases, will make
the spelling corrections (shown after a wrong answer is submitted) to be inconsistent with what was typed using the on-screen keyboard. This issue is purely visual and should not affect how cards function and are graded. Hopefully, this will be changed in future AnkiDroid versions. Fixing this behavior within the card code only is also possible, but will take quite a big amount of work for such a minor thing.}

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2. Hint button

as requested by

@wodwocrow

1. Hint button
2. Limited alphabet from which to choose letters

The button works practically the same as it does on Memrise, except the answer is not automatically accepted right away when it is spelt completely – it only will be submitted after the Hint button is pressed one more time (the card will be autorated Good).

If you want to disable this button, type “off” in the list of its classes:

(or simply delete the whole line to remove it from the keyboard completely, if you are sure you won’t need the button in the future)

_{The placement of the Hint button on the keyboard is intentionally a bit different from the original Memrise layout. Let me know, if you consider this an issue.}

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3. Multiple-Choice cards

@wodwocrow

4. Option to choose correct answer from four or six possible (similar) answers

For a multiple-choice card to be generated, a field {{Choices}} on the respective note should be populated with alternative answers that will appear as choices in addition to the correct one. This can be done in one of the two ways:

1. Fill in the alternative answers manually, separating them with ‘|’ (spaces can also be added to improve readability, but are not necessary). This way you can target specifically the words that you often confuse with each other, so that this type of card will serve as a memory boost for especially difficult cases.
   

2. Fill the alternatives using the support addon. If you have it installed, an option Fill Choices will appear at the bottom of the context menu when you select and right-click a set of cards:
   
   This will mix the selected cards, putting words from each card as an alternative answer for the other ones. You can do this in small batches, e.g. by Memrise level to keep alternative answers thematically close to each other, or just mix a whole deck (course) in one go, if purely random alternative answers are what you want.

   Additional info

   You can also combine the two methods. For example, generating an initial set of choices automatically and then manually removing all alternatives that are too obvious to be incorrect (since in Anki you can edit cards during the reviews, you can even do the removal on the go each time you see an easily recognizable wrong option. This will naturally increase the difficulty of a card the more you review it).

   I might also be able to add a feature that will add a submitted answer to the choice field each time a wrong answer is typed.

   Fill Choices settings

   The dialog option for Fill Choices contains three options:

   

   1. Source Field – is the field you are setting to be tested on by the card.
   2. Choices Field – is the field where all alternative answers will be stored. Potentially you might want to have several Multiple-Choice cards for one Note that test on different fields. In this case, more {{Choices}} fields should be added to the Note type and their contents filled accordingly.
   3. Action: Append adds newly generated choices to the ones already present in the selected choices field. Overwrite will remove all existing choices and leave only the ones generated with the current settings. If the {{Choices}} field is empty, both options will lead to the same result

This setup has to be done only once, so don’t worry about the addon being unavailable for Android. If the choices are filled and the collection is synced, the Multiple-Choice cards will work on both desktop and phone:

As with the previous version, the Anki package for v3.32 contains two Note Types:

1. Memrise (Lτ) Preset [Translation+Listenting | Typing+MultipleChoice] v3.32 is a ready-to-use option made to produce four cards (one per combination of question and input types) for each Note (provided it has all necessary fields filled, including {{Choices}}, as described above);

2. Memrise (Lτ) Template v3.32 is the most basic version of the template – you can take either this one or the Memrise (Lτ) Preset... Note Type and customize it to your individual preferences, adding or removing Types of Cards and changing their contents. I’ve already described the most common modifications in my previous posts. The main new thing in this version of the template is the customization of an input method (Typing vs Multiple Choice):

   Making a Multiple-Choice Card

   In order to change the input method of a Card Type from Typing to Multiple Choice you need to change three things on the Front of a Card:

   1. Add mch to the list of classes for the following element:
      
      (this is the main toggle that enables Multiple-Choice keyboard)

   2. Add {{#Choices}} and {{/Choices}} to the beginning and the end of the first block respectively:
      
      This tells Anki not to create cards that have no alternative {{Choices}} specified (otherwise such cards would show up with only one button to press, which would be rather pointless).
      
      If you are designing a Note Type with several different Multiple-Choice cards, make sure to use the respective {{Choices}} field in this step, as well as putting the same field into this part of settings:
      

   3. Similarly make sure, that the field the card will test on (the one that contains the correct answer) is indicated in these two places accordingly:
      

   Optionally, you might want to rewrite the card prompt as well
   

   Also don’t forget to remove empty cards after the editing (Tools → Empty Cards…)

More differences with the original Memrise design

4. The pressed button stays pressed instead of jittering back:
   

5. The color scheme is consistent with the overall style (the graying-out effect is removed, the correct and pressed buttons are recolored to match the good and bad answers in typing questions):
   

   

6. Number labels are better centered:
   

7. Multiple-choice questions are ensured to have only unique options, unlike their implementation at Memrise:
   

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4. Images

The images that are placed into question and extra fields are now properly scaled and styled:

Images in the multiple-choice fields will not work in the current version. If requested, this can probably be implemented in the future.

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The latest version (3.32) is available, as usual, on the GitHub page:

GitHub - Eltaurus-Lt/Anki-Card-Templates: Decks of templates + source code...

Ankiweb still has an old version. The new one will be uploaded there after I finish updating the documentation.

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With the growing number of features the template supports it becomes increasingly hard to test single-handedly every configuration and combination of settings/use cases/platforms/etc., so any feedback will be greatly appreciated.