New Feature Suggestion: FieldTypes

Suggestions
1

Hi everyone, I have just recently started using Anki and it has been absolutely amazing. I just want to say thank you to the the developers for everything they have put into developing this absolutely incredible application.

I know the devs are already very busy, so I want to emphasize that this is just an idea and please don’t feel any pressure to make it an feature anytime soon.

I was wondering if the introduction of FieldTypes would be something the developers and community would be interested in.

Basically, when adding fields to a note there would be options to select from a pre-set list of types.

Some ideas might include:

  • Option: Predefined user values that can be selected when making a card (disables others)
    (Make a switch version of the input validation {{^}}{{#}})

  • Selection: Predefined user values that can be selected when making a card. (Could be implemented in card using {{#FieldName:selectionOption}}value/markup{{^FieldName:selectionOption}}value/markup}}{{\FieldName:selectionOption}})

  • Argument List: Allow the user to add a list of values as a field. (Maybe can be auto wrapped in a ul tag or place {{FieldName}} in an ancestor of an element with .FieldName class to auto generate markup/style for each field index value)

  • Argument Tree: Like the list Argument list field but allows you to make sub-lists

and other Field types that may be handy.

This could also include a system to make custom FieldTypes using html forms and other web technologies.

I know that this could all be accomplished already by parsing inputted string and scripting but, I think this may help learners make more stylized card systems to aid them in developing/creating cards faster.

Thanks a lot for your time, and hope you all have an amazing day.

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2

Out of curiosity: What is your use case here? Say you have a note for learning Latin, where the gender is masculine, feminine and neuter. You can put the whole word or something like m, f or n into a gender field. What would be the benefit of having this information defined beforehand?

(It really interests me. I have automated all sorts of things in Anki over the years with external tools, so that on the one hand I can use very simple templates and on the other hand I can still enter certain content quickly (such as Latin declensions). That is very flexible. I don’t know if Anki could offer this flexibility on the one hand without overwhelming the average user even with a small extension of the range of functions in terms of what may or may not be entered in a field).)

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3

For me, I was really interested in the List functionality because it would make it a lot easier to quickly add a category that can have more than one value. Normally you could just write out bulleted points or numbers to make a list, but styling that list requires you to make script to parse it apart or wrapping it in html as input but that would take time; unless there is something I am completely missing. This led me to think of the ability to make field types and the other types are mainly to add completeness to the idea.

This was more of a user experience type of suggestion and not really something that would add lots of functionality to the overall application.

4

I’m afraid I think you’re somewhat underestimating the extra complexity this would add to the code base and UI. With limited resources, this is unfortunately unlikely to happen in the near future.

5

That’s cool, I appreciate you giving it a look.
:slight_smile:

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