Hi,
For about 3 weeks I have problem with cards that use {{Tags}} keyword to show card tag at the front. Basically these keywords are not properly parsed:
And it makes me kinda annoyed because several of my cards have similar wording, but are used in different context (which I differentiated by using {{Tags}}).
I didn’t tinker with note types or anything. One day it just stopped working. It happens on both desktop and android app.
I would fully appreciate any help with this issue.
{{Tags}} and other special fields should be placed in the card templates (accessible from the Cards button). They have no effect in fields. I don’t know if this used to work in the past, but I think the current behavior is done on purpose.
Please see https://docs.ankiweb.net/#/templates/fields?id=special-fields
Ok, thank you for the reply. Is it some fresh change? I used {{Tags}} on cards with different note types earlier and there wasn’t any issue.
How can I add proper template for these cards? I pressed Cards button and then I have option to edit Front Template However I don’t want to change template for every card of this type, I only want to fix these affected by the issue.
There is also other option: Add Card Type in Options dropdown menu to the right of Card Type field. However when I choose it, popup informs me that using this option will create 720 cards. And that’s surely not what I want in this situation. I don’t want to end messing up my whole collection and then having to fix everything by hand. Anki’s UI is sometimes absolutely confusing and unintuitive.
Not sure when this was changed (I’m just a user too).
You can make a separate note type for these cards. But your use case for tags is pretty unusual: you use them as part of the questions, but they are intended mainly for organizing your content into categories. I recommend adding an extra field instead and using tags for their intended purpose.
See the Card Templates section.
Oh, I use them mainly for organizing, but also sometimes for additional info about which category does the question come from whenever there are similar concepts and terms used in different contexts (described by tags). I don’t feel it is in any way unusual. From my understanding one can use them elastically as simple variables that are parsed whenever card is shown for a review. I’ve didn’t have to add them to templates earlier in order to be shown.
Adding separate note type is tedious as there are several note types I use - basically I would need to duplicate every note type to account for it. So It’s a cross-cutting concern I shouldn’t fix by simply plopping more note types.
The problem is that you’re using them for different purposes. Adding {{Tags}} to your front template will do the trick for cards like the one shown in your post, but will not look right in notes that use tags for categorizing.
As I suggested, You have also the option of adding an extra field and using it instead of Tags for additional info. This should free you from the hassle of creating a new note type and managing it.
Ok, I will check out this possibility.
Still, getting some reponse from devs about what could be the cause of breaking the feature (regardless of whether I used it as intended or not) would be nice, as it’s not the first time something weird happens with Anki and I need to lurk the forums to get any solution.
I agree that it should be mentioned in the notes when even an experimental feature is removed. But when you look at the manual, it persistently states that field references are to be placed in templates. So just as well as a feature, you could call it a bug that was abused by some users.
You can imagine all the potential issues with dynamic and maybe even recursive field content like this.
I seem to recall that one user was discouraged to use this kind of references due to performance issues, but I might misremember.
I’m not the developer, but I hope I could make the origin of your issue a little bit more comprehensive.
Ok, so basically the solution suggested above is to just write tag substitutes in additional field (as {{Tags}} special field cannot be parsed outside of template regardless of which field I use). Well, I don’t really feel that manually fixing >100 cards in such way is a solution I prefer.
It looks like the only solution is to add tags in every one card by using special field in basic note type or to duplicate every note type with added special field for tags.
Regarding the potential issues, honestly I’m talking about only using predefined, special fields. I don’t see any issues with recursion while just placing tags in the text of your cards. These are defined in static way and could be changed only on card edit.
Finally I’ve created new note type with {{Tags}} in template and moved most of the cards there and reworded others.
As I’ve found solution for my problems and discussion has shown that using {{Tags}} in card text instead of template was either an experimental feature or a bug, then we can treat the problem as solved and close the thread.