Anki Card Creation

Why Choose Anki for Card Creation?

Take a look at this video "Our Foreign Language Education Methods Have Been Almost Entirely Wrong for Decades", which aligns perfectly with Saladict's design philosophy.

Most vocabulary learning applications display words and their various common meanings, with users learning through memorizing these associations. However, this method is more suitable for exam-oriented memorization and lacks practicality. Learning based on accurate context, where each word has a precise meaning, aligns with SuperMemo's memory concept and is more conducive to forming conditioned reflexes.

When reading web pages, we can translate unfamiliar words by selecting them and save them to Saladict's notebook. At this point, the word's context is also saved and automatically translated. These authentic contexts can be perfectly synchronized to the Anki memory library, generating beautifully crafted cards specific to Saladict.

Automatic Card Creation with Anki Connect

With Saladict, card creation no longer requires tedious manual configuration; everything can be generated with a single click.

First, you need to install Anki and the Anki Connect plugin.

1. In the Anki menu bar, find Tools 👉 Plugins 👉 Browse & Install.
2. Enter 2055492159 to confirm installation.
3. Restart Anki.

Windows may display a firewall prompt, which requires allowing Anki. Mac OS X Mavericks might need to adjust App Nap to prevent Anki from being suspended, see details in its documentation.

After installation, use default configuration if there are no special requirements. Enable Anki Connect sync in Saladict settings 👉 Word Management/Notebook.

After enabling, keep Anki running in the background. You can also install plugin 85158043 to minimize Anki to the system tray. Each time a word is saved to the notebook, Saladict will automatically create a card and sync it to Anki. Duplicate words (based on "Date") will be skipped; to force an update, you can edit the word in the word editor.

• Example of a word in Saladict：

时间截: 1234567890
单词: beauty
上下文: >
  She walks in beauty, like the night
翻译: >
  [:: google ::]
  她走在美丽的地方，就像夜晚
   
  [:: youdaotrans ::]
  她走在美丽的夜色中
   
  [:: caiyun ::]
  她举步娉婷，就像夜晚
  ---------------
笔记: >
  In beauty 一词仿佛她自带光环，美丽洋溢在她四周。
来源标题: >
  She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron (George Gordon) | Poetry Foundation
来源链接: >
  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43844/she-walks-in-beauty
来源图标: >
  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/assets/media/images/favicon-32x32.png?v=1.2.9

• After saving to Anki, it becomes

Date: 1234567890
Text: beauty
Context: >
  She walks in beauty, like the night
ContextCloze: >
  She walks in {{c1::beauty}}, like the night
Translation: >
  <div class="trans"><span class="trans_title">google</span><div class="trans_content">她走在美丽的地方，就像夜晚</div><span class="trans_title">youdaotrans</span><div class="trans_content">她走在美丽的夜色中</div><span class="trans_title">caiyun</span><div class="trans_content">她举步娉婷，就像夜晚</div></div>
Note: >
  In beauty 一词仿佛她自带光环，美丽洋溢在她四周。
Title: >
  She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron (George Gordon) | Poetry Foundation
Url: >
  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43844/she-walks-in-beauty
Favicon: >
  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/assets/media/images/favicon-32x32.png?v=1.2.9
Audio: ''

These fields - Date, Text, Context, ContextCloze, Translation, Note, Title, Url, Favicon, Audio - are the "Note fields" in Anki. If you want to customize cards, do not change these names. Instead, directly modify or add new card types. One of Anki's killer features is the separation of notes and cards, as mentioned in previous conceptual materials. We can notice that these names correspond almost one-to-one with the Saladict word fields, but with the addition of ContextCloze and Audio. The Audio field is for the yet-to-be-implemented pronunciation feature. The ContextCloze field, if you look closely, replaces the keyword "beauty" with {{c1::beauty}}, which is used to generate Anki cloze deletion cards. The original context is still preserved in Context, allowing users to create other types of cards. Combining Saladict's default cloze deletion card style, you can achieve the following effect:

• Card Front：

The keywords are automatically blanked out; the automatically generated translations are also automatically formatted; personal notes are hidden as prompts, click to expand; the source is retained at the bottom.

• Card Back：

Text Import

Anki also supports importing notes in text format, but if possible, it is recommended to use Anki Connect for more convenience.

Note Type

Before the first import, we need to create a new note type in Anki, which only has the built-in front and back sides of Question and Answer, which can also be used if deemed sufficient.

Click Tools -> Manage Note Types to browse all note types, and click Add to add. Advanced users can choose freely, but here we choose the most basic Add: Basic. Enter a name, such as Saladict Notebook. Then, you can see that it has been successfully added to the list, select it, and click Fields to edit the fields. You can see that only Front and Back are provided by default, which can be deleted or directly renamed to replace them with Saladict's several fields: Word, Context, Translation, Note, Source Title, Source URL, Source Favicon. Here, we add Word, Context, Translation, and Note in order. Anki will prompt that the next sync will completely overwrite, so if there are no other devices that have not been synced, click confirm. After adding, Close and return to the list. Open Cards to edit the card template. You can see that the card template is divided into front and back. Fill in as needed, and the {{}} inside will be automatically replaced with specific content. Here is a simple template:

• Front Template

<p>{{Word}}</p>

<p>{{Context}}</p>

• Back Template

{{FrontSide}}

<hr id=answer>

<p>{{Translation}}</p>

<p>{{Note}}</p>

After filling in, close it. The Note types have been added.

Exporting Words

You can export words from Saladict's vocabulary book or search history, either selecting specific words or exporting all. Anki will automatically recognize duplicates.

When exporting, write a template, exporting in the order of the Note Type fields, using ` to separate them to avoid character conflicts.

For example, following the order of Word, Context, Translation, Note from the example above, our template should be

%text% %context% %trans% ` %note% Also, since Anki text imports recognize units by lines, and the exported content may have multiple lines (such as automatically generated translations that produce multiple lines of content), note that you should select "Preserve line breaks" at the top of the editor.

You can choose to replace line breaks with spaces, and the exported text will have no line breaks. You can also choose to replace line breaks with <br> or <p>. These are HTML tags that Anki can recognize (see the configuration below). Under the default style, <br> will be more compact than <p> between each line. Save the exported file.

Importing Words

Open Anki -> File -> Import, select the file, and import type as Text separated by tabs or semicolons.

Then, the Import panel appears. Several options:

Type is the Note Type mentioned above, select Saladict Notebook. Deck is how to categorize the cards, using :: to separate the hierarchical structure. You can open it to select existing ones or Add a new one. Here, we create a new one, Word::Saladict. Fields separated by: Space. We change it to `. Then, there are ignore rules, select as needed. Here, we keep the default. Allow HTML in fields. If you selected <br> or <p> for HTML formatting, you need to check this. Then, the Field Mapping field mapping below can see that it has recognized the four fields defined above. The two match successfully. Click Import to see the import result.