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![]() As you have seen, SuperMemo is a very powerful program. It is also very versatile. One of the most striking features about SuperMemo is that you can change how questions are asked and answers are given (indeed, even what constitutes a question and an answer). SuperMemo accomplishes these tasks through templates. These are very powerful concepts that may be unfamiliar to you and we encourage you to experiment with templates to become familiar with them. Remember that the simplest representation of items in a SuperMemo database is the familiar flashcards that we used as children. Well, a flashcard has two sides. But what goes on each side? SuperMemo lets you specify up to ten paragraphs for each side of the card. Within those ten paragraphs, you can add your own text or use the contents of one of the six fields you named in each database category. You can even specify the font, layout, margins, etc. of each of the ten paragraphs on each side of the card. Each database category has its own template. The template determines the appearance of all cards in the category. To open the template editor, you can tap the Template button in the Edit Card screen. The template editor allows you to control the content of each paragraph and its font, indent and justification. Of course, if you are content with the standard look of the cards, you do not need to care about templates at all. Otherwise, more details follow in these sections: |
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![]() Cards are used to display database items. Each card has two sides: question and answer. Each card side can have up to 10 paragraphs of text. You can design these paragraphs in the template editor screen. The first thing you have to do is to select the paragraph you want to design using the main control on the template editor screen, the paragraph selector. Use the two Q/A buttons to select either a question or answer side and use the little arrows on the right of the box showing the paragraph number to select the desired paragraph. If you want to quickly select the first paragraph, just tap the paragraph number and it will be set to 1. Note that you can always edit only one template paragraph at a time. |
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![]() For each paragraph you can select the font in which its text will be displayed in the card view. For this, use the font selector bar. The font selector bar consists of 7 buttons with the following meanings:
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![]() Each paragraph can be either left justified, right justified, or centered. Select the desired justification using the three buttons left from the font selector bar. You can also add a space left, right, above and below the paragraph. For this, use the four number boxes with the little arrows. The number denotes the space in pixels, which are the tiny dot elements on the display of your handheld). The larger the number the bigger space. If you want to quickly set any of the four spaces to zero, just tap the number in the box and it will reset its value instantly. |
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![]() The most important part of the paragraph setting is its text content. Anything that you write into the field will appear on every card in the category. It is useful for designing headers or creating question sentences. Using this feature, you will not have to repeat the caption or question on every card, which will save you time and memory space as well. Besides the plain text that will be displayed on the card verbatim, you can enter special field tags that will be replaced by actual field values when displayed on the card. The field tag is the name of the field placed in braces. You can paste these tags easily using the field selector. You can mix the field tags with plain text. For instance, if you create a paragraph with a question text What is "{English}" in French?, the card will display What is "memory" in French? on one item and What is "snake" in French? on another. Of course there can be more field tags in one paragraph if you want to. For instance, you can create a paragraph with an answer text such as 'The capital of {Country} is {Capital}.' On the actual card, the text will then be displayed as 'The capital of France is Paris.' or 'The capital of Spain is Madrid.' for instance. |
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![]() If you are lost in your template editing and your template does not work properly, or if you want to start building a template from scratch, tap the Default button. When you confirm the dialog, all current template settings will be discarded and replaced with their default values. |
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© MapleTop Software Last update July 3, 2001 |
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