Use 3-sided cards with txt format?

[Scyza]

Hello Ernie,

as far as I understood from reading the information provided on your site it is not possible to use 3-sided cards when using txt format, is that correct?

I have so far been creating my decks in excel, copying the content into a txt file and then uploading it to my own webspace. Now I would have liked to use 3-sided cards, but it appears to only work with excel files and I can't use excel files when uploading to my own webspace, right?

Is there perhaps any solution for my problem? ^^
I would like to keep using my own FTP as that's the most comfortable solution for me.

Oh and by the way, is there possibly going to be a feature that will allow users to make changes to a deck inside of the app and then update the deck on the FTP-server as well? This would be great!

Regards
Stefanie

[acetylator]

Hi Scyza, I am not Ernie, but maybe I can help you. I use also cards with 3 sides. I prepare them in Excel, then save them as Unicode text files. The resulting text files contain fields separated by a tabulator (#9), and first line is "Text 1 <Tab> Text 2 <Tab> Text 3". Then I just upload it to the server, then download it to the iPhone - everything works fine. So yes, it works - having 3 sided cards in text format. Cheers!

[Scyza]

It does, really?? I must have made some sort of mistake then, it didn't seem to work for me when I tried yesterday even though I formatted my txt file the way you described

Glad to hear it does work for txt files too though, thanks a bunch, I'm gonna try it again as soon as I get home. I prolly just made some stupid mistake

Regards

[Ernie]

Hi Scyza,

Ultimately, all deck definitions are .txt files. Each item is separated by a tab. Save as a UTF-8 file.
There should be no problem... you can copy 3 columns from Excel to a text file and save on your server.
I have people copy-paste from Excel into my website. You can do the same thing into your own text file, no matter how many columns.
(Ok, I just said the same thing 3 different ways.)

Let me know if you have problems.
Ernie

P.S. Thanks acetylator

[Scyza]

I'm really sorry for the unnecessary question, I have no idea what went wrong when I tried this yesterday, it is indeed working perfectly now! And I didn't even do anything different. Must have been blind.
Thanks anyway guys

[Scyza]

Hello again,

got another question - I have made cards that have one side with spanish words, one with german translations and one with english translations. I would like to study them with either side showing up first randomly. It seems though that only side 1 and 2 are affected by the setting show side first: random.

Did I miss something again?

[Ernie]

Random will only do side 1 or side 2 first.

I have something called "card layout" in the deck options that allow you to remap what is shown on side 1 and 2. (e.g. Text 3 on side 1/front). There is a built in layout called "Side 3 on front", but this will put side 1 and 2 on the back, making it a two sided card. You can edit the layout to make a 3 sided card. Editing card layouts is a bit complicated unfortunately.

By using a custom layouts, you can have random work between any two sides at a time, but not three.

Let me know if you want to explore card layouts more and need help with it.

[Guest]

Hello Ernie,

I already used custom card layouts for a different deck, however I just could not see how to accomplish what I described earlier with card layouts. Since it can't be done I just put the English translations on the backside now, like you said.

The nicest solution for my deck would have been that either of the three sides can (randomly) show up first, and then the texts of the other two show up on the back.

I realize it might get a bit complicated, but are there perhaps any plans to implement side 3 in custom card layouts in the future?

[Ernie]

"perhaps any plans to implement side 3 in custom card layouts in the future?"

I'm not sure what you mean. There is a "show side first" option with two basic options, "Side 1" and "Side 2".
When you edit a card layout, there are two sections, "Side 1-> 2" and "Side 2->1"... which relate to the show side first option.

Example: You set "Side 1-> 2" to show Text 2 on the front and Text 1+Text 3 on the back. Then you can set "Side 2->1" to show Text 3 on the front and Text1+Text2 on the back. You can then set show side first to random so that sometimes you see "Text 2" on the front and sometimes "Text 3".

The problem is I don't have a 3-way random switch. I think this is your only limitation at the moment.

[Scyza]

The problem is I don't have a 3-way random switch. I think this is your only limitation at the moment.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant, that side 3 would also be affected by the random setting (and its behaviour could then be defined further with a custom card layout just like it can be done with 2 sides at the moment).

I'm sorry if I'm not explaining this well!