# Usage (Short-Term Memory)

## Short-term Memory

Short-term memory allows us to store verbal and visual information for a short period of time. When you learn up to 20 flashcards of new words every day for a period of several consequtive days, this information is stored in your short-term memory. By the end of this learning period, you can correctly identify the meaning of a word in each flashcard in both directions (front and back). However, as weeks pass by, you will eventually forget all of the infomation you have learnt.

### What Is A Deck?

A collection of flashcards is assembled into a Deck. A Deck is a representation of a physical deck of 3x5 flashcards. It has two sides: a Front that contains a question and a Back that contains an answer (or a translation of the question word). In addition, the Back of an flashcard has an area for an example sentence, just like a physical flashcard would do. Whatever you might do with a physical deck of cards can be done with a Deck in Granule: adding a new card, editing, deleting, shuffling, inserting one Deck into another and so on.

Deck is used to train your short-term memory. Divide your study material into separate Decks with no more the 15-20 flashcards in each Deck. The experience shows that this is an optimal size for memorizing new information (new foreign words for that matter). Try also to supplement each new word with a sentence that you have encountered it in. It helps greately to remember the meaning.

## To Create A New Deck

To create a new Deck, choose Deck New menu item. You will see a new Deck entry, "`Untitled1`", being added to the "Decks" pane (the DeckList).

### Main Window Dialog

#### New Deck in Main Window Dialog

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MainWindow Dialog

### DeckPlayer Dialog

Select "`Untitled1`" entry and dobule-click on the selection. You are presented with `DeckPlayer` dialog.

#### New Deck in DeckPlayer Dialog

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DeckPlayer Dialog

The DeckPlayer Window dialog consists of the following elements:

Tabbed text area

- Represents the Front (question) and the Back (answer/example) of an index card.

Right-hand side control pane

- Holds control buttons.

Bottom control pane

- Holds various controls to navigate through the Deck.

Close button

- To close the dialog window.

### DeckView Dialog

Click on Edit button of the side pane and you will be further presented with an empty DeckView window.

#### New Deck in DeckView Dialog

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DeckView Dialog

The DeckView Window dialog consists of the following elements:

Cards View List

- Question/Answer pairs of each card in a Deck.

Control buttons pane

- Holds various control buttons to manipulate a Deck.

Close button

- To close the dialog

### CardView Dialog

Click on Add button to bring up CardView dialog window.

#### New Card in CardView Dialog

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CardView Dialog

The CardView Window dialog consists of the following elements:

Front text entry

- Holds the question word.

Back text entry

- Holds the answer word.

Example text entry

- Holds an example of usage of the question word.

Enter "freedom" in the Front: field, "the state of being released from something.", in the Back: field, and "~ is being able to make decisions that affect mainly you." in the Example: field.

The tilda ('~') symbol if present in the Example: field is always painted in red color. You can also use Pango Text Attribute Markup Language anywhere in the text entry fields to modify text appearance. Click on Help to consult the Pango markup reference guide.

#### Filled CardView Dialog

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CardView Dialog

Note that Front: and Back: text entry fields have vertical scroll bars. You can insert multi-line text there and it will be centered and left-aligned.

Click on Ok button to create and add a new index card to your card deck. The DeckView dialog lists your newly created card.

### To View The Changes

#### DeckView Dialog

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CardView Dialog

You can continue adding more new cards in a similar manner. When you are finished, click on Close button of the DeckView dialog window.

### To Study Cards In A Deck

DeckPlayer dialog now shows the front of the first index card in the Deck.

#### DeckPlayer (front) Dialog

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DeckPlayer (front) Dialog

You can flip the card by clicking on either "Front" or "Back" tab at the bottom of the text area.

#### DeckPlayer (back) Dialog

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DeckPlayer (back) Dialog

The answer validation entry lets you enter your answer and check it against the back side of the card. Only the first line of the multiline answer is compared to the one entered. All leading and trailing whitespaces as well as any Pango markups are removed before the comparison is made.

To check your answer either press Check button, or Enter key. The visual feedback will indicate the correctness of your answer.

#### The Answer Validation Entry

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grapp-play-controls.png

The navigatonal control buttons at the bottom pane let you (from left to right):

#### Play controls

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grapp-play-controls.png

- Pronounce the Question word (if you have sound dictionary installed).

- Jump back to the first index card.

- Go back to the last index card.

- Go to the next card.

- Jump forward to the last index card.

In this mode, DeckPlayer's play controls also have the following keyboard bindings:

### DeckPlayer's Play Mode Keyboard Bindings

Action | Key(s)
Play the sound | Up_Arrow
Flip the card | Down_Arrow, Spacebar
Go back to the last card | Left_Arrow
Go to the next card | Right_Arrow, Enter
Validate the answer (activated when you type anything in the validation entry field). | Check, Enter

The Ask front/back radio button lets you select whether you are tested on the questions or the answers of the cards in a Deck.

#### Side control

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grapp-flip-control.png

Granule remembers which side you were studying the last time the Deck was opened, and if you have gone through all the cards, it would flip the deck for you next time you load it up.

The Shuffle button lets you shuffle the cards in the Deck. Clicking it will change the order of the cards for the duration of the learning session. The actual order of cards is not changed. If you want to change the actual order, use Up and Down buttons of the DeckViewer dialog.

#### Shuffle the Cards

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grapp-shuffle-button.png

When you are done with playing the Deck, click on Close button of the DeckPlayer dialog window.

## To Save New Deck

You are back to the MainWindow dialog. Select "Untitled1" Deck entry and then choose Deck Save menu choice. You are presented with Save Deck (As) dialog (which might be expanded by clicking on "Browse for other folders" button). Type in the name of your new Deck, "`Lesson_01`" and click on Save button.

### FileChooser Dialog

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FileChooser Dialog

The MainWindow lists your new Deck, "Lesson_01". You can view the Deck by double-clicking on it. Your new Deck has been saved as `/path/to/Lesson_01.dkf` file (DKF extension stands for DecK File). It is a very simple XML text file that can be viewed with any text editor. Its DTD is stored in `${prefix}/share/granule/xml/granule.dtd`. Studying the structure of your `Lesson_01.dkf` file might be useful if you want to convert an existing collection of words to Granule's Deck format.

If you are reading this chapter of the manual from the beginning, you might want to exit Granule now. The following section illustrates how to load an existing Deck.

## To Load A Deck

To load an existing Deck into Granule, choose Deck Open menu item.

### MainWindow Dialog (Deck menu)

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MainWindow Dialog (Deck menu)

If this option is not be available (grayed out because another Deck is selected in the Deck List of the Main Window at the moment), unselect the current selection first by choosing Deck Unselect.

You are presented with Select Deck File FileChooser dialog. Granule remembers the directory path of the last open/save operation you have performed, and takes you there. Choose "`Lesson_01`" entry and press Select button. "`Lesson_01`" entry appears in the Deck List of the Main Window if it is not already there (if it is, you will get a warning pop-up).

### Open Deck Dialog

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grapp-openfile.png

You cannot close an opened Deck. Once it is loaded into Granule, it cannot be closed. So, don't even try!

## To Add One Deck to Another

You can add cards from one Deck (source) to another Deck (destination). First, load the destination deck into Granule with Deck Open. Then, select the destination deck in the DeckList and choose Deck Insert.

### Insert One Deck Into Another

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grapp-insert.png

A FileChooser dialog pops up. Choose the source Deck file and click Select. The source Deck is added to the destination Deck.

## To Import Words from Comma Separated Value (CSV) File

If you already have a collection of words in a plain ASCII (UTF-8) format, you can import them into Granule. The word pairs in your text file must be separated by one of the separator characters in the Import from CSV dialog. The text also must be in UTF-8 format. One way to check it out is to open your input file with gedit. If it doens't complain and you see all the text in it the way you've expected, then forge ahead.

To import, open a Deck file and click on Deck Import from CSV menu entry.

### Select Import from CSV Menu

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The File Select dialog appears. Find and Select your input text file. The CSV Text Import dialog apears.

### CSV Text Import Dialog

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grapp-import.png

Line Break

- UNIX (LF) for UNIX files; Windows (CR+LF) for Windows files

Separators

- Select word separator in the input file. If you have phrases, you might want to use Semicolon for a separator.

See two separators as one

- If selected, will ignore adjacent separators. For example, you might have a word list separated not by one but by loose number of white spaces. Selecting this option will let you treat multiple adjacent spaces as one separated between words.

## To Weed Out Card Duplicates

You can have duplicate cards in your Deck because the same word might have multiple meanings. However, if you absolutely positively want to get rid of the duplicates, load your Deck and go to the Deck View dialog - Deck Play/Edit Edit .

### Remove Duplicate Cards

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grapp-deckview-sorted.png

The "Front" clickable label on the top of the question column allows you to sort cards in the Deck. In the example above the word "adamant" is listed twice. To remove either instance, select the word in the list and then click on "Delete" button in the right pane.

### Remove Duplicate Cards

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grapp-deckview-sorted.png

## To Find And Collect New Words

I get my words mostly from reading Web articles and e-books. I use wonderful StarDict international dictionary for Linux to look up translation of new words. This process is best illustrated by the following diagram:

### Find And Save New Words.

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grapp-round-trip.png

The typical steps are:

1. While reading an on-line article, copy-n-paste a new word you don't already know from the browser into StarDict search window. Press Enter button to search for the translation.

2. Copy-n-paste the word into Granule's "Front:" field of CardView dialog.

3. Copy-n-paste the word's translation into "Back:" field of CardView dialog.

4. Copy-n-paste the context (the whole sentence) into the "Example:" field of CardView dialog. Substitute the word itself with '`~`' symbol for Granule to highlight it.

As you can see, most of the time, there is no typing involved at all. The whole process is as painless as possible with the right set of tools.