Html

Dealing with PUNCT nodes in interlinear glossing.

I write in Markdown because it’s much easier to keep the flow of writing going without taking my hands off the keyboard.

I also like to write content in Anki cards in Markdown. Over the years there have been various ways in of supporting this through add-ons:

• The venerable Power Format Pack was great but no longer supports Anki 2.1, so it became useless.
• Auto Markdown worked for a while but as of Anki version 2.1.41 does not.
• After Auto Markdown stopped working, I installed the supposed fix Auto Markdown - fix version but that didn’t work either.
• It’s possible that the Mini Format Pack will work, but honestly I’m tired of the constant break-fix-break-fix cycle with Anki.

The problem

The real problem with Markdown add-ons for Anki is the same as every other add-on. They are all hanging by a thread. Almost every minor point upgrade of Anki breaks at least one of my add-ons. It’s nearly impossible to determine in advance whether an Anki upgrade is going to break some key functionality that I rely on. And add-on developers, even prominent and prolific ones come and go when they get busy, distracted or disinterested. It’s one of the most frustrating parts of using Anki.

[N.B. 2016-03-26 Nathan Ifill pointed out that it is possible to use Anki’s built-in conditional replacement feature to do what I’m illustrating. I’ll have to work on another example!]

Anki is a widely-used flashcard application. If you’re learning a foreign language and you’re not using Anki, you should be.

If you are using Anki and are picky about the appearance of the cards, you should know that JavaScript can be used in the card template. This opens up a number of possibilities for dynamic cards. I’m just touching on the technique here.