Flashcard Wizard Version History

1.2 (Released 14/1/00)

AS OF 1.2 FLASHCARD WIZARD IS FREEWARE. Optional registration can be made to donate to an educational charity, but no payment is required for unlimited use of the program. A complete redesign of the program is underway and will be released as 2.0 upon completion under the GPL Open Source license.

Summary: The 1.2 update fixes a few bugs in the 1.0 release and adds a few minor features. These include the ability to edit entries while conducting interval study, ability to tab out of the comment field, and a few new export options, most notable export to a format which can be recognized by a number of PalmOS flashcard programs. These are still text files though, and must be converted to a ".pdb" Palm file before they can be used with PalmOS applications. You may now also export to the Vocab flashcard program format.

• Added: When pressing tab in the comment field of the "Add Entry" window, the previous comments will not cycle through but rather you will be moved to the next field.
• Added: New Export features for Palm flashcard programs have been added. However, after export, these files must still be converted to ".pdb" files before they can be used on the palm.
• Added: You may now export to the Vocab file format.
• Fixed: The version number is now saved correctly in FcW files.
• Fixed: FcW files may now be opened directly from the finder without the "AppleEvent" error in the 1.0 version.
• Fixed: Popup menus in the printing window now work properly. An error, never reported, was found
• Added: In response to several requests, and my own annoyance at the lack of this feature, you may now edit entries while you conduct interval study on them. The changes will not be fully saved until after you finish interval study, and will affect only those files which are in the user file folder.

1.0 (Released 28/8/00)

Summary: The 1.0 update is the first non-beta version. After several beta releases, a host of bugs have been found and worked through. This release contains few new features but fixes all those bugs which have been found to date. The only major new features are flexible printing and some powerful pasting features for faster set creation. From this point on, releases will follow the even/odd release strategy common in the open source community. Even releases (*.2, *.4. etc.) will be "stable" releases and odd releases (*.1, *.3) etc. will be beta releases with experimental new features.

• Added: "Select All" option in the "Edit Set List" submenu of the "Set" menu.
  
• Changed: After inserting or deleting a field within an entry, FcW now selects the changed entry after making the change.
  
• Fixed some problems with marking and saving words in the Interval Flashcard Mode.
  
• Fixed a rare bug with the popup menu in the General Preferences dialog getting permanently disabled if there is a crash when interval study is going on.
• Fixed problems with marked words in sets with pictures.
• Fixed some minor bugs with displaying pictures in flashcards.
• Added "Default Special Paste" setting in the general preferences
• Added 6 "Special Paste" options for pasting in entries from delimited text
• Added a special paste option for pasting in directly entries found in the freeware "MacJDic" Japanese Dictionary by Jim Breen and Dan Crevier

0.95 (Released 10/5/00)

Summary: This update debuts the ability to include pictures in the first field of sets (with 11 preferences to customize their use), User Logs and Statistics (with 11 preferences to customize User Logs), the powerful "Set Doctor" and its accompanying features, as well as updated help files and features to have Flashcard Wizard check for updates and reported bugs in the current version online.

• Added: The flashcard window can now be changed to 10 new sizes.
• Added: The ability to include JPEG, GIF, and PICT files in the first field of sets.
• Added: 11 new preferences for handling pictures in sets.
• Added flashcard preference option of showing a black backdrop when in flashcard study mode.
• Added the User Log & Statistics menu item to the User menu to open the User Statistics window.
• Added: The User Statistics window now shows the total number of user set entries at each TTF stage, and how many entries should be reviewed for each of the next 7 days. This feature, unlike the Set Status feature, shows the totals for all entries instead of single sets.
• Added User Log event tracking. When turned on, and users are loaded, up to 14 different events of 10 categories will be tracked and saved in the user file. The logged events can be viewed in the User Statistics window which interprets the statistics and displays them. (In a future version there might be support for exporting chosen statistics in various formats or displaying them in graphs)
• Added User Log preferences panel with options for including/excluding logging for 10 different categories of events.
• Added the "Set Doctor" which allows you to view the raw file data of sets and perform various functions to find and correct corrupt data in your database.
• Added the "Online Bug Report" feature. Users can directly download a small report on bugs which have been reported for the current version of Flashcard Wizard.
• Added the "Update Info" feature. Users can directly download a small file of information about the most current udate.
• Fixed Comment display in the lower toolbar for 2 field sets.
• Fixed: Locked the field name fields in the flashcard window.
• Fixed error when selecting two items in the "Edit Set" window when clicking in the third field.
• Fixed: FcW now prompts you to save when closing set after changing the "About..." info for a set.
• Fixed: The number of entries for the set shown in the bar window is now updated as it should be.
• Fixed: There is no longer an error when selecting multiple entries in the list view of two field sets.
• Fixed incorrect font display of field 3 in the flashcards of 3 field sets.
• Fixed incorrect display of field names in the flashcard window during the second round of review in Interval Study.
• Fixed problems with the Recent User and Recent User Sets menus.

0.93 (Released 28/3/00)

Several helpful suggestions came from Jeffrey Hayden
Several bug reports and suggestions came from Olli Salmi

• Added a new menu item in the "Set" menu: "About this Set..." which opens a small window where one can save a variety of information such as the author's name, organization, link, email, comments, and a subject for the currently open set. In a future release of FcW, I hope to add a find feature that allows users to search a folder of sets for ones which match certain characteristics including the information in this window. Also, in this new about window users can save and load this information as a kind of "signature" which makes it easier to use the same signature in the about windows of many sets. (Thanks to Jeffrey Hayden for suggesting this feature)
• Added new option in the general preferences which can force Flashcard Wizard to save all sets with the creator codes of almost a dozen different applications besides the special "FoL1" Flashcard Wizard files. This means they can be easily opened in other text editors for those who want access to the "guts" of Flashcard Wizard files. However, most users will prefer to leave this option off so that sets will launch Flashcard Wizard automatically when opened. (This change was inspired by comments made by Jeffrey Hayden on the chinese@kenyon.edu Chinese language list.)
• Added "Use Signature..." button to the "New Set..." window so that users can choose signatures to use when creating files.
• Added "Default Signature..." button to the "Set Creation" preferences so that users can indicate a signature they wish to have automatically added to sets they create or import. (note this can be changed later in the "New Set" window and the "About this Set..." windows)
• Added "Refresh Fonts" button to "Add Entry"
• Added "Set Tools" to "Set Status" window
• Added information on the number of entries in the currently reviewed set in flashcard mode.
• Added a shortcut in the filter window. Option-clicking the number of entries not yet selected will set the "maximum" words selected by the "remaining random" button to the current number of entries not yet selected.
• Added new preference which allows some flexibility in the hours of the last 24 hour period that Flashcard Wizard searches for entries to study in interval study.
• Added "User Sets" shortcut button to the toolbar.
• Added "Reset User Set Statistics" to the pop up "Set Tools" menu in the "Set Status" window. This will reset all statistics used in interval study.
• Added Baloon Help to buttons in the preferences.
• Added "Include All" button to the "Entry Filter" window.
• Added two new font sizes 14 and 18 for entries in list view. (Suggested by Jeffrey Hayden)
• Changed menu item "Add Cards" to "Add Entry"
• Changed the Set List list fields so that by holding the "option" key down while selecting a list of items will also create a "double-click" effect.
• Changed the icon for "Quit Flashcard Wizard" on the toolbar to the Macintosh standard finder icon.
• Changed: Menubar and the toolbar are now hidden when doing flashcard study
• Changed: Flashcard sets are now tab-delimited. Sets and users will be updated automatically (changed from comma to tab delimited files) when opened. Commas can now be included in the contents of all entries.
• Improved performance slightly for repeats in the flashcard mode.
• Improved performance slightly for filtering entries in Interval mode.
• Fixed a bazillion things that broke after making the switch to tab delimited Flashcard Wizard files (This took me forever!)
• Fixed behavior of Add Entry window when "OK" is pressed with an empty entry.
• Fixed the file menu's "Revert..." command.
• Fixed: Inserting a blank between entries in a field no longer leaves spaces at end of list
• Fixed "Change Comment" menu item in the "Set" menu.
• Fixed problems with fonts in Flashcard mode after inserting a blank between entries in a field.
• Fixed: After editing words directly from the flashcard mode, the user is always returned back to flashcard mode.
• Fixed: When editing words directly from flashcard mode, review statistics are no longer lost in the lower bar window.
• Fixed: Locked text for field containing the number of entries in the "Set Properties" window.
• Fixed "Can't find graphic, button, or field" error in "Set Properties" window when pressing return in name field.
• Fixed: The "Import Set" radio buttons and check marks no longer reset when the window is opened/closed. Only the "Reset Preferneces..." will restore these to their factory settings. (Thanks to Jeffrey Hayden for this suggestion)
• Fixed problem of name change in the flaschard mode's "Advance" button
• Fixed problems with changing the password on a user in the User Properties window.
• Fixed weird behavior of User List window when deleting user sets and adding them again (At least I think it is fixed. The blanks that appeared are no longer there in my own tests).
• Fixed the font display in the flashcard mode when opened immediately following the import of a new set.
• Fixed problem with words edited directly from Flashcard mode not being saved properly so they are displayed in their modified form in the next cycle (This one was a real pain to track down!)
• Fixed the various problems with "Own ttf Schedule" list field in the "Set List" window.
• Fixed the annoying fact that user sets which are included in interval study multiply in size with each review, a new item per line per review. (Another hard bug to track down). I think this fixes one of Interval Study's biggest problems - which eventually crashes FcW when files get too big for memory.
• Fixed error when randomly selecting words in interval study (Thanks to Olli Salmi for finding this bug)

0.92 (20/2/00)

Several helpful suggestions came from Charles Kelly

• Added "advance" button on flashcard
• Added auto-start flashcard mode preference
• Added Intro Screen
• Added "Refresh Fonts" button
• Fixed problem of showing third field in flashcard mode
• Fixed time reset for interval flashcards
• Fixed message after making new set
• Fixed Flascard start over error
• Fixed "Advance" button name change error
• Fixed resizing of edit set window
• Fixed Reset Preferences
• Fixed menu enable bug for importing files.
• Fixed "Empty" showing up in odd places
• Fixed refresh "Edit Set" window problem after adding cards

0.91 (17/2/00)

• Fixed error which appears on quitting with any window open.
• Fixed Delete Item in Field errors.

0.90 (14/2/00)

First Beta Release.