2.5.0 — 🎁 Just in time for Christmas!

🎄It's been a long time in-between releases, as I've been teaching in China for the past few years. I've overhauled the css and made a few changes under the hood. There's still a few things to iron out, along with some ideas for the future.

Feedback

• 💬 It's really helpful to get feedback. Things you like, things you're struggling with, so on.
• 📁 It's also very helpful if you could share a sample of your decks, so I can see how Anki themes are being used.

• How are you using (or not using) Anki?
• Is converting markdown->html painless?
• Any bugs?¹ Does it work on iOS? Android?²

Quick start

1. Make sure you're using the latest version of Anki
2. Download the latest .apkg Anki deck, in the assets below
3. Open Anki desktop app and select File -> Import ... and select the new Anki deck
4. Expand the Updates option and toggle merge notetypes on²
   • Leave the other settings as they are
   • If you don't want to update your old cards, toggle merge notetypes off
5. Get creating some new cards!

Documentation

Creating your own themes and converting markdown->html should be simple enough to understand, but the 🧑‍🎓professional documentation still needs some work. It's probably going to work with NPM in the near future.

Notes on testing

1. Bugs already fixed are in the following issues: #56 #63 ↩

2. Updating your old cards should be fine, it's been tested on MacBook Pro using Anki Version ⁨23.10.1 desktop app. I haven't seen any issues, but haven't yet tested on iOS or Android. I use semantic versioning. ↩ ↩²

2.1.0 — Get coding!

The themes are ready for you to get coding! I'm finally pushing this live ...

Feedback:

I'd love to get your feedback, or any issues you may have:

• How are you finding the new cards?
• How do you find the markdown->html process?
• Any bugs?

Quick start

1. Follow the guide
2. See assets below for the latest .apkg Anki deck

Notes:

For you professionals out there:

• Poor "advanced" documentation (you're on your own for now)
• Build process works, but tested on Mac only

2.0.0-beta — Early release with demo deck

I'd love to get your feedback, or add any issues you may have:

1. How are you finding the new cards?
2. How do you find the markdown->html process?

Quick start

• Follow the guide
• See assets below for the latest .apkg Anki deck

Notes:

• Syntax colours aren't actually available yet
• Build process needs a little work (Pandoc)
• Documentation unfinished

Otherwise, it's nearly there!

1.0.0 - Production Ready

After months of testing and revising, the production-ready Anki Themes programming deck is now live! If you installed 1.0.0-beta-3 or an earlier version a few things have changed, so please consult commits prior to 20af571 for full notes.

Major updates

Cloze Theme

I've included a Cloze template, which I've been using for around 60% of my new cards. Coupled with the Power Format pack, this is speeding up my workflow nicely. I suggest you give them a try!

Pygments for code highlighting

I've been experimenting with a few different highlighters, but Pygments is by far the most reliable, and is future proof. The .codehilite class can always be utilized, if js is an option in future.

Unfortunately, this means we have to revisit old cards to keep our code highlighting. This is a real pita, but neccessary. You have a few options:

1. Stick with the default <pre> styles, without the pretty colours
2. Add your own basic <pre> styles
3. Reinstall highlight.js from the previous Beta version

Suggested method:

1. Install Power Format Pack (PFP)
   • See this issue first
2. Run through your important cards with larger sections of code, converting them into Markdown blocks with PFP.
3. Regenerate the code with the PFP Markdown button.
4. Your code should be highlighted once again!

New features

• Added Cloze Theme: You need this in your life.

Breaking Changes

• Removed Highlight.js: See here and here for full details.
  • Closes #21
  • Fixes #17
• Removed all Highlight css
  • Refactoring code in the demo deck to add the .codehilite class.

Beta 3

Small update to 10bbe67 which includes the new deck with 'Puzzle theme' and all changes to Note Type fields.

Beta 2

If you're just getting started, download this current version and ignore the below message.

Updating your Note Types

I've made a few sizeable changes to the way _Complex Theme_ works:

• 'Complex Theme' is now 'Puzzle theme'
• It's far simpler to understand and use now
• Changed a couple of the field icons in both 'Puzzle theme' and 'What's the syntax?'

You can see commit f6783a3 for a full overview of what's changed. You'll need to manually edit your existing cards (or create a backup if you want to keep them); remove the fields from your current 'Complex' Note Type and make the icon changes.

It would also be wise to then import the minor theme changes to your cards.

Initial beta release

This is a major overhaul from the original version, with basic/js syntax highlighting, 2 fun card templates that I hope will help your learning — they've evolved quite a bit during my time with Anki. Unfortunately, this release is not compatible with earlier releases (or at least, it'd be too much of a headache to merge in!).

If you're new to this github repo:

Congratulations! You can download and start learning right away.

If you've used these Anki themes before:

I'm still figuring out how best to release these so they won't break your cards, so:

1. If you've using an earlier version of the Anki programming themes please take care not to integrate just yet — you're probably going to have to create clone duplicates of each Note Type to avoid conflictions.
   • It's a real pain to have to clone each Note Type every single time I create a release, so it's probably going to involve some amount of manual integration on your part in future. Contribute to this issue if you have any ideas or thoughts.
   • Read this brilliant guide to better understand Note Types etc (I've still not figured it out fully)
   • Feel free to create a dummy Ankiweb account to see how the new setup works :)
2. I really need a javascript guy onboard. I'm not particularly interested about learning javascript so it'd be helpful to have someone to help out with the syntax highlighting and debug issues.

In future I'll try to stick to minor.major.patch semantic versioning, so updates don't break existing cards. Unfortunately Anki makes this tricky, so view commits for any major changes to the theme. Follow the instructions for the easiest way to test the .apkg package before updating future versions.