Curtiz-Web is the browser-based interface to Curtiz, my experimental Japanese-language-learning-oriented flashcard app with intelligent quiz scheduling. Use this web app if you want to review your Curtiz Markdown files from your phone, from work or school, etc.
Why does a web app need a “Setup” section? Because Curtiz-Web doesn’t handle creation of your Curtiz Markdown databases of flashcards: you need to:
- read the Curtiz documentation and create some Markdown files, and
- commit them to a Git repository that’s cloneable and pushable from the internet: I’ve tested this with GitHub Gist.
Wow, that second step might be totally incomprehensible to you. Sorry for using a coder technology (Git) in a flashcard app—I wish there was something else with a value proposition this juicy, but there isn’t. I’ll first explain what you need to do to get set up, and then why.
Once you’ve created a Markdown file or two on your computer that Curtiz can handle (you can start with the Curtiz Readme),
- create a Gist, which you can think of as just a collection of files. You need a GitHub account, so sign up for one if you don’t have one.
- Create a GitHub personal access token (which is like a password, but you can create many of them, and you can limit each one’s access):
- click “Generate new token”,
- enter something like “testing out Curtiz-Web” under “Token Description”,
- check the checkbox next to “gist” under “Scopes”,
- click “Generate token”,
- and most important, copy the token generated. The website can’t show you this token again, so enter it into your browser’s password manager or write it down right away.
- Use (1) your Gist’s URL, (2) your GitHub username, and (3) the token just generated to log into Curtiz-Web to begin learning and reviewing your flashcards.
All the data you store in the cloud could be stolen, or lost, or be rendered useless any day now. The list of internet companies that have disappeared or reorganized is depressingly long. The language learning services I’ve used—Memrise, Duolingo, LingQ—have had been around for some years now but any could evaporate with tomorrow’s morning dew.
As both a user and as a developer, I hate this. As a user, I’m one server crash or database ransomware away from losing my data. As a developer, it’s upsetting that I can’t come up with something more resilient. I don’t want Curtiz to go down that route.
Curtiz-Web is a purely client-side web application. The website you get when you visit https://fasiha.github.io/curtiz-web can be hosted on any web host—Geocities, your Wordpress instance, the Raspberry Pi in your closet, or, in this case, for free with GitHub Pages.
Meanwhile, your flashcard data is stored as readable Markdown files in a Git repository which you can clone on any computer or Git service. You don’t have to use GitHub, Curtiz-Web should work with BitBucket, Gitlab, Gogs, Gitea, etc. I’ve only tested on GitHub’s Gist platform, but I’m committed to ensuring it works on all Git hosts, including that Raspberry Pi in your closet.
So when you open Curtiz-Web and enter (1) your Git URL, (2) a username, and (3) a token, your browser fetches the latest Markdown files. As you review and learn flashcards, your browser updates the Markdown files, and pushes the changes back to the Git server (currently tested only with GitHub Gists).
If you review on another device and come back to an old Curtiz-Web session, just refresh the page and log back in with the data. Curtiz-Web doesn’t yet support automatically fetching the latest changes (help gladly accepted!).
Isomorphic-git!
Isomorphic-git!
Isomorphic-git is the best!
Isomorphic-git is the magic ingredient that Curtiz-Web uses to clone, commit, and push repos from the browser. It’s what single-handedly enabled this client-side workflow.
Right now, isomorphic-git can’t handle merge-based pulls, which is why when the Git repository changes behind-the-scenes, Curtiz-Web needs refreshed (to pull down a fresh clone). A simple way to fix this would be to fetch before every commit. We can do it! 💪