Lernkarten
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A "better" flashcard program
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Lernkarten attempts to solve many of the problems with current digital
flashcard solutions. 

1. Lernkarten stores decks in plaintext so that one can easily modify
the deck without using Lernkarten's deck editing tool. 

2. Lernkarten's sorting algorithm for deciding when to present cards
is subjectively better than other digital flashcard programs.

3. Other improvements which I haven't yet thought of :P



The algorithm:
==============

When presented with a card, Lernkarten will give you three options:

a) Hard
b) Continue
c) Easy

(Names may change over time)

By default, the Lernkarten algorithm will follow path (b). This path
will focus on presenting the user with a small set of cards at a
time. When starting a new deck, the user will be presented with the
first 5 cards in that deck. By default, these cards will cycle x times
(where x is a number between 3-7 [tbd], most likely 5). Once the
cycles have been completed, the next five cards will be
introduced. The same cycles will apply to this new set of cards, but
at the end of each cycle, a card from the previous cycle will be
presented. After the cards from the previous set have appeared at the
end of the current set y times, they will appear at the end of each
25th set instead of each 5th. This procedure will then repeat with
each new set of 5 cards. For example, the appearance progression of a
given card  might go as follows:

(numbers represent how many cards it will take for the given card to
reappear. Each state will be visited 5 times before moving on)

5 -> 25 -> 125 -> 625

Remember, this is what happens if a person selects (b) every time. If
the user selects (a), the card is moved to the current or next set of
5 active cards (that is to say that it moves back to the beginning of
the progression marked above). If a card is marked (c), the card will
automatically move down the progression by one step.

At the moment, I have no plans to allow cards to extend beyond 625, so
decks of larger than 625 may get a bit crowded.