Flash Cards

A simple flash card program

Author:	Paul Goins
License:	GNU General Public License, Version 2 or Later

Note: this project was formerly known as "Kanji", but has been renamed to reflect its now more general target audience.

Summary

This is a quick application I coded in Python/Tkinter. It is meant to load a list of characters or words and display them one-by-one, refreshing every 30 seconds or so. The window can be set as always-on-top, allowing you to passively study while working on other tasks.

"Flippable" cards can be created by writing the word list as a CSV file. Each card is represented by one CSV line, containing one or more comma-separated values. To flip, just click the window to go to the next value for the card. 1

All options are configurable via the command line. This is intentional: I don't want a lot of GUI code in this application, and I'd like to keep usage of screen real estate to a minimum.

A nice side effect of writing it this way: it should be easy to call this program from within another tool or study program, for those so inclined.

Requirements

You must have Python 2.7 with Tkinter, or Python 2.6 with Tkinter and argparse. The program has been tested on both Windows and Linux.

Note: This tool must have its arguments supplied via the command line, or via a wrapper script; there are no interactive GUI-based dialogs for telling the program what to do.

Help

Usage

usage: flashcards.py [-h] [-f FONT_FACE] [-s FONT_SIZE] [-i INTERVAL] [-t]
                     [-v]
                     filename

Randomly displays characters or words in a window, refreshing every 30 seconds
or so.

positional arguments:
  filename              A UTF-8 encoded file, containing one line per
                        character or word for review.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -f FONT_FACE, --font-face FONT_FACE
                        Specify font face.
  -s FONT_SIZE, --font-size FONT_SIZE
                        Specify font size in points. (Default: 100)
  -i INTERVAL, --interval INTERVAL
                        Specify how long to wait before changing entries.
                        (Default: 30)
  -t, --on-top          Make the window stay always on top.
  -v, --version         Show version and exit.

In-program keybindings

Enter, space bar or left click: flip forward

Backspace or right click: flip backward

Footnotes

[1]	For advanced users, Excel-style CSV formatting is used, so it is possible to include quotation marks or commas in a value. double-quotes are used for both escaping and quoting values.