[kde-edu]: KWordQuiz

[Peter Hedlund]

On Monday 08 March 2004 12:42 pm, Marc Heyvaert wrote:

> I had a first quick look and I like what I see. I'll
> give you a more complete review later this week. Just
> a few remarks.

Thank you. I appreciate your support.


> The idea was that I didn't really like FlashKard
> because it was too simple and KVocTrain I find too
> difficult. But there were other reasons too.

KWordQuiz wants to position itself somewhere in between.

> 1. I would like to see the possibility to include
> graphics next to characters. In your interface this
> could be implemented by allowing filenames to be
> entered. The program would then try to render these.
> In my earlier post my immediate need was to make a set
> of flashcards to learn Chinese characters. But other
> possibilities abound...

This is of course a very good idea. We need to decide how such information 
should be stored in a data file. Store images in the file or just store 
links?

> 2. Why not drop the link to vocabulary completely? In
> a reaction to my first post on this Scott Wheeler
> asked for any replacement for FlashKard to be more
> than for words (I don't remember how he put it). E.g.
> you could use KWordQuiz to ask for sums also. And even
> in different formats, e.g. 7x8= answer 56 or ...x8=56

I have seriously considered this. I would like input on suitable terminology 
to use.

> 3. I don't like the interface to be input + flashcard
> + quiz + multiple choice, all in one. If I present
> this to my 8 year old daughter it will be confusing to
> open a file, get the input canvas, having too choose
> the right menu option etc. A possible workaround could
> be to provide some commandline options. E.g. kwordquiz
> filename -card, or kwordquiz filename quiz. Then we
> could write some scripts and present those to pupils.

I think I said last time that I will consider this. I need to rewrite some 
code first to separate data from views better.

> Along these lines some further suggestions : log files
> with the results being generated automatically; a
> -lock switch when the program is started from the
> commandline to prevent a user from checking the
> answers or from intervening with settings (so all
> options on the menu greyed, except quit?); the

Some people are working on this for KVocTrain I believe. I will consider it 
for KWordQuiz.

> possibility to add several filenames on the
> commandline that would ten be aggregated by the
> application (this would allow us to make small modules
> and to combine these).

For the time being you can use smart pasting in the KWorQuiz editor to combine 
several vocabularies (or what we should call them)

> So this is it for the time being. I have a daughter of
> 10 that is learning French this year. I will test your
> application using her vocabulary list. As it is it
> seems to be already very useful for this type of
> drill, all the stuff above is in the 'nice to have'
> category, so don't worry. I think it is more a matter
> of keeping the application very focused and simple vs
> accepting some complexity and having more
> functionality. How far do you go, hè

Yes, it's probably easy to overdo it, but my ambition is to have advanced 
features without compromising ease of use.

Thanks,
Peter