The Flash Card file
This chapter explains how to generate a flash card file and what each part of the file does.
Introduction
The flash card file is a simple text file generated by any Japanese word processor that can save a file in either EUC or UTF-8 format (JFC will automatically determine the format of the file). Generally the flash card file should be saved with an extension of .jfc. The preferred format is UTF-8 since it allows support of European charter sets. EUC format has been included because this is the format supported by other flash card programs.
Tip: JWPce will automatically load files with an .jfc extension, and contains a JFC file save mode. This mode simply saves the current file in UTF-8 format with the extension .jfc.
Generally each line (some cards take more than one line) of the flash card file contain the definition of a vocabulary card or a kanji card. This information is used by JFC to generate actual flash cards for you.
JFC is very flexible about the formatting of the data in the flash card file. For example, JFC requires that you put some space between the kanji for a vocabulary word, but it will allow that space to be tab characters, ASCII space, Japanese space, or any combination of these. Some special symbols are used in flash card files to mark special cards in general JFC does not care if these symbols are in ASCII text or in JASCII text, or if these symbols are in upper case or lower case (there is one place where the case does matter).
WARNING! Commas cannot be used as separators in the flash card file! JFC treats a comma as just another character!
Related Topics
Blank Lines
JFC ignores all blank lines within a flash card file, so you may include any number of them you want (then can be helpful in keeping the file in order). See the example below.
Comment lines
Any line that begins with a # or 
is treated as a comment line and is ignored by JFC. This can be used to leave notes in the file for yourself without interfereing with the cards generated. (There are examples of comment lines in most of the flash card file examples.)
Vocabulary Cards
Vocabulary cards are the most common type of cards (most people will know more vocabulary than kanji). From a vocabulary entry, JFC will generate up to three actual flash cards depending on other information and the current options settings. These cards are simply JFC will show the kanji, kana, or meaning and ask you to provide the missing two. The basic format of a vocabulary card is:
[< flags >< spaces >][< kanji >< spaces >]< kana >< spaces >< meaning >
Tip: Don't worry if the above line looks cryptic, just look at the examples and it will become clear.
The basic vocabulary card consists of three entries; the kanji for the word (for words without kanji, this will not be included), the kana for the word, and the meaning.
The kanji part of the card generally should contain the kanji for the vocabulary word, and must contain not spaces. If there is no kanji for the word, simply do not include a kanji entry for the vocabulary word.
The kana part should generally contain the kana for the word and must not contain any spaces. JFC will automatically remove the brackets that are included by JWPce's dictionary, this makes generating vocabulary entries from JWPce very easy.
The meaning field contains a definition of the character that you can understand. Normally this would be stored in ASCII format, but it could also be in Japanese, if you want to define you vocabulary in terms of other Japanese. The meaning field is the only field that can contain spaces, and is simply the entire rest of the line.
You can generate a full entry for each of your vocabulary words, or you can let JFC do most of the work for you. If you just provide the kanji, kana, or even the meaning, JFC will search the dictionary files (if installed) and provide the rest of the entry for you.
This can save some typing by letting JFC provide the rest of the entry for you, but you must use some care in doing this. To complete an entry like this JFC uses the dictionary routines developed for JWPce to search for a dictionary entry that matches the part of an entry you provide.
Since JFC will use the first matching dictionary entry to complete the entry you must be careful in what you enter. For example, if you simply provided Remember JFC takes the first match to use in completing your entry so you just added baby chicken to your vocabulary list!
When completing an entry for you JFC uses the dictionary search routines developed for JWPce, with some modifications. First, unlike JWPce the user dictionary* is search first, then the main dictionary (Jim Breen's EDICT). This allows definitions that you have entered to override definitions in the main dictionary.
The settings used for searching the dictionaries are:
* JFC contains no method to modify the user dictionary, but this can be done using JWPce. For JFC to search your user dictionary you must either install JFC in the same location as JWPce, or you must copy the user dictionary file (user.dct) from the JWPce directory to where JFC is installed.
Under normal conditions you provide an entry for each vocabulary word you want to study and based on the current options settings, and kanji information JFC will generate up to three different flash cards for you. Under some circumstances (such as a card that is really a grammar point not a vocabulary word), you may want to control what JFC does. Inserting one or more flag character in front of the actual entry can do this. The flag characters are:
Flags can be combined to generate any combination of cards that you want. For example, using the flag combination KA would generate both a card with a kanji shown and a card with the meaning shown.
Kanji cards are designed for learning kanji. From a basic kanji entry JFC will generate up to three actual flash cards the current options settings. These cards are simply JFC will show the kanji, readings, or meaning and ask you to provide the missing two. The basic format of a vocabulary card is:
The kanji entry consists of four entries; the kanji, the on-yomi, the kun-yomi, and the meaning.
The kanji part of the entry should be a single kanji character.
JFC does not actually care about the order of on-yomi or kun-yomi. The type of the first character identifies Readings. Katakana indicates on-yomi and hiragana indicates kun-yomi. A reading is identified by the first character and includes all characters up until the next space character.
I don't advise it, but you can have multiple on-yomi and/or kun-yomi in a single line. JFC will automatically combine them into a single reading and add a fixed-space (Japanese) comma between them.
The meaning field contains a definition of the character that you can understand. Normally this would be stored in ASCII format, but it could also be in Japanese, if you want to. The meaning field is the only field that can contain spaces, and is simply the entire rest of the line.
You can generate a full entry for each kanji you want to learn or you can let JFC do most of the work for you. If you just provide the kanji JFC will search the kanji information database (if installed) and provide the rest of the entry for you.
Using this feature requires a compatible version of JWPce's kanji information file (kanjifo.dat) to be installed in the same directory as JFC. (This file is derived from the KANJIDIC database developed and maintained by Jim Breen.)
In some cases, especially if your native language is not English, you may not be happy with auto-kanji cards. In most cases, the readings are fixed, but you may want to change the meaning field to your native language. In this case you can use an auto-kanji-card. These are identical to the auto-kanji card, except that you provide the meaning field.
The format of the card is as follows:
The meaning field must begin with an ASCII value. JFC will provide the readings for you, but use your meaning field.
Under normal conditions you provide an entry for each kanji you want to study and based on the current options settings JFC will generate up to three different flash cards for you. Under some circumstances, you may want to control what JFC does. Inserting one or more flag character in front of the actual entry can do this. The flag characters are:
Flags can be combined to generate any combination of cards that you want. For example, using the flag combination KA would generate both a card with a kanji shown and a card with the meaning shown.
This would be equivalent to the entry line
Advanced kanji cards are one of the main reasons this program was written. These cards provide a strong reinforcement of learned kanji and vocabulary. An advanced kanji card is simply a basic kanji card followed by any number* of sub-cards that use that kanji. Each individual sub-card is simply a vocabulary card as described in preceded by a + sign.
When actually generating a flash card from an advanced kanji entry, JFC will put the kanji character at the top, along with the readings and meanings, and then place as many of the vocabulary words as possible (in random order) at the end of the card.
* Actually JFC has a limit on the number of sub-cards supported. At the moment it is 100 cards. Thus if you include more than 100 sub-cards, only the first 100 will be used (let me know if this is a problem).
In my opinion, kanji can be best learned and retained when that kanji is used often and reinforced within the vocabulary you encounter. This leads to a number of conclusions:
It is certainly true that for many people (especially normal students), the kanji you choose to learn is not you own choice, but is rather chosen for you by the instructor. For the rest of us, we are faced with the task of choosing which kanji to learn and when. My suggestion is to choose your kanji based on the words and vocabulary you see in the material you are reading. If you use a program such as JWPce as a dictionary and keep a list of words that you had to lookup you can use the count-kanji feature in JWPce to determine the kanji you are encountering the most often. These are the kanji you should consider learning first. Note that these will be different for different people because each of use is reading different material.
Again, my advice is to go back to the materials you are reading and the vocabulary that you known. If you have your vocabulary list in electronic form then you can simply search for all words that contain the kanji you are dealing with and include them in the vocabulary list attached to the kanji. Generally, I find that about four to six well chosen vocabulary words is sufficient to attach to a kanji.
If all else fails use a program such as JWPce and enter the kanji into the dictionary (clear the Begin With and End With check boxes) and search. This will locate all words in the dictionary that contain the kanji you are dealing with. From this list you can select a few vocabulary words to attach to the kanji. Or use a kanji study guide to obtain a list of words that use the kanji you are learning.
You can include one flash card file into another. There are a number of reasons you may want to do this, most commonly, to generate review files that include a number of other flash card files.
The syntax for including a file is as follows:
The filename indicates the name of the file to be included. JFC allows both relative and absolute path names to be used. If the path name is absolute it must contain a drive specification (such as c: or d:). (On Windows CE machines, an absolute path begins with a \ character.)
A relative path is a path specified relative to the flash card file that is including it. The easiest way to explain relative paths is by examples. Just to layout the directory structure of your hard drive:
Here, the review files could be as follows:
Since the lesson files are in the same directory (folder) as the review files, you do not need to specify the path.
The master review file could be generated as follows. Note the use of the directory (folder) path relative to the flash card file.
JFC, however, allows sub-files to include other files (up to some limit), so this could have been generated much more efficiently as follows:
Sub-files can be used to access one set of flash cards using different settings. Since the many of the settings are normally stored in the statistics files associated with each flash card file. When a file is included as a sub-file the settings are taken from the parent file, not form the sub-file. This allows you to have different settings for the same actual flash cards.
For example, you may have a set of flash cards that contains mixed kanji cards and vocabulary cards. You want to study for a kanji test so you just want to review only the kanji. You could make a new flash card file containing just the kanji, but what a pain! Further, this method would not use the statistics you have already accumulated for these cards.
An alternative is to make a flash card file that simply includes the other file. Then in the settings disable all of the vocabulary card types. JFC will then just generate a stack of flash cards with just kanji cards. Further, this method will use the statistics information about which cards you often miss, and if you revise the main flash card file, the kanji version will get revised automatically.
Other uses for this type of trick would be having a quick review flash card file that just goes through the cards once, miss or hit. Creating a flash card file with only a limited number of cards to use as a review when you don't have much time.
Remember, the statistics information for a particular flash card is used no mater how the card is accessed!
Basic Vocabulary Cards
WARNING! The kanji and kana fields can contain ASCII characters, but they must not contain spaces, and the kana field they must not begin with an ASCII character.
WARNING! You should not generally put kanji in the kana field. This can cause confusion in the operation of JFC.
Auto-Vocabulary Cards
, this would produce eight different entries with the current version of EDICT:
Tip: It is generally best to use kanji when allowing JFC to complete entries for you. This will get rid of most of the ambiguity.
WARNING! It is strongly advised that you do not use ASCII for an entry you want JFC to complete. Because of the structure of the dictionaries, ASCII text is almost always going to lead to multiple matches and JFC will not choose the one you wanted.
Understanding How Entries are Completed
WARNING! This section discusses how JFC uses the dictionary routines of JWPce to complete entries for you. This discussion assumes that you are familiar with JWPce and the dictionary.
JWPce parameter setting Begin With on End With on No Names on Advanced off all other exclusions off
Special Vocabulary Cards (Flags)
a or A Only generates a flash card where the meaning is given and you must supply the kanji and kana. k Only generates a flash card where the kana is given and you must supply the meaning and kanji. K Only generates a flash card where the kanji is given and you must supply the kana and meaning. x or X Indicates that you know the kanji for this entry no mater what the state of the color-kanji options and color-kanji list are.
Tip: Remember that flags can be in ASCII or in JASCII codes.
Related Topics
Kanji Cards
< flags >[< spaces >][< on-yomi >< spaces >][< kun-yomi >< spaces >]< spaces >< meaning >
Tip: Don't worry if the above line looks cryptic, just look at the examples and it will become clear.
Basic Kanji Cards
WARNING! If you use punctuation characters such as 
and 
in the on-yomi or kun-yomi do not use them as the first character of the entry. This can make it very difficult for JFC to identify the on-yomi and kun-yomi.
Auto-Kanji Cards
Tip: As a general rule, unless you have some specific readings or definitions you want for a particular kanji I suggest letting JFC do the work for you. If English is not your native language I suggest you use the semi-auto-kanji cards (below)!
Semi-Auto-Kanji Cards
< flags >< spaces >< meaning >
Special Kanji Cards (Flags)
a or A Only generates a flash card where the meaning is given and you must supply the kanji and readings. k Only generates a flash card where the readings are given and you must supply the meaning and kanji. K Only generates a flash card where the kanji is given and you must supply the readings and meaning. x or X Indicates that you know the kanji for this entry no mater what the state of the color-kanji options and color-kanji list are.
Tip: Remember that flags can be in ASCII or in JASCII codes.
Related Topics
Advanced Kanji Cards (sub-cards)
Tip: The + sign needed for sub-cards can be generated in JWPce in kanji mode by pressing Ctrl+^ followed by +. The + cannot be entered directly because this is used to indicate a small kana.
Advice on Generating Advanced Kanji Cards
WARNING! This section contains my opinions and suggestions. If you don't want them don't read them.
Picking Kanji to Learn
Choosing Vocabulary to Attach to Kanji
WARNING! If you do a blanket search though JWPce's dictionary for a specific kanji you will get a lot of words that use that kanji, but some of them may be rather unusual, and thus may not be encountered by most people in normal reading.
Related Topics
Sub-Files or Including a Flash Card File
&< filename >
The & or 
characters can be used to indicate an included file.
C:\My Documents\JFC\
Master_review.jfc
C:\My Documents\JFC\J101
J101_review.jfc
Lesson_1.jfc
Lesson_2.jfc
C:\My Documents\JFC\J102
J102_review.jfc
Lesson_1.jfc
Lesson_2.jfc
Lesson_3.jfc
More about sub-files
Next Chapter: Working with Files