Options and Settings
JFC has a number of options that can be used to configure the program for different individual tastes.
Introduction and Concepts
The Options dialog box contains most of the settings that control how JFC works. Many of these options have been discussed elsewhere in the manual, but all of them will be touched on in this section. (Yes, there are lots of options. This means that I didn't have to force a single approach, but could rather simply put in an option, that everyone could use.)
Normally, the options settings (actually the entire configuration settings) are saved whenever you exit JFC. This option can be disabled by clearing the Save Settings on Exit checkbox on the General page of the Options dialog box. If the auto-save of the options has been disabled, or you simply want to save the options, you can save the current settings by choosing the menu command Utilities/Save Settings command. This command will save the current settings right now. Some of the options are saved with the statistics file for each flash card file. This can be changed by changing by clearing the Keep Statistics or Use Statistics File Options check boxes on the General page of the Options dialog box.
The entire settings for JFC can be restored to the default configuration by selecting the Utilities/Default Settings menu command, or selecting the Restore Default Values button in the Options dialog box.
The Options dialog box can be accessed form the Utilities/Options... (Ctrl+O). The dialog box is a multi-page dialog box. This chapter will examine each page of the dialog box one at a time.
Note: On slow machines (Windows CE), it may take a few seconds for the dialog box to open. Please be patient.
General Options
The General page contains options that effect the entire program.
Startup Options
The Startup Options section allows you to control aspects of the startup process:Display Options
The Display Options section effects the general appearance of the program.Exit Options
The Exit Options section controls actions JFC takes when terminating:Exit with Open File Options
The Exit with Open File Options section controls what JFC will do when you close a file that still has flash cards. Basically these options determine if a saved file is generated or not.Related Topics
Controls Options
The Controls page determines various controls used by JFC and what they do. The options allow you to customize the actions of the program to match your own desires.
Double Click Options
The Double Click Options section determines the action taken when you double click in a Japanese text control.
- Character Information -- Gets the character information for the character you double clicked on. (This is the default option.)
- Card is Right -- Indicates a double click should mark a card as correct. This option is primarily to keep compatibility with older versions where this was the action associated with a double click.
- Disable (do nothing) --Does nothing special. A double click is simply registered as two single clicks, without any special actions.
Multi-Element Displays
The Multi-Element Displays section determines how JFC displays Japanese text controls that have more than one line of display. For example, the vocabulary attached to an advanced kanji card.
The two major choices are Cycle and Swap. In Cycle mode, JFC will cycle through the list of possible choices every time the control is selected. For example, a vocabulary list item may change from kanji, to kana, to meaning, to kanji, etc. In Swap mode, the display toggles between the primary text line (usually the kanji for the word) and all other parts of the display combined into one display. (Set to swap by default.)
Cycle mode shown on the left and Swap mode shown on the rightCycle mode has the advantage of requiring less space, but also requires you to click more times to see all the information. The Swap mode can show all information at one shot, but when changing the display, the size of the windows must be changed which pushes all other windows down.
The last display option is Change Mouse Up/Down. This option is only effective for Swap type displays (see above). If this options is selected the display will swap states when the mouse (or select button on a PPC) is pressed and will change back when the button is released. This allows you to tap on the display to see the readings/meaning, and release to go back to the kanji. This is particularly handy on PPCs when working with one hand. (Off by default.)
Special Modes
The Special Modes section controls some special control modes. These modes are designed primarily for Windows CE PPC (or PocketPC) machines. These modes are designed to provide complete control of JFC using the limited input controls on such machines. The modes will function correctly, however, on other systems.
Cards Options
The Cards page allows you to control options about how cards are generated shown, and how incorrect cards are treated.
Statistics Information
The Statistics Information section controls the handling of the statistics files:
- Keep Statistics -- If selected JFC will generate .jst statistics files and keep information on how you did on your flash cards. (On by default.)
- Use Statistics File Options -- JFC keeps a copy of all the options settings that affect the generation of flash cards in the statistics file. This option determines if this information is used when the file is open again. This allows you to have different configurations for each card set. (On by default.)
The options saved with statistics file are:
Page Options Cards Review Mode Maximum Number of Cards settings Move Missed Card to End Duplicate Missed Cards settings Timed Card settings Vocab Show Kanji (known kanji) Show Kana Show Meaning Show kanji for all kana cards Show unknown kanji Known kanji from color-kanji Kanji Show Kanji Show Reading Show Meaning Review All settings - Review Mode -- Generates cards in review mode. This means that JFC may elect not include all of the cards if you frequently get a particular card correct. This allows you to concentrate on the cards that you do not always get correct. The weights used to determine the chances of including a card can be adjusted on the Review page. (On by default.)
Fixed Number of Cards
Enabling the Use Maximum Number of Cards control will fix the maximum number of cards that can be generated from a single flash card file at the value in the Max Number of Cards control. Less than the indicated number of cards can be generated, but never more than the selected number. (This option is disabled by default.)
When more cards are available than the number you have set, JFC randomly selects the cards to be included in the flash card set. If you are using statistics information, the selected cards will be weighted toward the ones you miss the most. If you are not using statistics information, the selected cards will be determined using equal weighting.
Tip: Using a limited number of cards can be very useful when generating review flash card files that include a number of other flash card files (section 5.6). Particularly combined with review mode, this will keep the number of generated cards to an acceptable level.Missed Card Options
The Missed Flash Cards section determines how JFC treats flash cards that you miss. A missed flash card is generally moved to the end of the stack, where it will be presented again and again until you get it correct.
- Move Missed Cards to End -- Normally a missed card is moved to the end of the stack. This allows you to review missed cards until you get them right. This option suppresses the moving of missed cards to the end. (Off by default.)
- Duplicate Missed Cards -- This options causes a missed card not only to be moved to the end of the stack, but it causes the card to be duplicated a number of times though the deck so you can really get it correct. (Off by default.)
- Duplicate Frequency -- If a missed flash card is duplicated (see above), this number determines how often this is done (ie every so many cards the missed card is inserted again). (Set to 20 by default.)
Time Options
The Time Options allow you to place limits on the time in witch you have to view a card before it is marked incorrect. (These options are off by default.)
If Time Cards is enabled, the Show time indicates the amount of time (in increments of 0.1 seconds) before the card will automatically be shown. Putting a zero (0) value in the Show option will disable it. You can show the contents of the card before the time has run out by using any of the show commands. (The default value is 30.)
The Next option indicates the about of time (in increments of 0.1 seconds) after the card is shown before the card is considered incorrect. If you do not indicate the card is right before this amount of time, the card will be considered wrong and the next card will be shown. Putting a zero (0) value in the Next option will disable it. You can indicate a card is right or wrong before the time has run out by using any of the standard commands. (The default value is 15.)
Tip: You can use the timing system to generate a continuous display of cards. If you have missed cards placed at the end of the stack, you can have a stack of cards that goes around in circles forever, flashing the cards and moving on.
WARNING! If you create a loop as above, but have the missed cards duplicated and inserted into the deck, you will generate a much larger set of cards as the loop continues to process.
Font Options
The Font page allows you to select display fonts, and control various aspects of the display.
Fonts used by JFC are composed of a kanji font, and an ASCII font face. The kanji font is used to display Japanese kana, kanji, punctuation, and fixed width characters. The ASCII font face is sized to match the kanji font and is used to display ASCII (English) characters.
It is true that most TrueType Japanese fonts contain ASCII characters so only one type of font may seem necessary. This division is maintained for two reasons. First, the public domain bitmapped fonts used by JFC do not contain ASCII characters. Second, most freely distributed TrueType Japanese fonts have ugly ASCII characters (in my opinion).
Kanji Fonts
Five different kanji fonts are used for different parts of the program:
- System Font -- This font is used to display all system information. This name is really to keep compatibility with JWPce. In JFC the system font is currently only used to display information in the Character Information dialog. Generally this should be a small font, since the object here is to get a lot of information on the screen at a time. (The default is the k16x15.f00 font.)
- Kana Display Font -- This is the main workhorse font. This is used to display all kana text lines. Generally you would want a larger font here. (The default is to set this font automatically, or the default is the k24x24.f00 font.)
- Kanji Display Font -- This font is used to display all kanji lines. Often people like to associate a larger font to the kanji so they can view the strokes within the font. (The default is to set this font automatically, or the default is the k24x24.f00 font.)
- Meaning Display Font -- This font is used to display the meaning lines. Often people like to choose a smaller font for the meaning because they have less trouble reading it and want to save screen space. (The default is to set this font automatically, or the default is the k24x24.f00 font).
- Large Kanji Font -- This is used only to display the large kanji used in the Character Information dialog. For this font you don't pick a size for TrueType fonts, but rather a face. If you are using bitmapped fonts, you will want to choose the largest font you have since this will give you the best display. (The default is to set this font automatically, or the default is the k48x48.f00 font).
When a display element has multiple parts, precedence rules are used to determine which font is used (elements are not displayed using mixed fonts). This situation can only be generated when displaying kanji compounds associated with advanced kanji cards and using the Swap display option. Highest precedence is given to the Kanji Display Font, then the Kana Display Font, and finally the Meaning Display Font is last.
When selecting fonts several controls are used.
The Font control selects which font you are setting (see above).
The Automatic Selection control is available for all fonts except the System Font. Selecting this control allows JFC to automatically choose the fonts for you. The font dependencies are as follows:
- System Font -- Cannot be automatically selected.
- Kana Display Font -- Uses the same font as the System Font.
- Kanji Display Font -- Uses the same font as the Kana Display Font.
- Meaning Display Font -- Uses the same font as the Kana Display Font.
- Large Kanji Font -- If the Kanji Display Font is a bitmapped font, the largest bitmapped font is automatically selected. If the Kanji Display Font is a TrueType font then the same font face as the Kanji Display Font is uses.
The Choose Font control becomes active if the font is not being automatically selected (see above). This list contains a list of all possible fonts. Normally these fonts include bitmapped font (indicated by the extension .f00) and TrueType fonts on your system that have Japanese support.
If you are selecting a TrueType font for any font except the Large Kanji Font, the Pixels box will become active. You can use this box to set the size of the font in display pixels. This is an unusual way to set the height of the display font, but it makes it easy to find a font size that allows you to easily see the characters.
The Show All Fonts checkbox will show all possible TrueType fonts in the Choose Font list. This can be used to select a font that your know contains Japanese encoding, but the font header information is not correct so JFC does not recognize it as a Japanese font. If you select a font that actually does not contain Japanese glyphs, JFC to ask the system to provide the "closest" font with Japanese glyphs. If Windows is not able to find a font with Japanese glyphs (often a problem on Windows CE machines), JWPce will display boxes wherever a Japanese character is located.
TrueType Japanese fonts are supported on Windows CE devices that support TrueType fonts (not all do). As of the time this manual was written, many Windows CE devices did not correctly recognize Japanese TrueType fonts, so to select such a font the Show All Fonts checkbox must be used.
ASCII Font Face
You do not choose the size of the ASCII font, JFC will match it to the size of the Japanese font you are using. Further, JFC only allows you to use TrueType ASCII fonts (except on Windows CE PPC, which do not support True Type fonts). The ASCII Font drop-list allows you to choose the ASCII font face.
Other Controls
The Use Kana Font for Compounds is a special control that relates only to font usage in advanced kanji cards. An advanced kanji card consists of a kanji card followed by a number of compounds (really just vocabulary cards). The compounds are normally displayed in kanji and thus would be displayed in the Kanji Display Font. If you are using a big font for the Kanji Display Font, you may want to select this option, which causes the compounds to be displayed using the Kana Display Font.
Related Topics
Vocabulary Options
The Vocab page contains options used in generation of vocabulary flash cards.
Flash Cards to Generate
Normally from a single vocabulary entry in a flash card file JFC will generate up to three actual flash cards (show kanji, kana, or meaning, Using JFC and The Flash Card File). The options in the Flash Cards to Generate section determine what types of cards can be generated:
Tip: Remember that you can determine exactly what type of card(s) are generated for a particular file entry by using the flags.Kanji Processing
The second section of the Vocab page controls how kanji are processed during vocabulary cards:
Tip: You can actually combine the color-kanji list method, and still use flags for some of your vocabulary.Related Topics
Kanji Options
The Kanji page contains options for the generation of kanji flash cards and for processing of kanji on the display.
Flash Cards to Generate
The first section determines what type of kanji flash cards will be generated. JFC can generate up to three flash cards from a single flash card file entry (Using JFC and The Flash Card File). These flash cards are:
Tip: Remember that the flag settings for a particular entry override the general settings here.Advanced Kanji Cards
The Full kanji card for advanced cards option determines how the normal kanji card part of an advanced kanji card is treated. Normally, JFC uses four Japanese text controls for a kanji card (one for kanji, on-yomi, kun-yomi, and meaning).
For systems with limited display resource, this can take a lot of space, so one way want to disable this options. In such a case JFC will use a single line for the kanji part of the advanced kanji card. The different parts of the kanji card can be accessed using the Cycle or Swap option.
The Auto Expand compounds and Auto Collapse Compounds settings are intended for use by people using the keyboard to control the program, or by people using PPC machines. These options only effect the kanji compounds associated with an advanced kanji card. For either of these settings to work, you must have the Swap option set on the Controls page of the options dialog. The Swap option causes the display to toggle between kanji and a combined kana and meaning display.
Selecting the Auto Expand Compounds option will cause the compound display to automatically swap when the compound is selected. This means you can use just the up and down controls to expand the compounds. (Off by default.)
Selecting the Auto Collapse Compounds option will cause the display to automatically return to the kanji compound when that line is not the active line. This can save a step of collapsing the display.
Tip: Both options can be used together to allow advanced kanji cards to be manipulated with just the up/down controls. I personally, use just the Auto Collapse Compounds option on my PPC.Related Topics
- Using JFC -- Vocabulary Cards
- Using JFC -- Kanji Cards
- Using JFC -- Advanced Kanji Cards
- The Flash Card File -- Vocabulary Cards
- The Flash Card File -- Kanji Cards
- The Flash Card File -- Advanced Kanji Cards
Miscellaneous Options
The Miscellaneous page lets you set various options that cannot be set anywhere else. This is a rather eclectic collection of options.
Color-Kanji
Color-kanji is a feature that was first implemented in JWPce. This features allows JFC (and JWPce) to change the color of kanji that are on or are not on a specific list. Normally, this list contains kanji that you know, and all other kanji are displayed in a different color. JFC can use your JWPce color-kanji list to determine which kanji you know and don't know, as well as change the color of displayed kanji.
- Use Color Kanji -- Clearing this checkbox will completely disable the Color Kanji feature. (If you are using a very slow machine, disabling color kanji can increase the screen update speed a little.) (On by default).
- Color Kanji in List -- If this is selected the kanji in the list will be colored and the kanji not in the list will be black.
- Color kanji Not in List -- If this is selected the kanji in the list will be black and the kanji not in the list will be colored (default).
- Select Kanji Color (or click in the color box) -- Allows you to choose the color used by the Color Kanji feature (blue by default).
Character Information
The Character Information options control settings that effect how information is displayed in the Character Information dialog.
The Show Titles option includes the titles in the list box in the Character Information dialog. Turing this option off can increase the amount of actual information displayed at the expense of reducing readability. (On by default.)
The Compressed setting displays the reading fields (meaning, on-yomi, kun-yomi, and nanori) in a compressed format, where entries are separated by commas, instead of on separate lines. This allows much more information to be viewed, at the expense of readability.
The Select Title Color (or click in the color box) button allows you to choose the color used to display the title information. (Red by default.)
Related Topics
Review Mode Options
The Review page lets you adjust the weights that are used during review mode.
Normally JFC keeps statistics on weather or not you correctly "guessed" a particular flash card the last eight (8) times you were presented the card. In review mode JFC uses this information to determine which cards are included in the flash card stack.
For each of the six possible types of cards that can be generated:
Type of Card Description Vocab -- Kanji Vocabulary card, show kanji and "guess" kana and meaning Vocab -- Kana Vocabulary card, show kana and "guess" kanji and meaning Vocab -- Meaning Vocabulary card, show meaning and "guess" kanji and kana Kanji -- Kanji Kanji card, show kanji and "guess" readings and meaning Kanji -- Readings Kanji card, show readings and "guess" kanji and meaning Kanji -- Meaning Kanji card, show meaning and "guess" kanji and readings There is a table of nine numbers. These numbers indicate the percent chance of a flash card being included if you have gotten the card wrong the previous number of times.
To see how this works, consider the default numbers shown in the figure above. The 25 by the 0, indicates that 25% of the cards you have gotten correct eight of the last eight times they were presented. The 50 by the 1, indicates that 50% of the cards you missed one of the last eight times will be included. Similarly the 75 by the 2, indicates that 75% of the cards you missed twice out of the last eight times will be included, etc.
WARNING! If you set one of the weights to zero, cards that fall into that class will never be included in flash card stacks.Related Topics
Advanced Options
WARNING! Most of the settings on the Advanced options page are technical in nature. If you are unsure of what they do, you may not want to change them. Also remember that you can restore the default configuration by using the menu command Utilities/Default Options, but this will reset EVERYTHING!The Advanced options page contains a number of technical options that can be adjusted to best suit your individual tastes.
- Font Cache -- To reduce the memory usage, JFC does not load all of the kanji font into memory at one time. In particular JFC loads only a number of characters. Further, the characters are loaded as they are used, and cached in a cache, so that common characters do not need to be loaded again. This parameter determines the number of kanji in the cache. Making the cache too large both wastes memory and slows down general rendering, because the cache search takes longer. Making the cache too small will slow things down and exercise your hard drive more than you want. The default is 300. (Font caching does not effect TrueType fonts.)
- Maximum Number of Subfiles -- In reality JFC can handle any number of subfiles your systems memory can contain. The problem is if a subfile includes another subfile, which includes the original subfile, JFC will continue trying to process this loop forever, until you run out of memory, your system crashes, or you abort. To get around this in a simple way JFC limits the number of subfiles you can load. If you need more then by all means increase this number. Just watch out for loops. (The default is 1000.)
- Cache System Font -- Normally JFC does not cache the display font. Usually, this is the 16x16 bitmapped font, which is 220KB, thus keeping the entire font in memory at one time is not so bad. (The 48x48 bitmapped printer font is 2.3MB for comparison.) If this is selected JFC will cache the display font. You may want to consider this if you are using a large font as a display font. (Font caching does not effect TrueType fonts.) (Off by default.)
- Cache Display Font -- Normally JFC does not cache the display fonts (Kana Display Font, Kanji Display Font, and Meaning Display Font). Usually, this is the 16x16 bitmapped font, which is 220KB, thus keeping the entire font in memory at one time is not so bad. (The 48x48 bitmapped printer font is 2.3MB for comparison.) If this is selected JFC will cache the display font. You may want to consider this if you are using a large font as a display font. (Font caching does not effect TrueType fonts.) (Off by default.)
- Cache Kanji Information -- Selecting this option will speed up the rate of kanji lookup, for kanji cards and for Character information. The speed of these searches can be greatly increased by caching the kanjinfo.dat file in memory, at the expense of using up 500 kB of memory. The kanjinfo.dat file can be moved into memory by using this checkbox. For people who have lots of memory, slow machines, and/or use the lookup features a lot, caching kanjinfo.dat is advised. (Off by default.)
- Check If Installed -- Clearing this option will suppress the check to see if this is the installed version of JFC or not. This may be a helpful thing to do if you have the .jfc extension assigned to another program, or you have more than one version of JFC running at a time. (On by default.)
Related Topics
- Font Options
- Fonts
- Sub-Files or Including a Flash Card File
- Character Information
- More About Instalation
Next Chapter: Fonts and Other Topics