ankifier

Efficiently create Anki flashcards from your notes.

I created this package to facilitate faster creation of Anki cards while I study utilizing the fantastic text editing of Emacs.

Screencast

Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Development
  • Changelog
  • What’s Next?
• Acknowledgments
• Development

Installation

Requires Emacs 27.2+.

Dependencies:

• expand-region.el (link).

Recommended package:

• anki-editor While not required, this is the anki-editor package that allows the output of my package to be sent to Anki (utilizing the AnkiConnect addon).

Then put this file in your load-path, and put this in your init file:

Clone the repository.

git clone https://www.github.com/adham-omran/ankifier

Load the package.

(load! "/path/to/ankifier/ankifier.el")
(require 'ankifier)

Usage

Run one of these commands on an active region:

• ankifier-create-basic-from-region: Create Basic question(s) from active region.
• ankifier-create-cloze-from-region: Create Cloze question(s) from active region.
• ankifier-create-from-region: Parse basic and cloze questions in the active region.
• ankifier-find-to-be-ankified: Interactively search the buffer for un-ankified questions and prompt to ankify them.

Variables

• Set ankifier-insert-elsewhere to t if you want the questions to be created under a * Cards org heading (This is what I mostly do).

  The name of the heading can be modified through ankifier-cards-heading.

• Set ankifier-context-question to t if you want to use contextual questions, see examples for uses.
• Set ankifier-feedback to t if you notes you ankify to have ANKIFIED at the start of the text to indicate that this has been ankified. Useful when you return to your notes after a while and wonder if you Ankified something or not.
• ankifier-anki-cloze-note-type sets the card type for cloze cards.
• ankifier-anki-basic-note-type sets the card type for basic cards.
• ankifier-anki-deck sets the Anki deck to push cards to (default: “All”).
• ankifier-anki-tags sets the tags to apply to created cards (default: “”).
• Set ankifier-arabic to t to use Arabic question marks (؟) instead of Latin (?).

For a basic question, the questions must be separated by two newlines and have a single question mark to indicate the Question part and the Answer part.

For a cloze question, the sentences must be separated by two new lines.

Examples

Normal Format

What is Emacs?
An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor — and more.

When was Emacs 27.2 released?
Mar 25, 2021.

Emacs is an {{c1::extensible}}, {{c2::customizable}}, free/libre {{c2::text
editor::application type}} — and more.

Contextual Question Format

Context: Question?
Context: Cloze.

Geography: What's the capital of France?
Paris.

Geography: {{c1::Paris}} is the capital of France.

This results in the “:” being replaced with two newline characters.

Example Config

This is the config I’m using at the moment.

(setq ankifier-insert-elsewhere t
      ankifier-anki-basic-note-type "E-Basic"
      ankifier-anki-cloze-note-type "E-Cloze"
      ankifier-anki-deck "My Deck"
      ankifier-anki-tags "study"
      ankifier-arabic nil
      ankifier-feedback t
      ankifier-context-question t)

Tips

• You can customize settings in the ankifier group.
• Check out Power up Anki with Emacs, Org mode, anki-editor and more for ideas about general anki-editor use and how to get code highlighting working properly.

Custom Fields

Extra fields can be added to generated cards via the ankifier--extra-fields variable. It holds a list of plists, each with three keys:

• field-name — The name of the field in your Anki note template (e.g. “Source”).
• source-name — The keyword or property name to read the value from.
• source-type — How to retrieve the value:
  • file — reads from an org file keyword (e.g. #+SOURCE_NAME: value). All cards in the file get the same value.
  • property — reads from an org property drawer (e.g. :SOURCE_NAME: value). Supports inheritance, so different headings can have different values.

Example: File-level keyword

Given this in your org file:

#+SOURCE_NAME: Introduction to Algorithms

And this configuration:

(setq ankifier--extra-fields
      '(( field-name "Source" source-name "SOURCE_NAME" source-type file )))

Each generated card will include a “Source” field with the value “Introduction to Algorithms”.

Example: Per-heading property

Given this in your org file:

* Chapter 1
:PROPERTIES:
:SOURCE_NAME: Introduction to Algorithms, Ch. 1
:END:

What is an algorithm?
A well-defined computational procedure.

* Chapter 2
:PROPERTIES:
:SOURCE_NAME: Introduction to Algorithms, Ch. 2
:END:

What is insertion sort?
A sorting algorithm that builds the sorted array one item at a time.

And this configuration:

(setq ankifier--extra-fields
      '(( field-name "Source" source-name "SOURCE_NAME" source-type property )))

Cards created under “Chapter 1” will have Source: Introduction to Algorithms, Ch. 1, while cards under “Chapter 2” will have Source: Introduction to Algorithms, Ch. 2.

Development

Changelog

• 1.4.2: Fix a bug where a space after :: broke cloze deletion cards.
• 1.4.1: Fix bug with multiple ‘:’ in a question for the basic card type.
• 1.4.0: Add the function ankifier-find-to-be-ankified. Remove dependency on cl-lib.
• 1.3.0: Add the function ankifier-create-from-region.
• 1.2.0: Add the ability to include feedback for ankified notes.
• 1.1.0: Add the ability to format contextual questions.
• 1.0.0: Initial release.

Acknowledgments

This package would not have been possible without anki-editor, which allows the flash cards to be sent to Anki in the first place.

Development

Bug reports, feature requests, suggestions are all welcome, keep in mind this is my first Emacs package!

Tasks

• [ ] Fix author on old commits