Cards'n'Boxes - Help (ver. 2008-03-15)

INTRODUCTION
Cards'n'Boxes is a freeware flash card training program written in Java. It uses a simple cardbox system: Cards out of boxes are tested randomly. If the answer is correct, the card advances one box; if it is wrong, the card is put into a lower box. Cards that reach the highest box are considered to be learned.

REQUIREMENTS
Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.4.1 or newer
At least, that's what Cards'n'Boxes has been tested on so far. Chances are good, that it will also run in older runtime environments.

START
There is no need to unpack the downloaded jar file. Cards'n'Boxes is started by the command:
java -jar CardsNBoxes.jar
With a properly installed Java platform a double-click on the jar file should work, too.

USAGE
After opening a boxset file Cards'n'Boxes starts showing cards from the lowest not-empty box. If the boxset file does not specify the number of boxes, you will be asked to enter how many boxes you want to use. A boxset consists of at least two and at most nine boxes. The boxes are numbered from 1 (the lowest box) to 9 (maximum).

Type your answer in the input field at the bottom and hit <ENTER>. Your input will be compared with the possible answers on the other side of the card, not regarding upper/lower case or punctuation. After that both sides of the card will be shown and whether your answer was correct or not. Press <ENTER> again to see the next card.

In the status bar you can observe your boxset with the number of cards in each box. The lowest box is displayed on the right and the highest on the left. As you progress cards move from right to left and end up in the highest box, where they are not tested anymore. The active box, from which cards are drawn at the moment, is marked red. You can change to another box manually by clicking on its icon or using the corresponding menu BOXSET --> GO TO.

Additionally, in the BOXSET menu you can change the number of boxes. Boxes will be added/removed at the top of the boxset. Cards from removed boxes will be moved to lower boxes. RESET BOXSET moves all cards to the lowest box.

Cards can be created and edited in the EDIT menu. To edit the card that is on display choose EDIT CARD. To edit other cards and to create new ones use EDIT BOXSET, where you get a list of all the cards in the boxset. In the edit dialog double-click on the entries you want to edit and on “[...]” on the appropriate side to add a new entry. Different entries on one side describe multiple possible solutions (e.g. words with the same meaning). You can add comments to each entry by writing it in parenthesis.  Comments are not part of the solution, but are shown when the card is displayed.

OPTIONS
In the Options menu you can adjust the following settings:
HIDDEN SIDE to select the side of the cards you want to be asked for. "Left" and "Right" respectively correspond to the way the cards are stored in the boxset file.
WRONG ANSWERED CARD to set what will happen to a card, if your answer is wrong. The default is to put it back to the lowest box, but you can also choose to move it down by only one box.
NEXT BOX SELECTION to set how the next box is chosen, once all of its cards have been put into other boxes. The default setting (BY WAIT COUNT) should work fine. It selects the box that has not been used for the longest time.

FORMAT OF A BOXSET FILE (.cnb)
Cards are stored one per line in a plain text file with the extension “.cnb”. The two sides of a card are separated by "::" (two colons) and multiple possible solutions are separated by "|" (pipe sign).
Parts enclosed by parenthesis "(" and ")" are regarded as comments.

Here is an example of a valid boxset file, containing three vocabulary cards (English - German):

to work :: arbeiten | funktionieren
automobile | car :: Auto | Wagen
pavement (Brit.) | sidewalk (Amer.) :: Gehweg

After opening and saving this file with Cards'n'Boxes the following information will be added. (You can add it also yourself, of course.)

At the beginning of every line the card's box is set by writing the box number enclosed by "#" (hash signs). If this is missing the card will be placed in the lowest box (box 1).
The number of boxes is specified in the first line of the file enclosed by "##" (two hash signs). For example, "##4##" in the first line will create four boxes. If this information is missing, you will be asked how many boxes you want to use, when opening the file.
Here again the above example:

##4##
#2# to work :: arbeiten | funktionieren
#1# automobile | car :: Auto | Wagen
#2# pavement (Brit.) | sidewalk (Amer.) :: Gehweg

Cards'n'Boxes uses UTF-8 encoded files. When editing your boxset files with a text editor, remember to save them in this format.

WEBSITE
More information, as well as the actual version of Cards'n'Boxes can be found at:
http://www.emirp.net/cardsnboxes/


CARDS'N'BOXES COMES WITHOUT ANY KIND OF WARRANTY! READ THE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR DETAILS.

