
Ask HN: File based note taking with spaced repetition? - mcbetz
Text files based note taking has been my prefered way to manage knowledge for several years. NVAlt and markdown files have been a great combination.<p>As I am also writing technical notes (for example when learning a new programming language or framework) I wish I could combine the file based notes with spaced repetition (similar to Anki).<p>Does anyone know a system where I can combine the two features (simple text note taking and spaced repetition)?
======
fsavard
There certainly is, I coded one myself, but I never made any effort to
publicize it.

[http://www.fsavard.com/flow/2012/12/diff-
revision/](http://www.fsavard.com/flow/2012/12/diff-revision/)

Basically you take notes like you normally would and the "diffs" of your notes
become the elements you will review using spaced-repetition style intervals.

Drawbacks:

\- It's not exactly user friendly in its current implementation.

\- There isn't any way to give yourself a grade based on how well you
remembered a piece of information.

\- You must take care to write notes in small blurbs before running the "diff"
command, otherwise I end up with large chunks of text to revise and I won't
review properly.

\- The lack of question-answer mechanism pretty much bypasses the whole
"active recall" principle, or whatever that was called.

(Edit: spacing.)

------
davelnewton
Note that spaced repetition is pretty easy to implement; if your notes are in
J Random Format you'd need to munge them anyway.

------
givemefive
whats wrong with anki again?

~~~
mcbetz
Nothing. Anki is great. But I prefer to have general notes in a text only
format that I manage via NValt or simply desktop search. Anki gives me an own
file format and forces me to manage my knowledge just within Anki.

~~~
givemefive
It's easy to write plugins for anki though. Anki's data is just stored in a
sqlite db.

~~~
mcbetz
Thanks for the idea. I will look into that.

~~~
givemefive
My 2c would be to have a special notation in your text notes that labels the
data you want to study later. then just parse that and combined with anki's
cards you can generate decks easily.

