General ⇒ Tutorial for creatings flashcards

[Montag]

Hello,

thanks to Andreas Matthias, the author of pdfpages, I have been using his package with some adjustments by him for quite some time now and I thought I'd share it. I asked him for permission to share and upload his code on here, so it's all good.

The motivation was that I used to (and still do) write up summaries of lectures and course material that I got for classes/courses in university. When preparing for exams, I wanted to create flashcards based on the work I've done so far, meaning I didn't want to write down the stuff a second time, either because of time issues, laziness and or efficiency.

So the basic idea is that you have a command called "\kk" ("Kk" => "Karteikarte" => "flashcard" in German, you can of course rename the command to something else) which I use as a macro. In this context, it's a command for a flashcard. It has two arguments. The first one is for the keyword or question or whatever you want to put there, the second one is for the characteristics of a certain "keyword", answers or whatever you want to put there.

So here's a quick tutorial for creating flashcards with LaTeX.

1. Download the file called 'files.zip'.
2. Unpack the file.
3. Either click on

   Code: Select all

   math-flashcards-single-a6.tex

   or

   Code: Select all

   math-flashcards-single-a7.tex

   .
4. Fill them with lots of content.
5. If you plan to get some bigger flashcards, compile

   Code: Select all

   fc4.tex

   when you are finished. If you want the "usual" flashcards, use

   Code: Select all

   fc8.tex

   . The rather complicated code in both these files comes from Andreas and I am glad that he sent it because I still haven't really figured out what it all does exactly. But it's part of the package and of course intended for use. If I understood him correctly, he might be implementing this flashcard-feature for an upcoming version of pdfpages.

Some notes:

1. You must know how your printer works. You need to be able to make him print in duplex mode.
2. And again, you must know how your printer works. I can tell you from my own experience, only print the first two pages from the first documents you compile. Saves you a lot of paper if you figure out how to print out the a4-document. In my experience, the trick lies in the setting how you tell your printer driver where you will turn the a4-sheets, meaning on the long or short side. For my printer (Kyocera FS-1300D), the correct setting for the a7-flashcards is "Turn on the long side", for the a6-flashcards it's "Turn on the short side".
3. For a rather "usual" overview of the flashcards, you could use

   Code: Select all

   math-flashcards-a4.tex

   . This document does not produce flashcards.
4. Just as a technicality, you have to know how to install packages like 'pdfpages' or 'etex' of course. This shouldn't be trouble at all if you have a distribution like MikTeX.

Again, a big thanks to Andreas.


P.S.:
If I find the time, I'll upload this "tutorial" as a pdf-document.