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Ask HN: File based note taking with spaced repetition?

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.

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).

Does anyone know a system where I can combine the two features (simple text note taking and spaced repetition)?

( 7 comments | 2 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: File based note taking with spaced repetition? by fsavard on Monday May 08, 2017 @03:47PM (#14294919)
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/

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.)

Re:Ask HN: File based note taking with spaced repetition? by davelnewton on Monday May 08, 2017 @10:27AM (#14291710)
Note that spaced repetition is pretty easy to implement; if your notes are in J Random Format you'd need to munge them anyway.
Re:Ask HN: File based note taking with spaced repetition? by givemefive on Monday May 08, 2017 @10:14AM (#14291600)
whats wrong with anki again?
Re:Ask HN: File based note taking with spaced repetition? by mcbetz on Monday May 08, 2017 @10:43AM (#14291887)
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.
Re:Ask HN: File based note taking with spaced repetition? by givemefive on Monday May 08, 2017 @10:48AM (#14291943)
It's easy to write plugins for anki though. Anki's data is just stored in a sqlite db.
Re:Ask HN: File based note taking with spaced repetition? by mcbetz on Monday May 08, 2017 @10:52AM (#14291978)
Thanks for the idea. I will look into that.
Re:Ask HN: File based note taking with spaced repetition? by givemefive on Monday May 08, 2017 @11:07AM (#14292123)
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.