date-created:: 2023-02-21

Anki is the third PKM 個人知識管理 that I built, after DTSearch and Evernote. Today, it is my most frequently used and updated system. I almost stopped using DTSearch altogether for its being on the old Windows 10 VM, a resource hog on my Mid-2014 MacBook Pro (Intel)｜2014年版MacBook Pro. As for Evernote, it is where garbage data goes to die. I still use it today, making most of the free 60MB storage per month to store random web content and short memos.

I started putting all my effort into Anki in ... 2019, when I successfully imported 200,000 English-Chinese dictionary entries into it and started liking its versatility. The rest is history.

Now I have this as my second weapon: My first Obsidian vault: EKLIAO.

Verdict: 4 stars

Pro

AnkiWeb surprisingly fast

• Having experienced the awful slowness of Obsidian (iCloud and local) in handling 400K data, I gave AnkiWeb a try. It's already there, but I actually never used it, assuming it wasn't going to be fast compared to the desktop app. Gosh, I was so wrong. On 1.2 million entries, the search for a headword takes less than 5 seconds, sometimes only 1-2 seconds. What a surprise!
• More about AnkiWeb (its pros and cons).

Hierarchical tags and search

• Truly hierarchical: searching for tag:A alone without saying tag:A:: or tag:A* will still get A::B and A::B::C, etc. Great!
  

Custom fields

Cons

Very limited regex search

#Glasp

Searching - Anki Manual

Metadata

• Title: Searching - Anki Manual
• Tags: #Anki, #regex, #regular-expressions
• URL: https://docs.ankiweb.net/searching.html

Highlights & Notes

• "re:(some|another).*thing"

Page Comment

Despite Anki's official documentation, Anki does not support parentheses at all. I have tried many times and have given up. Parentheses for grouping (either capturing or non-capturing kind) is crucial in regex searching.

Random ideas of metacharacters in regex search

• Simply put, Anki's search has the weirdest idea of what works and what doesn't. For example, a literal space won't work in a regex search. Don't get me started.

No "search as you type" functionality

Migrating to Obsidian

• Anki to Mochi to Obsidian

Anki hacks I've learned

(New to old)

• Anki - AnkiWeb (cloud storage) file size limits - official and actual

• Anki - (Basic) note type naming mess (variants without a difference)

• User interface size

  • Though obvious, I didn't discover this adjustable parameter earlier. Once I changed it to 150%, Anki immediately felt a lot more accessible.

• "Set font size" add-on (enlarges everything except browser grid font/back fields)

• Image occlusion (Cloze)

  • add-on: image occlusion advanced

• Hierarchical tags: simply rename a tag with two colons in the middle. Can be multiple levels, e.g.:

  

• Rename or delete a tag in browser left-nav tag list (without bulk adding a new tag then bulk deleting the old tag)

• Use Anki add-on - Customize keyboard shortcuts

  • to change default Keyboard shortcuts for Cloze deletion - different card for "adding Cloze deletion - different card" to Cmd+Shift+Z

• Change font color in the styling section of a note type

• Add Cloze deletion - different card

• Add Cloze deletion - same card

Add-ons

• Merging Notes： Anki Add-ons of Interest

Issues

• Desktop app degradation

Desktop performance tracking

After Anki Issues of Slow Desktop App, I decided it was time to track every newly installed add-on to monitor for performance issues:

• Anki add-on performance tracking

More ...

Ankification

Anki Export Considerations： text vs apkg

Anki data merging project (WIP w ongoing change log)

Refocusing on Glossary Management