Being able to remove focus from the Edit window.

[brett.gildersleeve]

The way I use Stackz is to have a set number of words to learn in a given time period, and then put them in my Review stack, which I test several times a week.  So, when I have long lists of words to learn (for example, for JLPT2) I first randomize them and break them up into weekly "lessons."  Then I learn one lesson per week (usually 100 words or so) and at the end of the week I copy-paste that entire lesson into the Unknown bin of my Review stack.

The problem is, what happens when I want to go back and add more cards to those lessons?  For example, right now I have a certain number of weeks until JLPT2.  So, I broke up all of the words I need to learn into that number of lessons.  But, occasionally I'll find a nice wordlist online, for example the onomatopoeia list, and I want to distribute that evenly among my current lessons.

It would be a simple matter of copy and paste, but the problem is, Stackz doesn't let you remove focus from the Edit window when you're in it.

So, instead of: Highlight words in the onomatopoeia list, Ctrl+C, selecting a lesson stack, Ctrl+V...repeat...

I have to: Edit list, Highlight words, Ctrl+C, Save, Close edit window, Select Lesson Stack, Ctrl+V, Select new list...repeat

I know it doesn't sound that annoying, but it is!!! 

Anyways, it would be nice to be able to select another stack while having the edit window open.

[Chris]

That would be a bit difficult to do, because some actions would have to be allowed (selection), others not (opening another edit dialog). Currently everything is blocked by opening a modal dialog, this avoids all mysterious side effects that could arise otherwise.

Stackz 07 offers a new method for that purpose (Stackz 07 beta 4 is currently available in the members section). It offers a new "Maintenance - Move to Stack" context menu command in the edit dialog which opens a dialog that asks for the target stack. And if you edit more than one stack, the paste command needs to know where you want to put the entry as well, so it opens the same target selection dialog. Those proceedings allow you to move cards around without selecting the target stack previously.

HINT: You don't have to copy all entries to the same file before applying this technique - you can select stacks from several open files by holding down the ctrl key. This allows you to see all entries in the edit dialog so you can cut or copy the ones from one file, and when pasting them, the said target selection dialog will appear. It will show the stacks of the active document only however (i.e. the one on top).

As a side note, using this multi-file selection technique you can avoid copying the entries around. In the same way that you can select stacks from several files for editing, you can also select stacks from several files for testing or learning. The settings (ColorMode etc) of the active (on top) document are used to configure the test or learn dialog in this case.

This multi-file selection thing should work without problem, it allows you also to break your content into several files even if you want to learn them in one session. The reason why I have not advertised it more in the new version is that there are enough other new features to be introduced, and then the support is somewhat too basic to make a foolproof feature out of it (manually select with control key only, and somewhat unclear situation about what file's configurations are used). However, if you know what you are doing, this could be of great benefit for your task even in the Stackz 07 version that is currently available!

[brett.gildersleeve]

Thanks I just tried out this feature and it works great.