Ability to Append Additional Comments to Notes
I find that I often like to append comments to a note, beyond the information that I am trying to memorize. Information that is neither the question nor the answer. This might be used to include explanations of how to figure out the answer, tricks to help remember the answer, and perhaps even references or additional information. Perhaps an icon could appear on the slide indicating that this note has an attached comment, which you would click on, in order to view that comment. And/or there could be a button in the tool bar, which lights up when a comment is available. The reason for not including this information on the flash card itself is that if you make it reversible, you wouldn't want to see it on the answer side of the card, any more than on the prompt side.
A vote for it
I consider this feature a necessity ( it's still fairly rare also, even in major word processors ).The
light on the toolbar ( presumably clickable to get the comment ) sounds elegant. The primary
reason for it is note refinement that can be used and accessed as desired. Think of the note as the highest design level of Mental Case and the comment as a refinement of the design. It opens up
then the possibilities of multiple comments to the same note and comments-on-comments.Very powerful and could open the way between Mental Case and Mindmapping.
How would it look?
Maybe we should call this extra information 'attachments', as in mail. It could be text or other files related to the note. This is certainly taking MC more in the direction of a personal database, ala Yojimbo.
How do you see it working? If there was an attachment button in the slideshow, what should happen if you click it? Slide show stop? Floating window and slide show pause? Or should the information not be accessible in the slideshow, but only via the main organization window?
Drew
Mental Case Developer
Exactly
Not sure what a HUD inspector is, but yes, I think that's what I was aiming for. Maybe it's just me, but I think comments are an extremely helpful thing to be able to both view and edit while studying flash cards. I suppose this is because I tend to think of new memory tricks for a piece of information while I'm studying it, and especially if I'm having trouble recalling it. And that generally only happens in the slide show itself. Plus, it might take me a Lesson or two before I've even memorized the memory trick (oh, the irony!), so I might need to remind myself of that memory trick the next time I see the note in a lesson. (Plus, who knows what other info you might want to attach to some future note, especially once you're used to having the option.)
HUD?
Comments were included in very early prototypes of MC, but at the time we didn't see much point in them. They are still buried in the app, so we could dig them up again sometime. Perhaps comments and other info could be displayed in a HUD inspector that could be brought up by pressing a button on the slide show control.
Drew