Vocabulary Study DX6

This page is about DX6, an implementation of "digital flashcards".

Introduction

Vocabulary Study DX6 is a small program intended to help people learn general or domain-specific vocabulary through a simple, repetitive process that emphasises the connexion between a word and its definition. Simple, plain-text data files encode the study items—files that can be created with any text editor on any platform. New features such as save-state and resume-state highlight the renewed focus on vocabulary and on providing useful, needed functionality. –and– Finally, Vocabulary Study is open-source, so users can modify it to fit their specific needs.

Summary of Features

Vocabulary Study DX6 provides many of the benefits of flashcards:

• a simple, straightforward way to study vocabulary
• a means for assessing what is known and what needs to be studied more

• a way to share your data files with others (with classmates via e-mail, with the world via the internet)
• a simple means to create different combinations of sets of study items and to keep them organised
• an opportunity to practise spelling

News

• 2006-06-20–uploaded GTK version-1; I'm delighted to (finally) announce a new graphical version of DX6—I don't think there's been a new GUI-based version in almost five years. This is my first attempt at writing anything using GTK, so I'm sure there are a couple bugs to be worked out, but it's worked so far for me! (Code will be coming ... at some point.)
• 2006-06-19–uploaded patch-24; this is a minor bug fix
• 2006-06-15–work is underway on a graphical version of DX6 using GTK; see the screenshot below
• 2006-05-04–uploaded patch-23; improvements include:
  • removal of duplicate study items
  • better data randomisation
• 2006-03-05–uploaded the first release

Download

• DX6 is open-source, and it is available for binary download for some platforms (I'm not sure what libraries they require ... for the GNU/Linux binaries, you'll probably need NCurses and maybe need some sort of O'Caml run-time library? For the Windows binary, I've done my best to include the required libraries, since I imagine that the average Windows user is less computer-literate than the average GNU/Linux user!):
  • O'Caml sources (tgz) (patch-24) New!
  • GTK binary for x86 GNU/Linux (version-1)(tgz) New!
  • GTK binary for PPC GNU/Linux (version-1)(tgz) New!
  • SCurses binary for x86 Windows NT/XP (patch-24)(zip) New!
  • SCurses binary for x86 GNU/Linux (patch-24)(tgz) New!
  • SCurses binary for PPC OS X (patch-23)(zip) New!
  • SCurses binary for PPC GNU/Linux (patch-24)(tgz) New!
• there is also a DX6 tutorial to help introduce the program:
  • DX6 tutorial (pdf)

Screenshot

Vocabulary Study DX6 running through French vocabulary (with the GTK interface).

Vocabulary Study DX6 startup / welcome screen (with the SCurses interface).

More Information

Well, there's really no more information available for the time being, sorry! Please check back soon, though, or e-mail me if you have specific questions. I would also love to hear if you are using DX6; please send me a mail if you find it useful or are interested in new features (I am a busy student, so I cannot promise anything, but I am at least willing to entertain suggestions!).

If you are a user of one of the old versions of Vocabulary Study (I'm sorry if you're still using that!), there is a translator utility for converting the old, binary-and-text data files to the new plain-text format.