Most important operations on the element displayed in the element window are available from the element pop-up menu. To open this menu press Alt+F10 or right-click over an empty element area (i.e. area not covered by components; clicking over a component will open its own pop-up menu). If your element is entirely filled out with components, you can also right click over the element toolbar (except for the button Next which gas its own pop-up menu).

The element pop-up menu includes the following options:

• Classify - set the element's place in the learning process
  • Forget (Ctrl+R) - remove the displayed element from the learning process and put it at the end of the pending queue
  • Remember (Ctrl+M)- introduce the displayed element into repetitions. Optionally you can specify the first interval, e.g. if you are sure you will remember the item in 2 months, you might save time by choosing the interval 60 without a detriment to the learning process. Once you memorize an element, you it will recur periodically for a repetition
  • Dismiss (Ctrl+D)- ignore the displayed element at repetitions. It will still be available when browsing the collection but it will not enter the learning process unless you explicitly choose Remember (see above)
  • Add to drill (Ctrl+Shift+D)- add the displayed element to the final drill queue
• Edit
  • Duplicate - create a copy of the currently displayed element in the same place of the knowledge tree. This option is very useful for creating cloze deletion items. If you have problems creating well-structured items, you may opt for cloze deletion items. Just take the sentence that expresses the knowledge you want to master. Create a number of copies of that sentence with Duplicate, and delete critical words or phrases from each duplicate. Replace the deleted parts with three dots and put the deleted text in the answer field. This is a very effective learning technique for beginners
  • Edit title - open the title tab with an editing field that makes it possible to edit the element's title. Use this option or Alt+T to quickly generate a title from text fields in the element. If you want to edit the existing title, you may prefer clicking the Title tab at the top of the element window. This will prevent generating a new title
  • Edit parameters - open a dialog box with element parameters. This option, also available with Ctrl+Shift+P, is most useful for the following purposes: changing the forgetting index (e.g. to increase the quality of remembering), changing the ordinal number (most often used in sorting the pending queue), and changing the category to which the element belongs. In this last case, if you decide that your item would rather belong to Physics than to Chemistry, you can select Chemistry in Edit : Edit parameters : Category and the item will be moved to the appropriate branch of the knowledge tree. You can also use Edit parameters to add comments to item or view the element's repetition history
  • Swap components - swap texts and fonts between the first non-answer text component and the first answer text component. Usually you need this option to swap questions with answers when you learn bilingual pairs of vocabulary. It is most useful in conjunction with Duplicate (see above). The shortcut for swapping components is Ctrl+Shift+S
  • Move to ClipBox - move the currently displayed element to the element ClipBox. This way you can easily transfer the contents of the current element to another element. Once you locate the other element, you just drag the contents of the element ClipBox and drop it on the element display area
  • Reset repetition history - reset the history of repetitions for the currently displayed element. You can opt for using this option once you substantially change the contents of the element so that it is like learning a completely new piece of knowledge
• Template - template operations
  • Save as template - save the currently displayed element as a template in the template registry. This makes it possible to use the looks of the element in other elements
  • Save as default - save the current element as a template and make it the default template in the currently selected category. Choosing Alt+Ctrl+S is the fastest way to make sure that all your items in the current category assume a given look
  • Apply template - delete all components and load a template from the template registry (after selecting the template in the registry, you should click the Apply button at the bottom)
  • Merge with template - merge the currently displayed element with a template from the template registry. The process of merging begins with loading the selected template. Then SuperMemo transfer all matching registry object from the old template to the new template. Please note that SuperMemo will not warn you if it cannot find a matching component. For example, if your element contains an image and you merge it with a template that does not have an image, the image will be deleted. There is not undo for merging templates
  • Add to template - adding templates is similar to merging templates but the contents of the new template is simply superimposed over the old template. This way, you can create a template with an image and add this image to selected elements by adding the image template. In merging templates, the number of components equals the number of components in the merged template, while in adding templates the number of components is a sum of components in the element and in the template
  • Save to file - save the current element as a template file. This file can later be loaded into another collection with Load from file (see below). You can view template files with any text editor. Note that these files do not store registry objects but only references to appropriate files. This way a template file is useful only as long as the source collection remains in its original location on the disk. Once it is moved, references in the template file will be useless
  • Load from file - load a template file saved with Save to file (see above). Loading template file deletes all components and creates new components specified in the template
• Selection - perform operations on a group of selected component. You select components by putting them in the editing mode or in the dragging mode
  • Link registry member - link a given registry member to all selected component. The components must be of the same type. For example, if the components are images, you will link to them an image file from the image registry. If they are texts, you will link a text registry member, etc.
  • Link registry font - link a selected font from the font registry to all selected components. The components must be of text or sound type
  • Alignment and size - align a group of components or change their size. This makes it easy to align left borders of components, spread them equally, make them of the same size, etc.
• Background - determine the background image used in the currently selected element. If you want to change the background in all elements, use Tools : Options : SuperMemo : Default background image
  • Import file - import an image file to use as the background in the currently displayed element. This file will first be integrated with the image registry. The file must be in BMP format
  • Link from registry - link the element with an image from the image registry. The linked image will be displayed as the background
  • Arrangement - determine the way the background image will be displayed
    • Top-left - display the background image in the top-left corner of the element display area
    • Center - display the background image in the center of the element display area
    • Tile - tile background image throughout the element display area, i.e. fill the element with many copies of tightly aligned bitmap
    • Stretch - stretch the background image to fill exactly the contents of the element display area. If the background image is smaller than the element it will be extended
  • Delete - remove the background image
• Color - determine the background color of the element
• AutoPlay - make sure the element plays its first playable component each time the element is displayed. Playable components are: sound, video, script and programmed component
• Topic - mark the current element as topic (as opposed to an item). If Topic is unchecked, the element is treated as an item. This is mostly important to determine the way the element will be treated in the learning process. Topics are presented once and dismissed. They are treated only as a synthetic introduction to the learned material. Items enter the learning process and are repeated indefinitely. They are considered to be the knowledge that has to be retained in memory (see also: Topics vs items)
• Components
  • Component order - change the order of components. Order of components is important in tiling components one over the other. It is also important for AutoPlay (see above). AutoPlay plays the first playable component in component order. Similarly, SuperMemo automatically generates the element's title by using the text of the first text component in the component order
  • Test repetition cycle - test the repetition cycle without making a repetition. This makes it possible to see if all components show up in proper stages of the cycle: show answer, grade, next repetition, etc.
  • Repeat AutoPlay - play again the first playable component (the one played with AutoPlay). This can be useful in pronunciation exercises when you want to hear again the learned word
  • Previous component - select the previous component and set it in the editing mode (the currently selected component is set in the presentation mode)
  • Next component - select the next component and set it in the editing mode
• Delete components - delete all components in the currently displayed element
• Delete element - delete the currently displayed element (same as Ctrl+Shift+Del). Note that all children of the current element in the knowledge tree will also be deleted
• Mode
  • Editing - set all components in the editing mode
  • Dragging - set all components in the dragging mode
  • Presentation - set all components in the presentation mode
  • Switch window - switch to the contents window (the same shortcut, Ctrl+Shift+W, will take you back from the contents window to the element window)
• Jump to - display another element in the element window
  • Next - display the next element according to the element order specified on the pop-up menu of the button Next
  • Previous - display the previous element according to the element order specified on the pop-up menu of the button Next
  • Next element - display the next element in the knowledge tree
  • Previous element - display the previous element in the knowledge tree
  • Last element - display the last element in the collection, i.e. the last child of the last child of the last child ... of the root node of the knowledge tree
  • First element - display the root node of the entire collection
  • Parent element - display the parent element of the current element

Frequently Asked Questions

(Bonnie Smithson, USA, Feb 24, 1998)
Question:
How do I put pictures into the answer part?
Answer:
Check Answer on the image component pop-up menu