A simple way to write Anki decks in Markdown.

Anki is awesome, in many ways. However, its card editor is... a little bit uncomfortable. I really wanted to write Anki cards in Markdown. So I made a tool to convert Markdown (+ standard MathJAX math notation) into Anki decks that can be easily imported. This way, it's possible to use any fancy markdown (and MathJAX) tools to build your decks.

NOTE This program requires Python 3, along with the packages in requirements.txt

Ankdown can be installed by doing pip3 install ankdown.

Cards are written in the following format:

Expected Value of $f(x)$

%

$$\mathbb{E}[f(x)] = \sum_x p(x)f(x)$$

%

math, probability

---

Each of the solitary % signs is a field separator: the first field is the front of the card by default, the second field is the back of the card, and subsequent fields can contain whatever you want them to (all fields after the second are optional).

Each of the --- (or double %%) signs represent a card boundary.

The tool only needs these separators to be alone on their own lines, but most markdown editors will work better if you separate them from other text with empty lines, so that they're treated as their own paragraphs.

To compile the cards, put them in a file (e.g. notes.md), and run ankdown -p notes.apkg -d Notes -i notes.md. This will create a file, "notes.apkg", containing a deck called "Notes".

You can also specify a directory (by passing -r DIR) to walk recursively, accumulating cards from all files named "*.md".

To add them to Anki, go to File > Import, and select the file you created (e.g. notes.apkg).

IMPORTANT: When using the text format rather than the .apkg (not recommended) make sure that the separator is set to \t, you've selected the deck you want to modify, and that "Allow HTML" is checked.

Press "Import", and you should be good to go.

When you want to modify a card, just run your deck through the above process after changing the markdown file. Anki should notice, and update the card. This is done by giving the cards in your deck sequential IDs. This breaks down when you want to remove a card, though. In that case, you'll want to delete the whole deck and reload it.