Frequently Asked Questions

It is effective! Although it's difficult to make a reliable research to compare it with "common learning", once you know how it works (and know basics about human memory), it will be obvious for you that this is not a black magic — just an optimization, that just works.

However, don't expect FullRecall to be a panacea for learning troubles. Firstly, it helps only with remembering knowledge, not understanding. Secondly, when you have a frequent contact with the material you learn (i.e., you have many natural repetitions beside these in FullRecall) then FullRecall won't help you so much with this material.

Last, but not least. FullRecall optimizes your time spend on memorizing, allows you to focus your effort in the right way, in the optimal time. But it's your effort that is the crucial factor influencing the learning rate — if you won't make the serious effort trying to really remember every item then FullRecall will slow down the learning rate for you trying to match your "lazy forgetting curve". On the other hand, if you'll commit yourself to learning and won't skim though reviews: I'm pretty sure you'll remember much more then you would remember in the same time, making the same effort, but learning without the software.

Please choose a font (menu Options→Fonts→Questions/Answers fonts) that covers the encoding you use. If another application correctly displays affected text: please try to find out what font the other application is using and set the same font in FullRecall. On MS Windows you'll find Lucida Sans Unicode, it supports most commonly used characters and looks good; other universal fonts (not available by default on MS Windows) are: Code2000 (shareware), Cyberbit, Arial Unicode MS (supplied with MS Office 2002 (XP) and MS Office 2003). See also: List of Unicode Fonts. On Windows you can drag&drop *.ttf fonts files in "Control Panel"→Fonts. On Unix/Linux since XFree86-4.3 you can just copy the *.ttf fonts to ~/.fonts/, and they should be now visible in FullRecall, in Options→Preferences→Fonts.

Yes! Format of all files is fully compatible between Windows/Linux/FreeBSD/Pocket-PC versions.

On repetitions, in the background, using about 200ms of CPU time just after an answer or question is presented. The faster your CPU is, the faster ANN can grip your memory model. But don't worry even if you use a very slow CPU — it still should work okay, as it's well optimized.

weights.bin — contains internal ANN weights, so they don't have to be recomputed again from ANN learning data every time FullRecall starts; weights.bin file is saved from scratch everytime FullRecall quits;

user_cases.bin — contains data collected from the user to train ANN.

Yes, using -d parameter (and path after -d, with space between) from command line (e.g. fullrecall.exe -d c:\path-to-database\).

The space between Program and Files is the problem. A way around it:

add "C:\Program Files\The-Program" to the system path (right click on "My computer", Properties, Advanced, Environment Variables, System variables, edit "Path" variable: add to it: ;C:\Program Files\The-Program.

Now, provided 'exec tags' are turned on in FullRecall settings, this should work: <exec>the_program.exe c:\a_folder\image.jpg</exec>

Go to Options→Preferences→Fonts and set up the same fonts you are using, but without the leading @.

I don't recommend keeping secret information in FullRecall database and exporting it by network, but files are pretty secure. The weakest link is the wire — files are send over tcp not encrypted, but compressed using a compression format that none of the compression program (I'm aware of) can decompress directly; it's breakable though if someone can sniff packets in-between. Files are stored on a server the only person have shell access is me; files are not easily associated with a person (a hash is used). A backup is send everyday, after additional compression and strong encryption (using ccrypt), to another server, and is kept there for 7 days. Practically nobody but me could have read access to the files, and I have strong feelings about your privacy!

Cancel-Accept order seems to be better from usability point of view, and "common software" depends on the underlying platform (e.g. common software on MacOSX uses the order consistent with that found in FullRecall); a quote from dot.kde.org/1044312611/1044365145/1044366566/1044371352/:

FullRecall is used on different platforms, so "a common software" on a platform can be consistent witch the buttons order found in FullRecall. However, being inconsistent with user habits decreases usability, so I may eventually add an option to reverse the button order and/or an auto-setting of the order based on underlying platform.

The warning says that the item have been repeated many times and interval is still low. In other words: the item is very difficult and you spend much time on it. Some items are just difficult and we can do nothing about it, so in such cases it's safe to ignore the warning. But in most cases: we can reformulate question and answer to make answer easier to remember: question should be specific; answer should be short, ideally just one word; question should never force to you to enumerate many items (such questions can be often split into more items, every item that demands short, specific answer); sometimes you can also add an image or sound, or even a more explicit hint for the difficult item. After any substantial changes to the item, please use "Move to queue" feature from "Edit" menu, so item will be-reintroduced to the learning process from scratch (as it may have a different difficulty after the changes).

Yes. An internal user_cases.bin file optimizer (which is called when FullRecall decides that the file needs optimization) optimizes the file structure (so FullRecall can start faster), merges data, and throws away redundant data, which may result in a smaller file.

Close FullRecall, make a backup of database directory, open elements.xml, do a global search&replace in you editor of choice, save changed elements.xml and start FullRecall.

8kB per one question, 8kB per one answer. 128B per category name. No limits whatsoever as to number of items in the database nor size of the database (though free version is limited to 500 elements per database).
Network import/export has additional limits (4MB per file or 2MB per compressed file).

Yes. Newer versions are designed to read fully databases of older versions. Please make a backup of database before upgrading though, just in case.

Yes. Copy the executable, and folder with database along with its contents, to the USB drive (a sub-directory is fine).
If you don't know where is the folder with database is: path to it is always visible in running FullRecall in title bar.
You can create, on the flash drive, a batch file (e.g. "start.bat") that will start FullRecall from specific (relative) directory (using -d parameter), e.g.: fullrecall.exe -d fullrecalldb\
If you use images and/or sounds, try to keep them in a sub-directory of the database-directory if possible (also see this FAQ entry).

FullRecall-1.2.x on Windows 98/ME needs unicows.dll file from MSLU (Microsoft Layer for Unicode); you can download MSLU here. After download, unpack and place the unicows.dll file in "C:\Windows\System\" and FullRecall now should be able to start. (NOTE: it won't help Windows 95, Windows 95 is not supported at all by FullRecall-1.2.x and newer versions).

Yes, images and sound stored inside the database directory (or a sub-directory of it) have paths automatically converted to relative. So, for example, if your database directory is "C:\fullrecalldb\" and you keep images in "C:\fullrecalldb\images\" and sounds in "C:\fullrecalldb\sounds\", the paths (to images and sounds) in FullRecall database will be stored as relative.
Relative paths takes less space in the database and are portable from one computer to another.

FullRecall allows you to use regular expressions; regular expressions offer more than just the wildcard, but have rather beginner-unfriendly syntax. For the simple problem of the wildcard, you can use ".*" instead of "*" (i.e., ctrl+f, make sure "Use regular expressions" is turned on, in place of your "*" use ".*"). For more details (and the full syntax) about regular expressions, see external sources.

No, but you achieve the same with a "start script" that would be called instead of real FullRecall binary: the start script can download your current database from your own server, the start FullRecall, and (after FullRecall quit) upload the database to your own server (by ftp, scp, or whatever protocol you like). E.g.

#!/bin/bash
#script called before FullRecall start:
/home/dca/scripts/download-my-current-frdatabase.sh

#start FullRecall
/usr/bin/fullrecall-linux.bin

#upload the database to my server:
/home/dca/scripts/upload-my-current-frdatabase.sh

A similar solution with a .bat file for MS Windows is possible. The files that the "start script" needs to transfer are all files in current FullRecall database (path to current database directory is always visible, in running FullRecall, in title bar). If you need/want to extract the current database directory in the upload/download scripts: Linux/FreeBSD versions: `grep pathtodatadir ~/.foxrc/FullRecall`, MS Windows version: HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/FullRecall/SETTINGS/pathtodatadir

When item has been repeated at least 16 times (not counting any "forced" reviews or multiple reviews done on one day) and interval-scheduled-by-ann is still below 16 days.

• Make a backup of entire database directory, just in case.
• Pick "Export to FR format" from menu File→"Import/Export". Select the category, then click "Select" and choose a file name (e.g. "tmp.txt").
• Go to "Knowledge Manager" (from menu File) and delete the category.
• Pick "Import from FR format" from File→"Import/Export" menu and pick the "tmp.txt" file.
• Delete the "tmp.txt" file.

No, it doesn't skew ANN in any way. Forced reviews are usually suboptimal investing of one's time (unless one wants to increase retention disregarding optimal time/results ratio, e.g. before an exam), but are not bad in any way from ANN point of view (at the worst, ANN just doesn't learn anything from such review).

FullRecall can import data from MS Excel (and possiblly from other, non-Microsoft, spreadsheet applications) provided data is exported from Excel in tab-delimited format. So all you need to do is to pick (in Excel) "Save as..." from "File" menu and set "Save as type" option (at the bottom of "Save as" dialog) to "Text, Tab delimited".

Then, in FullRecall pick "Import Questions&Answers From File to Queue..." available under File→Import/Export menu and choose the file exported from Excel.

Please keep your images and sounds under FullRecall's learning database directory. If your learning database directory is "C:\frdb\", then keeping images (and sounds) in "C:\frdb\", or any subdirectory (like "C:\frdb\images\") will result in images (and sounds) stored in FullRecall database as relative paths, and that will be portable. See also.