In most cases – including learning Japanese or Chinese with the standard add-ons installed – adding a field Audio to the note and to at least one side of a card is enough, but more sophisticated use of the add-on is also possible.

This page describes how the add-on matches audio and text fields and gives examples on how to use more than one pronunciation per note.

Fields rules

The download mechanism uses the following rules to match audio fields to text fields

For most downloaders, plain text is used. The rules to find the source fields are:

  • When there is a field called
    • Audio or
    • Sound,

    the add-on looks for a field called

    • Expression or
    • Word
  • When there is an Audio or Sound field, but no Expression or Word field, the first field is used as the source.
  • For fields where Audio or Sound is a substring, this word is removed and the rest used to look for a field. For example, to get pronunciations for a field called Example, you should add a field named Example Audio (or Audio Example). When downloading, the add-on will find the field Example Audio, strip the Audio, clean up the space to get Example and look for that field to get the text.

To get Japanese pronunciations from JapanesePod101.com there has to be the reading stored in the note. The detailed rules are:

  • When there is a field called
    • Audio or
    • Sound,

    the add-on looks for a field called

    • Reading,
    • Kana,
    • かな or
    • 仮名
  • The substring rule is different for this case. For fields where Audio or Sound is a substring, this word is not removed, but the add-on looks for fields where that word has been replaced with one from the Reading list. For example, when there is a field called Japanese Reading, add a field Japanese Audio to download from the reading field.
  • There is no first field rule for readings.

All of these field names are not case sensitive. For example, expression, auDIO or SOUND will work.

The field names are defined in the lists in the file downloadaudio/get_fields.py in the add-ons folder. That folder can be displayed through the Tools/Add-ons/Open Add-ons Folder… menu item, and names can be added to the lists.

Examples

I use complex note types with many fields in my personal collection. Field lists from these models can be used to demonstrate real-life use of these rules.

Model Standard — Japanese

My main Japanese vocabulary model has these fields:

  • Expression
  • Reading
  • Deutsch
  • Zusatz
  • Audio
  • 例文
  • 例文 Audio

Applying the rules means that:

  • The plain rule matches the field Expression to the field Audio. The GoogleTTS downloader will work from the expression and download into the audio field.
  • The readings rule matches the field Reading to the field Audio. The JapanesePod downloader will work from the reading and download into the audio field, too.
  • The plain substring rule matches the field 例文 to the field 例文 Audio
  • For the fields Deutsch and Zusatz (and the audio fields themselves), nothing is downloaded.

Model Land, state etc.

For my world-wide geography deck, i use the fields:

  • CountryName
  • CountryName_Audio
  • Capital
  • CapitalName_Audio
  • Map
  • Flag
  • Inhabitants_Scalar
  • Area_Scalar
  • NameAlternative
  • NameAlternative_Audio
  • CapitalAlternative
  • CapitalAlternative_Audio

Here only the plain substring rule matches. The add-on tries to get audio for these field pairs:

  • CountryName → CountryName_Audio
  • Capital → Capital_Audio
  • NameAlternative → NameAlternative_Audio
  • CapitalAlternative → CapitalAlternative_Audio

Model 都道府県 – Japanese

Here some of the fields are:

  • Präfektur_ローマ字
  • 都道府県
  • 都道府県_Reading
  • 都道府県_Audio
  • Nummer
  • Einwohner
  • Fläche
  • Karte

Here the plain substring and the reading substring rules match:

  • The plain substring rule matches the field 都道府県 to the field 都道府県_Audio.
  • The readings substring rule matches the field 都道 府県_Reading to the field 都道府県 _Audio.

Here, too, pronunciations from different source texts are downloaded to the same field