Prompts, warnings, and other tags

Prompts

The raw data that Cerebware works from is a basic text file, containing German and English defnitions, like this:
der Hund : the dog

In some cases, the German or Englsh entry may have more than one meaning, or may be translated a number of ways. To indicate which of several possible meanings is intended, add a prompt to the item within the 'Edit' dialogue window or directly to the dictionary file. Note that the 'English prompt' is the text that will appear in conjunction with the English item (when the software is asking for the German), and the German prompt will appear with the German item.

In the dictionary file, the prompt text should be marked off with [square brackets].
Sie : you [formal]

These brackets are not needed if the item is edited directly, within the vocab file.

Warnings

Unlike prompts, warnings are not an integral part of the word list, and can be safely ignored by most users. When extracting words from a block of german text, however, warnings will be added to the text file to indicate potential duplications. If, for instance, you don't want separate listings for the various declined forms of regular verbs, it is important not to add 'sagte' (said) to your vocabulary when you alread have 'sagen' (to say). Each of these words will thus carry a warning when they are first extracted (See 'Creating vocab lists').

Warnings are separated from the definitions by .

Other Tags

A variety of other tags are used in more elaborate dictionary files. These can include audio labels, sentence numbers, the names of image files, links to grammar lessons, and so on. The syntax for a fully tagged item is as follows:

german phrase [german prompt] : english phrase [english prompt] {context.au | sentence number | grammar label | pronunciation.au} (picture.gif | mnemonic picture.gif | mnemonic text)

Missing items must be represented if later items within the same bracket-type are to be indicated. For instance, the mnemonic text appears after two vertical bars, within round brackets, so if one or more pictures is missing then it may appear as follows:
german [german prompt] : english [english prompt] {context.au | sentence number | grammar label | pronunciation.au} ( | mnemonic picture.gif | mnemonic text)

german [german prompt] : english [english prompt] {context.au | sentence number | grammar label | pronunciation.au} (picture.gif | | mnemonic text)

german [german prompt] : english [english prompt] {context.au | sentence number | grammar label | pronunciation.au} ( | | mnemonic text)

For the majority of users, it is not necessary to know this format, but teachers creating grammar lessons will find it quicker to type such items into a word processor, cutting and pasting the tags as needed, rather than to edit the items individually through the graphical interface.