An Anki add-on for importing Pleco bookmarks, enhancing the integration of two essential tools for learning Chinese.
It streamlines flashcard creation by automatically transferring character info, pinyin, definitions, and examples from Pleco Bookmarks to Anki cards, with improved formatting.
Optionally, it includes context-rich example sentences from Spoonfed Chinese for enhanced pronunciation practice.
- Install the AddOn through AnkiWeb using the code
427686509OR by downloading and double-clicking thepleco_to_anki.addonfile . - Export Pleco Bookmarks on your phone and save them on your computer. Make sure to use these settings.
- Import the Bookmarks in Anki under
Tools -> Import Pleco Bookmarks - Reformat the cards to your liking
The Pleco app allows for users to store bookmarks and to export these bookmarks to a textfile. This tool will parse the textfile and import the bookmarks into Anki. The bookmarks will be sorted into corresponding fields in Anki, such as the Chinese characters, pinyin, definition, and example sentences.
After importing the Bookmarks, one only has to give the cards a final touch in Anki to ones liking, for example by deleting redundantly much information, adding pictures, or changing the note type.
Since the information stored in Pleco bookmark is not well sorted, this tool does not work perfectly, sometimes the formatting of the information will be off or sorted in the wrong field. However, it still speeds up the process of building high quality anki cards, since it automates most of the work and adds some clever HTML formatting to the notes.
Additionally, this Add-On can add example sentences from Spoonfed Chinese to the Anki cards. The add-on will add sentences from the Spoonfed Chinese anki deck that contain the word at hand to the card. Since the Spoonfed decks contain thousands of sentences with audio files from native speakers, this is a great way to learn and practice chinese pronounciation from context. In order for this feature to work, the Spoonfed anki deck need to be loaded in your Anki decks. The deck can be bought on the website of Spoonfed Chinese (https://promagma.gumroad.com/l/IEmpwF).
- Bookmark in Pleco
- Raw Data after exporting the Pleco Bookmarks
- Card after importing the Pleco Bookmarks into Anki using this tool
- Card after manually editing the card in Anki
Three options.
- Download the latest release through Anki by using the
427686509in the Anki AddOns menu:Tools -> AddOns -> Get AddOns -> code - Download the latest
pleco-to-anki.ankiaddonfile from GitHub and install it by double-clicking or in AnkiTools -> AddOns -> Install from file - Download the source code and place the folder
pleco_to_ankiin the Anki AddOn folder, which, at least under Windows, is located at.../AppData/Roaming/Anki2/addons21'
If you want to use the Spoonfed Chinese feature, you need to have the Spoonfed Chinese anki deck loaded in your Anki collection. The deck can be bought on the website of Spoonfed Chinese (https://promagma.gumroad.com/l/IEmpwF).
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In the pleco app got to
Import / Export-Export Bookmarks -
Make sure to match the
File FormatandInclude Dataoptions from the screenshot below. As for theCharacter Set, you can choosetraditionalorsimplified.
Then Begin Export.
- Go to the file manager and send the file to your computer, e.g. via Messenger, AirDrop, E-Mail etc.
In Anki go to Tools -> Import Pleco Bookmarks.
Select the file you just exported from Pleco and click ok.
The options are set to the default values, which should work fine.
In general the options toggle some of the features described below.
Example of a card after importing the Pleco bookmarks. In red the example sentences from Pleco, in green the example sentences from Spoonfed Chinese.
View of the note in anki while editing. Either edit the note in the standard view or click on the button to the top right of each field to edit the HTML code directly.
Same card after manual editing.
The defintion with examples in pleco bookmarks are not sorted or seperated in any way. This tool tries to identify example sentences and sort them into a seperate field.
e.g. the definition of 中國 is 'China 中國大陸 zhōngguó dàlù Chinese mainland; mainland of China ....
This string will be split into two fields:
definition: China
Example: 中國大陸 zhōngguó dàlù Chinese mainland; mainland of China ....
This also works for words with multiple definitions and examples.
The tool creates notes with the fields Chinese, Pinyin, Definition, Example (and Spoonfed if the feature is turned on).
Pleco bookmarks contain numerical pinyin (e.g. ni3 hao3). This tool converts the numerical pinyin to pinyin with tone marks (e.g. nǐ hǎo).
For this feature, we use a custom fork of the open source tones respository.
HTML tags will be added to the example sentences to make them look nicer in Anki. Most importantly the pinyin and translation of an example sentence will be hidden behind the Chinese characters and only be shown when clicking on the Chinese characters. The motivation for this is to make it easier to practice reading Chinese characters and not to rely on the pinyin and translation too much.
For example, the example sentence 中國大陸 zhōngguó dàlù Chinese mainland; mainland of China of the word 中國 after importing to Anki will look like this:
Pleco notes can contain some keywords such as verb, idiom, (TW) etc. This tool will reformat these keywords to make them look nicer in Anki by replacing them and adding HTML tags for styling.
For example here 
the keywords verb and adjective are replaced by v. and SV.
The replacement of keywords can be customised by changing the keyword_replacements.py file in the config\pleco folder.
If you have the Spoonfed Chinese anki deck loaded in your Anki decks, this tool can add example sentences from the Spoonfed Chinese anki deck to the Anki cards. The tool adds up to 3 example sentences from the Spoonfed deck that contain the word at hand to the card. The idea is, to chose the sentence that best fits the desired difficulty level and to delete the other sentences. Then, everytime when reviewing the card, one can listen to the Spoonfed example sentence and try to repeat it. Both traditional and simplified characters are supported, specify which one you want to use in the settings. The number of cards can be changed in the settings. The feature can be turned on TODO: add example, add settings
In this example, 3 sentences contain the character 藏 but actually, the first and third sentences contain the compound word 收藏 instead of the single character verb 藏 which I want to learn. So I quickly delete the first and third sentence and keep the second one for my notes.
