WinFlash v3.1 was released primarily to make available new improvements to the way the program selects the Q&A pairs.  WinFlash v3.0 had some performance problems when choosing a Q&A pair from a category containing only one (or a very small number of) Q&A pair(s) from a file containing many Q&A pairs.  In the History Mode, for example, the first Q&A pair promoted to Short Term Learned would appear to turn up much too frequently after its promotion and, depending upon the speed of your computer, might take a considerable time to appear each time it was chosen.

Let's take an example.  Say the Q&A file contains 100 Q&A pairs and the Frequency settings are at 75%, 20% and 5% for Unlearned, Short Term Learned and Long Term Learned, respectively.

While all 100 Q&A pairs are Unlearned, they appear at random (even though there may be repeats - this has also been fixed in v3.1 - almost no back-to-back repeats of the same Q&A pair!).  As soon as the first Q&A pair is promoted to Short Term Learned it begins to appear 20/95 of the time, since it's the ONLY Q&A pair in that category.

A new algorithm has been developed which automatically tunes the setting for each category so that the frequency of appearance is what you expect, regardless of the number of Q&A pairs which occupy each category.  This algorithm has been applied to all three of the multi-category Q&A modes.  You may want to readjust the Frequency settings you currently have set for your files in light of these improvements.

In addition, the function used to choose a Q&A pair from the selected category has been rewritten for improved randomness.

A new installation program, SETUPWF.EXE is now included within the archive file, so installation of WinFlash into Windows' Program Manager or other shell is now quick and easy.

The on-line Help for WinFlash has been reedited and expanded and the registration procedures have been simplified - including the listing of a new 800 number for voice or faxed phone registrations.

A bug which could cause WinFlash to hang if File|Statistics was selected while WinFlash was displaying an Answer is now fixed.

 

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