• Create with your project with npx trgkanki-template-cli init case_insensitive_type_answer base

  • Project name: case_insensitive_type_answer
  • Incoming branch: base

  Meta) Creating project

• Also Clone Anki's source code like mentioned here

  Meta) Cloning Anki's source code

Here's the vscode code view of our addon (left) and Anki (right) side by side.

Patching

Finding what code to patch

Your addon has full access to Anki's internal data and code. This means you can patch existing code in any way you want. This is both power and responsibilities. You can execute arbitary code on user's PC, but don't do any malicious things on the addon.

For example, my extension noctrlq disables Ctrl+Q hotkey for exiting Anki window. To do this we...

• Find where Anki registers Ctrl+Q hotkey for exiting. On qt/designer/main.ui, there is such a code. It's written in Qt5 UI file, but anyway this code registers the hotkey.

  <action name="actionExit">
   <property name="text">
    <string>E&amp;xit</string>
   </property>
   <property name="shortcut">
    <string notr="true">Ctrl+Q</string>
   </property>
  </action>

• Qt5 UI files get compiled to python file. A block <property name="shortcut">~~~</property> translates to form.actionExit.setShortcut(QKeySequence("Ctrl+Q")).
• It's quite hard to remove the code directly, so instead we can overwrite the shortcut afterward. So noctrlq, runs following code to remove all shortcuts of actionExit.

mw.form.actionExit.setShortcuts([])

That's a case of noctrlq. In a case of case_insensitive_type_answer, we need to find what code to patch.

1. There must be a function comparing typed answer and real answer
2. ... and it must be using case-sensitive string comparison or so.
3. So we modify the function to be case-insensitive.