Combination deck with "cards to learn" set riddle

[Matina]

Hi Ernie,

sorry to bother you!
I'm on Android 7 and Flashcards Deluxe 4.42.

I've got a main deck with vocabulary cards with category 2 either "unassigned", or set to "studied" or "homework".
There is also a combination deck based on the main deck with "cards to learn" restricted by categorie 2, where it is set to "homework" (Advanced layout active, cards to learn is set this way in both learning directions).

It worked a treat originally with the cards I imported into the main deck. However, as I'm updating the category 2 setting for particular cards, the cards shown in the "homework" deck won't reflect the change, or at least not right away. The changes I did are (using the list feature with multi-select and mode repeatedly):
1. set the cards previously set to "homework", to "studied" (the filtered list with categorie 2 = "homework" correctly showed no entries after this change)
2. changed filter to "unassigned"
3. I selected the first 5 "unassigned" cards and set their category 2 to "homework" (correctly, the number of cards with category 2 unassigned dropped by 5)
4. changed the filter to "homework", the correct 5 cards show up
5. changed the filter to "cards to learn", again, the correct 5 cards show up
I did these steps both from within the "homework" combination deck and the main deck (basically moving my window of "homework" cards forward by 5 each time). Worked perfectly.

For some reason, however, when I practice the cards in the combination deck, "old" cards show up first. When I've worked through them, the "new" cards do show up... I think I've misunderstood something. Is it that the combination deck remembers which of "yesterday's" cards I haven't learned yet? I have found that if I go through them repeatedly, only the five cards I expect to see are shown. I reckon this may well be a feature that I simply wasn't aware of. It wouldn't ordinarily matter either because I would expect students to work through their homework assignment on the current day, before updating category 2 the next time. Just need to know for my documentation...

Best regards,
Matina

[Ernie]

I think it's a simple explanation, but let me know if you disagree....

It doesn't matter if it's a combination deck or the main deck. If you change a category on a card only, this is not enough to force a re-gathering of study cards. So the cards in the study screen will stay the same. When you get to the end, the app will re-calc which cards to show again, getting everything up to date.

To force a a new selection of study cards, you either get to the end, or you change a setting in the "Deck Options" screen, such as Card Order, or Cards to Study.

The lack of re-gathering cards after a category change is not a feature. It's more like I'm too lazy to determine if the category change will affect your study deck, and not sure I should force the user to start from the beginning on such a change.

[Katja from Hamburg]

Hi Matina,
Indenpendent of the re-calc «now or later» question, I wonder whether you can avoid doing that manual change at all.

Are you aware of cards-to-study setting «streaks» (for Leitner) and «interval» (for space repetition).
My own setup e.g. for quick freshup is to learn upto a stroke 3. After that cards will be treated us «studied» and skipped from learning.
Of course much better is spaced-repetition as that will repeat cards with a growing interval. Also here are settings possible to skip e.g. after «target» is reached.

[Matina]

Hi Eddie,
Thanks for your quick reply! I'll put a bit of info into my documentation for the kids. That should be good enough ☺️.

Hi Katja,
I'm afraid I do need the category update because this is a set of vocabulary cards for an entire school year. As the kids go through it at school, they need to be able to tell the app which words they have to study as today's homework. But thanks for your input!

Best regards,
Matina