The AcroTeX blog

May 14, 2013
by D. P. Story
0 comments

On Requiring minimal time for a Quiz

A user recently asked whether there is a way to require the student to
review an exerquiz quiz for a minimal amount of time. That
is, the student is not allowed to press the ‘End Quiz’ button until a
specified length of time has elapsed since the ‘Begin Quiz’ button was
pressed; for example, wants to allow a minimum of ten minutes for his
students. This file represents my solution to this problem.

The technique uses my cntdwn package. (There are several articles on the cntdwn package on this blog site.) When the student presses
the ‘Start’ button, the ‘End’ and ‘Correct’  buttons are hidden. After the
countdown, the two buttons reappear and the student can then press `End’ to get
his/her score and ‘Correct’ to get the markup.

Click to continue reading min_time_quizzes.pdf

May 8, 2012
by D. P. Story
6 Comments

Countdown Maximum Length Input

This problem was posed to me by Dale S. He wanted to create a
text field with a maximum character limit, but want to be able
to countdown to the user the number of characters still available
to enter into the field. This article contains my solution to this
problem.

I’ve posted an updated version of this PDF; the version of the PDF linked below now responds to Ctrl+Z, which was a concern of  one of the comments to this article.

Click to continue reading: pdfblog_26.pdf

 

 

January 20, 2012
by D. P. Story
0 comments

Studies in formatting a PDF for mobile devices

Since obtaining my smart phone, a Samsung Focus, Windows OS, I’ve surfed the Internet and have viewed web pages and PDF documents. The experience of viewing PDFs is now as great as with many web pages. The document is normally formatted for paper 8.5 inches by 11 inches, for example. The line width extends perhaps as wide as 6.5 inches, with 1 inch margins. This makes it difficult to read the content; the user typically must scroll horizontally to read an entire sentence.

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September 11, 2011
by D. P. Story
0 comments

APB: Using the rmannot and cntdwn Packages

The AcroTeX Presentation Bundle (APB) is entirely compatible with the rmannot package and the cntdwn package.

The rmannot package, which requires a Acrobat Distiller PDF creator, is used to insert FLV (and F4V), SWF, and MP3 files into a PDF document. The files may be embedded in the document, or streamed over the Internet.

The cntdwn package is a general purpose LaTeX package (not requiring Distiller). This package defines several clocks; in particular a countdown clock. Useful if there is a time limit on the length of your presentation.

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September 1, 2011
by D. P. Story
0 comments

Annotating a Continuing Problem with Parts, and Page totals

In this technical article, we illustrate several features:

  1. Annotating a Continuing Problem with Parts: When a problem with parts crosses a page boundary, eqexam can now automatically insert at the top of the next page a text string, “Problem xx continued.”
  2. Page Totals: The calculation of these totals has generally been correct, except for the case of problems with parts crossing over page boundaries. I’ve had to rework the calculation algorithms to take this into account.

The PDF, linked below, contains some additional comments, and the PDF has the source file attached to  it as well.

Continue reading: annot_parts.pdf

As always, additional details may be found in the Eqexam Manual. Be sure to download and install the latest eqexam package.

September 1, 2011
by D. P. Story
1 Comment

The Exam Record on the Cover Page

The eqexam package has had for many years a coverpage option. In light of my recent work on page totals (see recent blog article), I’ve added a new option called coverpagesumry. The coverpagesumry option accepts one of three values.

  1. byparts: An exam record is generated on the cover page, one line for each part (exam environment).
  2. bypages: An exam record is generated on the cover page, one line for each page.
  3. none:  No exam record is generated (the default).

The PDF linked below, contain comments in them, and have the source files attached.

Continue reading: exam_record_byparts.pdf and exam_record_bypages.pdf.

As always, additional details may be found in the Eqexam Manual. Be sure to download and install the latest eqexam package.

August 26, 2011
by D. P. Story
0 comments

The fortextbook option: Part 4, Solution Manuals

The focus of attention of the three previous blog articles in this thread, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, was on the creation of the textbook itself, the Instructor Edition and the more lucrative Student Edition. We turn now to the methods need to create a solution manual, both for the student and for the instructor. The Student Solution Manual typically contains solutions to the odd-numbered problems and solutions to all the chapter tests, while the Instructor Solution Manual contains all solutions to the problems in the textbook.

Details of the steps to create a solution manual are contained in Chapter 3 of

A Book on the fortextbook Option: fortextbook.pdf

Chapter 3 is new and is the documentation of the LaTeX code that I’ve developed recently for the solution manuals.

The Instructor Solution Manual: fortextbook_sman_instred.pdf

The Student Solution Manual: fortextbook_sman_stued.pdf

Source files: fortextbook.zip

Pick up the latest version of eqexam, containing changes brought about by the development of the commands for the solution manuals. Download and install eqexam_pack.zip from the eqexam home page.

 

August 10, 2011
by D. P. Story
0 comments

The fortextbook option: Part 3, Instructor Edition Online

The eqexam package is compatible with the hyperref package, and is tightly integrated with exerquiz (part of AeB). In this article, we compiled fortexbook.ltx, first introduced in the article The fortextbook option: Part 1, The Instructor Edition, with the hyperref and exerquiz packages using the package statements

\usepackage[dvips,colorlinks]{hyperref}
\usepackage[dvips,nodljs]{exerquiz}

Continue Reading →

August 7, 2011
by D. P. Story
1 Comment

The fortextbook option: Part 2, The Student Edition

The student edition is the one that is mass produced and sold to the student population. The answers to the odd-numbered problems are in the back of the book, the all answers or only odd-numbered answer to the chapter tests may also appear in the solution section of the book.

The document linked below is the same one that appears in the first article, The fortextbook option: Part 1, The Instructor Edition, but it is compiled using the studented option.

\textbookOpts{studented,marginsonleft}

Continue reading in PDF: fortextbook_se.pdf

 The source file is attached to the PDF.

fortextbook

August 6, 2011
by D. P. Story
0 comments

The fortextbook option: Part 1, The Instructor Edition

We begin a thread on a  major new feature of the eqexam package; the new feature is accessed through the fortextbook option, and as the name suggests, it is designed to support the authoring of  textbooks, in particular, but not restricted to, textbooks as published in the United States.

This article highlights the instred option,

\textbookOpts{instred,marginans,marginsonleft}

this is the edition of the book the instructor would get. In the U.S., the answers to the problem appear in the body of the text, either immediately following the question, or in the margins.

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