mailing-list for TeXmacs Users

[Sam Liddicott <address@hidden>]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 4:35 PM, Julien Frontisi <address@hidden> wrote:

Thanks a lot. 

I get the general idea of the templates but in order to adapt them, I'm beginning to realize I first need to clarify what would be better :

- each exercise in a separate file or in a unique file, or files by exam, by year, by domain (linear algebra, calculus, ODE...)?

- how to name the exercises to sort them quickly (by exam, by year, by domain...?)

- what kind of outputs I would like (prints, pdf, .tm files which would be accessible over the net...)

Yes these are the questions. When you said "exercises" I thought you meant fitness!! I was going to suggest to write a book about all the excercises in which the templates are defined, and that becomes the style sheet for customer specific exercise booklets. This is probably because I was at the gym when I read your question.

Maybe also get something usable by others and to which others could contribute. 

Eventually create the Ultimate Unified Math Exercise DB in the World.

(Every math exercise db I know is made of chunks of (la-)tex, pdf, MsWord, Excel, and whatnot)

-> That could actually be part of a TeXmacs website. 

-> Except that I need to add my own commentaries to the exercises, not necessary relevant to other people,

like where I got the exercise, what year I gave it to my students (some students stay in the same class two years in a row

and should not have the same exercises twice).

The more I think about it, the more ambitious and out of control my ideas get.

Therefore all ideas are welcome, before even considering the technicals.

Such a large database is almost infinite, and I don't have the classification experience there. I wouldn't use texmacs as the basis for it. I would use a xml, mathml and svg to hold the questions and any accompanying diagrams and metadata. You could then use any database or xml database to hold eagh excercise, and do simple xml substitutions to replace values in the question. You may want to be able to express additional constraints, so that (for example) in geometry questions, angles are within a certain range and 2*angle is an integer, and so forth, and then use a cas system to solve for possible input values to the template.

Sam

 

Julien

Le 31 mai 2012 à 10:14, Sam Liddicott a écrit :

The templates I sent are a mess, but I did clean them up for you.

I'll be glad to guide and advise you on their use or make them better so that they are more suitable for you.

Please ask lots of questions, I want to make TeXmacs better for you.

Sam

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 5:45 PM, Julien Frontisi <address@hidden> wrote:

Thanks a lot for your quick answers.

It's going to take me a while to fully understand Sam's templates  but I'll try hard.

In any case, it seems to be what I need.

Julien

 

Le 30 mai 2012 à 09:44, Sam Liddicott a écrit :

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 4:56 AM, Aleksandr Dobkin <address@hidden> wrote:

I think there are several approaches.

1) You can put each problem in it's own TeXmacs file and include the ones you want in the master document using Insert > Link > Include... .

2) If you want to define all the problems in the same document you can do so in the preamble. If you put an assign tag in the preamble, e.g. <assign|p1|My Problem Text>, you can include in the main document as <p1>.

I do it rather like (2) but not in the pre-amble. I had to produce some documents which showed step-by-step how to configure some systems, and most of the steps were the same but took different parameters so I developed a nice way of parameterising paragaphs. See attached zip file.

There is a file: templates.ts which allows one to use:

<save-chunk|chunk-name|...>

In the document one can use <placeholder|name|default-value>.

The first time placeholder is used for a name, it defines the name to the provided default-value, otherwise it uses the defined value (which can be overridden <with|name|new-value> or <assign|name|new-value>

This way I can define blocks of document and then re-use them inside a <with|...> block to change the rendering.

So I write a document using the template.ts which makes all my definitions. I can save this document as a .ts file instead of a .tm file. I do not use the "source" style sheet.

I then use this .ts file AND the templates.ts for my new document. Then I can invoke all the pre-defined chunks as I like (with parameterisations) my document.

So in the zip file, templates-test.ts is the database.

However it is a couple of years since I wrote it and I will re-write it soon, but it is very servicable. I have trouble rememberering how to make the templateised graphics work, but you must specify the width and height explicitly!

Sam

 

Numbering you get for free by inserting Question environments, for example, using Insert > Enunciation > Question.

Alex

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Julien Frontisi <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,
does anyone know if there is a simple way to create exercise databases with texmacs with the possibility
to select and extract some exercises out of the lot and then automatically create a document with the chosen exercises ?
Hope that's clear.
More generally, select some items out of a collection and create a new document listing the selected items. (Besides manually copy/pasting each, of course...)
(Re-)numbering of the items would be great.
Thanks
Julien
ps : sorry for double-posting this on the texmacs-edu list and here, I'm not sure if that one is working yet (no archive available).

<templates.zip>