This file lists the changes in the AutoTest package that may affect the final user. (For a more detailed list of changes refer to the ChangeLog file.) 2008-07-02 (version 0.7.2): Changed the PostScript code generated by mkform -f1. The problem was that newer cups versions on some PJL printer (tested on a Lexmark T630) heavily modify the PostScript code of the files to be printed. As a consequence, the black magic performed by the PostScript code generated by mkform was ineffective. 2005-11-28 (version 0.7.1): The scanform script again produces files with extension .pbm 2005-09-27 (version 0.7.0): This version introduces a rudimental support for selecting the format of the answer form, as well as the maximum number of questions and the maximum number of answers for each question. Currently, two formats are defined: the first one (form version 0) corresponds to the old format consisting of 10 questions and 5 answers per question; the second one (form version 1) allows to have a maximum of 15 questions and 6 answers per question. Moreover, the new format is "adaptive", which means that the answer form will contain only the answer boxes corresponding to answers that are effectively present in the text form. To select the form version, include in the ATQ file the statement "\formversion{1}". Omitting this statement is equivalent to specify "\formversion{0}". The new answer form format also allows to fill the date and course name fields of the answer form. To specify the contents of these fields, use the "\formdate{XXX}" and "\formcourse{YYY}" statements. If you omit one of these statements, the corresponding field on the answer form will be as usual. WARNING: Since the format of the ATD file is changed, the score program cannot process the ATD files created by previous versions of the AutoTest toolkit. However, here is a simple workaround: edit the old ATD file so as to insert a line right below the first line, as follows: ATD $^/&%#+=-.123456789 -- generated by AutoTest [...] NEW LINE --> Form version: 0/E 1:[...] Incidentally, the code has been cleaned up so that it should be easier to create your own answer form or modify an existing one. If you want to do so, have a look at the rdform/form1.h and mkform/psform1.h source files. 2005-02-19 (version 0.6.1): The example line in the answer form is now simply ignored by rdform. 2004-09-13 (version 0.6.0): Handling of '%' characters has been changed: now, '%' is interpreted as the start of a comment only if it occurs outside of any ATQ command argument. If '%' occurs inside an ATQ command argument, either it produces an ATQ syntax error, or it is interpreted by the LaTeX engine (usually as a "start of comment" or a printable character, according to the TeX context). The new handling of '%' allows a much simpler handling of unbalanced braces. Generally speaking, a command like the following is not going to work: \question{This is an opening brace: `\verb-{-'\ldots}\good{True}{1}... In fact, the ATQ scanner does not recognize the \verb LaTeX command, thus the closing brace after \ldots matches the brace inside \verb. The solution is (now) simple: when closing the text, add a '%' and as many braces as required for balancing: \question{This is an opening brace: `\verb-{-'\ldots%}}\good{True}{1}... This works because the ATQ scanner does *not* consider '%' inside the argument of \question as a start-of-comment; thus, it keeps reading the two closing braces and the rest of the line. The second closing brace matches the opening brace following \question, thus mktest ouput a LaTeX blob containing all the text up to (and including) the first closing brace. However, the LaTeX engine skips the closing brace, because '}' occurs after the '%' LaTeX start-of-comment. (Notice that unbalanced braces inside the verbatim environment are recognized by the ATQ scanner and do not require any special handling.) 2004-09-09 (version 0.6.0): It is now possible to split the ATQ file in several subfiles. The new \atqfile command receives as argument a file name, and replaces the *whole* line containing the command with the contents of the specified file. (As a rule of thumb, the \atqfile command should appear alone in a line.) The included files can contain whole ATQ commands (typically, \question, \good, and \bad commands), but they cannot contain other \atqfile commands. 2004-09-02 (version 0.6.0): scanform should now work with recent bash shells; also, the suffix of scanned image filenames is now ".pbm" (Portable Bitmap) rather than the generic ".pnm" (Portable Anymap). 2004-09-02 (version 0.6.0): ATQ files in DOS format (\r\n instead of \n as line terminator) are now supported. 2004-08-31 (version 0.6.0): A new ATQ command, \preamble, allows to define a sequence of LaTeX commands to be executed right before the \begin{document} command of any LaTeX text file. If the ATQ file does not include a \preamble command, a default "\usepackage[italian]{babel}" command will be used. Thus, to disable italian hyphenation, just specify "\preamble{}" or "\preamble{\usepackage[whatever]{babel}}". The \preamble command might also allow to change the default paper dimensions of the question form (see the mktest/texfile.h file for the involved LaTeX symbols); or it could change the font face and font size of the question forms. In general, you should be able to put here any (La)TeX fragment that modifies the aspect of the question forms. WARNING: recent versions of the babel's italian language file changed the catcode of double quote (") to 11 (active character). As a consequence, double quotes inside \texttt no longer work as expected. Here are some solutions: (1) Use '\char`\"' instead of '"'; for instance, \texttt{printf(\char`\"Hello\char`\");} instead of \texttt{printf("Hello");} (2) Unless you rely on '"' being an active character, restore normal catcode by putting {\global\catcode`\"=12} inside the \advise text (note: it does not work putting this command into \preamble, because the catcode has to be restored after \begin{document}) 2004-08-30 (version 0.6.0): Verbatim environment now works inside the answers, and in general it should be more robust. 2004-06-15 (version 0.6.0): Feedback of gentest has been made both less intrusive and more informative on the weights of the answers in the forms. 2004-02-25 (version 0.5.4): The \verb command now works inside the answers. 2003-05-14 (version 0.5.3): The "fontsize{}" directive clashes with a LaTeX command, thus its name has been changed into "fontpitch{}". By the way, the clash yielded an error in the "master" script, which is of rather marginal use and should be rewritten from scratch anyway. Oh, well. 2003-05-05 (version 0.5.2): A new \fontsize{} primitive has been added to the ATQ grammar. It expects an integer value in the range from 10 to 12, which corresponds to the font size (in points) of the text in the generated question forms. If missing, a default value of 12 points is used. The option '-s' of mktest is now deprecated; use \fontsize{10} in the ATQ file instead. Please notice that you may still make use of font-sizing LaTeX commands (like \small) inside the arguments of \question, \bad, and \good. 2002-02-14 (version 0.5): On customer demand, introduced online compression and decompression of bitmap files. When scanning, supply the "-z" option to scanimage. When scoring, points the RDFORMCMD environment variable to the "zrdform" script. gzip (and gunzip) program is required. Warning: either customize the scripts, or be sure to include the directories storing "gzip", "gunzip", and "rdform" in your PATH environment variable. 2002-02-14 (version 0.5): Added the option "-n" to score (on customer demand). When specified, "-n" forces the program to evaluate both the selected and not selected answers of each mulquestion. Of course, the weights of the non selected answers are negated. 2001-01-30 (version 0.4): Changed the format of the ATD file. It is now possible to change the value of an answer "on the fly" by modifying the second line of the ATD file, and then re-running score. Temporarily, the old format of the ATD file is still readable by score. 2001-01-19 (version 0.4): Introduced randomization in the question order (now question from n-th group does not necessarily appear as n-th question in the text form). 2001-01-12 (version 0.3): The example line in the answer form was somewhat confusing if the teacher doesn't allow multiple answers for the same question. Now the example line has just one answer marked as correct. Warning: the old rdform program (version 0.2) refuses to analyze the new form, please upgrade all programs to version 0.3.