#26 validation using user-defined string types

[Ken Monks]

In some situations, it is desirable to have students input
their answer in a notation that cannot be parsed as a
valid Maple expression. In these situations it would be
useful to be able to specify a Maple type other
than "string" at the c> flag in a question, but still
prevent AiM from trying to parse the student's answer.

For example, when asking a student for an answer that
is type RepeatingDecimal (see the Decimal package) we
must specify the Maple type as string to prevent AiM
from trying to parse it. What would be better is to
specify it something like

c> string,RepeatingDecimal

which would tell AiM to not parse the student's answer
string, but to check if that answer string matches the
Maple type RepeatingDecimal when validating it.

[Ken Monks]

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I have implemented this with the syntax String(mapletype),
where mapletype is a Maple type. However, this is only a
partial quickie solution. A better solution would be to be able
to specify the VProc at the c> flag in a manner similar to
what is done for the MProc at the s> flag, i.e. to allow syntax
of the form:

c> [validationproc,parserproc]

where validation proc is either a proc or a Maple type that
validates the students rawanswer as string, and parserproc
parses the rawanswer (as a string) into a Maple expression, it
would solve all of the problems related to this topic and we
wouldn't need these workarounds.