[Aimmath-commit] AIM/doc WhatsNewInV3.txt,NONE,1.1

[<mo...@us...>]

Update of /cvsroot/aimmath/AIM/doc
In directory sc8-pr-cvs1:/tmp/cvs-serv14288

Added Files:
	WhatsNewInV3.txt 
Log Message:
quickie rough draft of new features list for version 3.0

--- NEW FILE: WhatsNewInV3.txt ---

What's New in Release 3.0
-------------------------

* Multipart questions
    AIM now has implemented multipart questions, using a syntax similar (but
    not identical) to that in the Gent version of AIM.  See the question format
    documentation to explain how it works. 

* Focused mode
  + The user interface for students now allows them to focus
    on an individual question instead of working the entire quiz and one time. 
    This should improve response times quite substantially.
  + Once a student requests the solutions to a quiz, AIM now shows the solutions
    to the student every time the quiz is requested until the student explicitly
    requests a new version.

* Improved student feedback
  + The quiz selection page now shows each registered student a summary of 
    their current marks on all quizzes.
  + Students are now informed of the number of attempts they made on a given
    question, even if their answer is incorrect.

* Improved quiz navigation
  + when requesting a Mark or Validation on an unfocused quiz, the cursor
    returns to the question that the student was last working on, rather than
    the top of the page.
  + Solutions and teacher's answers now have a different color background than
    the rest of the question.

* Time limits on processing
  + The maple part of AIM now imposes time limits on many things such as
    initializing a question, constructing the solution, or marking an
    answer.  All time limits default to 2 seconds. 
  + There is a new timelimit>/tl> flag allowing you to specify a 
    different limit for a particular question. 
  + There is a new system variable Config['TimeLimit'] that can be set in
    ManualConfig.mpl to set change the system default from 2.0 seconds to
    whatever value is appropriate for a given server.

* Improved compatibility
  + As a first step towards integrating AIM with Moodle or other VLE's,
    AIM mark up its output in a way that can more easily be
    parsed by other programs.  This is mostly achieved by using <div> and
    <span> tags.  For example, question 7.2 now comes wrapped in
    <div class='question' id='question7.2'> ... </div>, and the solution
    comes wrapped in <div class='solution'> ... </div>.  
  + There are also some changes to move closer to strict compliance with 
    the XHTML standard, e.g. replacing <br> by <br /> everywhere.  This 
    will be useful if and when we move to using MathML.

* Postprompt flag
  + There is a postprompt>/pp> flag, for putting some text directly after
    the input box in a text question.

* Technical changes
  + There are some changes to the object oriented programming framework,
    to make it fit better with the Maple debugger.  In particular, the
    procedures used to perform methods, which were previously anonymous,
    now have names: for example, the 'Show' method for `aim/Question/Instance`
    objects is called `aim/Question/Instance!Show`, and this name is
    reported in error messages, and can be passed to debugger functions such
    as stopat().
  + There is a facility to make a list of all messages that might need to
    be translated for internationalization.
  + The trylast.mpl file has disappeared; it is replaced by the trylast()
    function which is now defined explicitly in Console.mpl
  + Several minor technical changes were made to allow compatibility
    with Maple 9

* Improved robustness
  + The old codegen package that was causing *lots* of problems when compiling
    questions has now been replaced with routines calling ToInert and FromInert.
    This should result in much improved robustness when compiling questions.
  
* Improvements to the Admin pages
  + The Zone admin page has been cleaned up a bit.  In particular the Zone
    student and administrator login page editors now have their own web page.
    The default for hiding subjects has been changed from hidden to visible.
  + The subject admin page now has a link to compile all questions in all 
    non-hidden subjects.

* Improvements in LaTeX formatting
  + Substantially improved default formatting of floats
  + There is a new global variable 'LaTeXDigits' whose value affects the number
    of digits used when formatting a float, but not the internal accuracy of the
    floating point calculations
  + n^(1/2) now formats as \sqrt{n} if n is a single digit integer 
  
* Exponential function and pi
  + AIM now defines the global variable e to be exp(1)
  + Students (and question authors) can enter expressions involving the
    exponential function using e instead of exp.  For example, exp(x) can
    be entered by the students as e^x
  + the global pi is now defined to be Pi, so students can enter either one

* New question authoring utilities
  + Several new packages and utilities have been added to aid in  
    question authoring:

    Trig    - authoring utilities for trig questions    
    Calc    - authoring utilities for calculus questions
    Inert   - defines Inert forms of Maple expressions and allows customized
              latex formatting of expressions
    SET     - defines an AIM class SET and related functions to get around
              the problems inherent in trying to use Maple sets in randomized
              questions
    Decimal - authoring utilities for dealing with the decimal representation
              of rationals
    Number  - utilities for dealing with the representations of integers (Roman
              numerals, converting numbers to words, etc)
    Random  - the Rand command now has several new features
    Keys()  - an authoring utility that makes it easy to generate quiz question
              selector functions
    Nice    - `Nice/Monomial`(), `Nice/Binomial`(), `Nice/Trinomial`() are
               utilities that produce "nice" monomials, binomials, and 
               trinomials similar to those usually found in textbook questions
    
* Servlet improvements
  + ???