This is a tool to automatically generate exams based on individual problems. For this, individual problems are stored in the Exercises folder (configurable, see exerciseDir option), each in separate sub-folders named exXX where XX are digits.
Exams are defined using cfg files, one for each exam. The cfg files contains information like which problems to include. Using LaTeX, the system compiles different problems into exam.
Install LaTeX on you system. Make sure the commands pdflatex, bibtex and latexmk are available on the $PATH of your operating system. Furthermore the script sometimes uses either gs or pdftk (configurable, see usepdftk option) to combine several PDF documents.
from a terminal launch
ruppena@tungdil:~$ sudo pip install exaManagementSystem
this will compile and install the project to the Python libraries (eg. /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Exa_Management_System-1.1-py2.7.egg). Furthermore it will install a script in /usr/local/bin/:
- exaManagementSystem
The configuration and logging.conf are copied into
/etc/ExaManagementSystem/but it is possible to overwrite them either by placing a file with the same name (but prefixed with a dot eg..logging.conf) in the user home directory or a file with the same name in the current working directory.
from a terminal launch
ruppena@tungdil:~$ git clone https://github.com/digsim/exaManagementSystem.git
ruppena@tungdil:~$ cd exaManagementSystem
ruppena@tungdil:~$ sudo python setup.py install --record files.txt
To clean the working directory
sudo python setup.py clean --all
sudo rm -rf build/ dist/ Exa_Management_System.egg-info/ files.txt
If your system supports bash-completion, it can be activated to have option completion for this script. The file exaManagementSystem-completion.bash is copied during the installation into the folder /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/ make sure this folder is activated as bash-completion folder in your .bashrc, .bash_login or .profile
if ! shopt -oq posix; then
if [ -f /usr/local/etc/bash-completion ]; then
. /usr/local/etc/bash-completion
fi
from a terminal launch
ruppena@tungdil:~$ sudo pip uninstall exaManagementSystem
ruppena@tungdil:~$ sudo rm -rf /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/exaManagementSystem*
this will remove the package and any associated artifacts.
- To get help type following command in the console:
ruppena@tungdil:~$ exaManagementSystem --help
- To create a new exercise empty structure type:
ruppena@tungdil:~$ exaManagementSystem --make-new-problem
- To build a new exam:
ruppena@tungdil:~$ exaManagementSystem --build-exam -e XX
where XX is the number identifying a serieXX.cfg file in the Series_properties folder.
- To create all the exams
ruppena@tungdil:~$ exaManagementSystem --build-all-exams
This compiles all defines series in the Exam_properties folder.
- To generate a quick pdf preview for a given problem
ruppena@tungdil:~$ exaManagementSystem --preview-problem -p XX
where XX identifies on of the exXX folders of the Exercises folder. The PDF is opened with the viewer specified in the opencmd option.
- To generate a quick pdf preview for a given problem solution
ruppena@tungdil:~$ exaManagementSystem --preview-solution -p XX
where XX identifies on of the exXX folders of the Exercises folder. The PDF is opened with the viewer specified in the opencmd option.
- To create a single PDF containing all exams and the associated solutions in the defined order.
ruppena@tungdil:~$ exaManagementSystem --make-workbook
- To create a single PDF containing the collection of all defined problems
ruppena@tungdil:~$ exaManagementSystem --make-catalogue
Start by creating a new Exam-Folder
exaManagementSystem --make-new-lecture -l GL
This creates a new folder GL containing the necessary structure to start creating exam questions for the lecture GL.
Adapt the properties in the exam.cfg to your needs.
The first step is to create a new exam question
exaManagementSystem --make-new-problem
This will create the necessary structure and files in the exerciseDir folder of the exam.cfg file. Fill in the exo-french.tex, exo-german.tex and exo-solution.tex. Repeat this step for all exam quetions you would like to create.
Define a new exam in the examProperties (specified in the exam.cfg file ) folder. Create a file named examXXXXXX.cfg, where XXXXX can be anything, with the following content
[Exam]
titles: Pattern, Théorie, SimJ
exo-numbers: 23,1,24
semester: Spring
percentage: 30,35,25
date: 9.6.2015 - 14h / PEII --- C120
and launch the compliation of the exam with the command
exaManagementSystem --build-exam -s XXXXXX
the XXXXX corresponding to the XXXXX in the examXXXXX.cfg file name.
By default the properties for an exam are stored in the folder Exam_properties (configurable, see examProperties option). A typical config file looks like:
[Exam]
titles: Pattern, Théorie, SimJ
exo-numbers: 23,1,24
semester: Spring
percentage: 30,35,25
date: 9.6.2015 - 14h / PEII --- C120
It contains only one section: Exam with five keys:
- The titles key defines the topics of the serie and is a comma separated list. In the final document this will produce an itemize in the serie header.
- The exo-number defines which exercices are selected for this exam. The number references the last (numbered) part of one exercise folder.
- The semester will print the according semester on the first page of the exam.
- The percentage is used for creating the scale to print on the first page of the exam.
- The date contains the exam date and is also printed on the first page of the exam.
The general configuration is hold in a file called exam.cfg. It contains a bunch of key values which are grouped into 5 sections: Config, Lecture, Logo, PDF and Language.
The Config sections defines various folders like the one containing the individual exercises, the output directory, whether pdftk or gs is used for PDF concatenation or whether the generated files are zipped or not.
The Lecture folder defines some strings specific for each lecture like its name and the name of the lecturer. It also contains strings for naming the series and the solutions.
The Logo part defines the logos which are shown on the left and right of the header.
The PDF part contains options used by LaTeX when creating the PDF file.
The Language sections contains for each language a key value pair where the key defines the language and the value defines the exam title in the PDF. Additionally, the key is also used as postfix for the corresponding problem description in this language.
Additionally, the generated exam.cfg file is fully documented.
By default the folder containing all exercises is Exercices (configurable, see exoDirName option). For the system to work, this folder needs to contain a strict hierarchy. It contains several folders, all named "ex" plus a number, eg. ex1, ex2, ... ex10 etc. Each of these folders contain only one exercise, its solution plus additional material (which will be zipped) to be distributed together with the series and the solution respectively. The structure is as follows:
~:$ ls -lR Exercices/ex1
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 4 ruppena staff 136B Oct 6 2014 code/
drwxr-xr-x 3 ruppena staff 204B May 28 08:07 latex/
Exercices/ex1/code:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 ruppena staff 68B Oct 6 2014 donne/
drwxr-xr-x 2 ruppena staff 68B Oct 6 2014 solution/
Exercices/ex1/code/donne:
Exercices/ex1/code/solution:
Exercices/ex1/latex:
total 32
-rw-r--r-- 1 ruppena staff 711B May 28 08:07 exo-french.tex
-rw-r--r-- 1 ruppena staff 774B May 28 08:07 exo-german.tex
-rw-r--r-- 1 ruppena staff 4.2K May 28 08:07 exo-solution.tex
drwxr-xr-x 4 ruppena staff 136B Oct 6 2014 ressources/
Exercices/ex1/latex/ressources:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 ruppena staff 68B Oct 6 2014 code/
drwxr-xr-x 2 ruppena staff 170B Oct 6 2014 figures/
Exercices/ex1/latex/ressources/code:
Exercices/ex1/latex/ressources/figures:
total 792
-rw-r--r-- 1 ruppena staff 233K Jun 7 2011 decorator_uml.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 ruppena staff 76K Jun 7 2011 transparent_enclosure1.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 ruppena staff 78K Jun 7 2011 transparent_enclosure2.png
Each problem is made of two folders: code containing additional material to be distributed and latex containing the latex code to generate the problem.
Additional material to be distributed in zipped form with the problem needs to be placed in a subfolder code/donnee whereas distributed material to be distributed with the solution needs to be placed in a subfolder code/solution.
The problem latex code is in a file exo-[language].tex where [language] is one of the defined languages in the Language section of the exam.cfg file. The solution is written in a file called exo-sol.tex.
You can define as many exam languages as you want. Just be sure that for each used language suffix:
- there is a corresponding entry in the [Language] section of
exam.cfgconfiguration - there exist a
exam-[language].clsdefining the first page of the exam in the corresponding language. Therefore it would be possible to have another file calledexo-english.texand a fileexam-english.clstogether with a definitionenglish: Examin theexam.cfg. Thus, the script would produce the exam in three languages: german, french and english. The global config fileexam.cfgdecides which languages are produced.
The layout of the titlepage can be adapted by modifying the exam-[language].cls files. Following keys need to be defined:
- the layout of the points (per exercise / total) can be modified by changing the
\donepointsvariable. \indicationscontains general indications (No books, no smart-phone etc.).\exampreambleputs together the\indications,date,university/courseheader and\donepoints.\studentheadercontains the header where students put their names etc.
Resources used for the latex code are stored in a subfolder resources. This folder contains two sub-folders; one for figures to store images which are included with
\includegraphics[height=7cm]{\includepath/figures/inherit.png}
and one to store listings to be included in the LaTeX code.
Furthermore, it contains a subfolder code used to store source code which is later included into the LaTeX source with
\lstinputlisting{\includepath/code_tex/ADT.java}