Home › Forums › Get Help › How do I ...? with Maple T.A.

Latex

Posted on 2008-02-06 13:31 By Colin Gillespie (Maple Rating 1 11)
Categories:

Dear All,

Does anyone actually use the latex facility with MapleTA? The more I look into it, the more I think that's the software is too buggy to be useful (that's the view that is echoed in past forum posts by other users).

The Maple TA documentation stats that you can author questions using the question bank, .qu script file or latex. Is there any documentation regarding the .qu script files? I've found only basic documentation regarding latex.

As an aside by current latex problem is using 'Maple' type questions, e.g.

\begin{question}{Maple}

\qutext{What is the derivative of $x^2$?}

\type{formula} % to allow the student to enter "2x"

\maple{evalb($RESPONSE = diff(x^2,x));}

\end{question}

On the latex2edu conversion I get the following errors:

first.qu: Unknown mode "Maple" requested for qu.1.1.type

Unknown mode "Maple" requested for qu.1.1.question

Unknown mode "Maple" requested for qu.1.1.info

Unknown mode "Maple" requested for qu.1.1.maple

Unknown mode "Maple" requested for qu.1.1.mode

Topic 1 is not fully set

Topic 1 (A topic) is missing question number 1.

But the .qu file is OK. Any ideas?

 

Best wishes,

 

Colin

 

A question for developers, MapleTA in plain html ›

MapleTA LaTeX

Comment on 2008-02-06 19:47 from Alex Smith (Maple Rating 3 232)

You are saying that the LaTeX example provided by the MapleTA documentation ought to work.

I agree: it does not work, especially in MapleTA3.**

The idea of integrating LaTeX into Maple and MapleTA is grand and worthy, but the implementation is pathetic.

I would love to use LaTeX to author MapleTA questions, but right now it is not practical. The confluence of LaTeX, html and Maple introduces ambiguities that the developers have not confronted. (Woe to the person who uses <!)

I tried hard to author MapleTA questions with LaTeX...hours turned into days which turned into frustration. There is no good documentation.

If somebody reports success, I would welcome their guidance.

 

Is there any progress on this?

Comment on 2008-03-27 08:14 from tobybailey (Maple Rating 1 73)

It does seem bizarre (pathetic even) that the examples in the documentation don't work.

Is anybody successfully using LaTeX to produce questions (beyond the simplest ones)?

Toby

 

latex2ta

Comment on 2008-07-22 04:30 from Grant Keady (5)

to Colin Gillespie

 

My understanding is that the response given by

http://latex2ta.mapleserver.com

 

should be regarded as "warnings" rather than "errors".

(I asked Andre Heck who had written quite a nice account of authoring

via latex2ta what all the output was about. The short answer is

"think of it as warnings, and irrelevant ones at that".

Andre and I would favour the code for this script being publicly viewable

so that we could try to improve it, or at least understand it.)

 

My firm belief is that the latex2ta authoring should be the default method

for mathematician authors of mapleta.

 

Grant Keady

keady@maths.uwa.edu.au

Well, I would prefered and

Comment on 2008-07-22 06:56 from fcsc (Maple Rating 1 13)

Well, I would prefered an offline editor, with latex capability for formulas, and maybe a Maple editor to introduce the algorithm,

but, in the mean time, with the resources we actually have i think latex authoring and edditing .qu is the best (in time and work) to develop questions, at least, to produce the formulas and write the question.

What I really hate is that with the examples of latex authoring i had discover a new question type: Matrix (yes i also read abut it on this forum) and graph capabilities (like sketch), so how many questions/options/newAndGreatThings are on MapleTA?

 

fcsc

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
}