@jwatkins 

Very nice, thank you. My complaint about necessary spaces around the equal sign was an error on my part. I simply put in the wrong answer such as y2=x2/x1 (x2 and x1 reversed) and was more careful the next time i entered with spaces so that I entered y2 = x1/x2 and it worked as it should with spaces around the equal sign...

@jwatkins 

It seems to work with your solution but there are some technicalities I would like students not to bother about. It seems they would need to use square-brackets around the indexies and a blank was also nessesary on both sides of the equation sign when entering the answer.

When I'm trying to load your xml file with "Import Question Bank" (I guess that is how to do it?) I got the following message: "Errors loading the question bank, C:\Users\pluto\Desktop\manifest.xml : Reason: Error at line 1. Line ended while reading variable name (missing "=" at end of name?)"

..so I wrote manually in a maple-graded question when experimenting:

Correct answer: $TA

Grading code:

a:=solve($RESPONSE);
b:=solve($TA);
evalb(a=b);

Accepted expression type: Maple syntax

Algorithm: $TA="y[2]=x[1]/x[2]";

I somehow thougt that for instance 5a was interpretted as 5*a and a5 was to be interpretted as a variable. It seems that Maple TA interprets both 5a and a5 as 5*a!?