Hi, When inserting special danish characters into a MathAppTextArea Component from a given string in a startup code, the letters are replaced by \u00e6,  \u00f8, and \u00e6 when running the corresponding MapleTA question. Interestingly, there is no problem with this when running the MathApp off-line in a Maple worksheet. Moreover, when looking into the grade book static image of the graded MapleTA question the problem is in fact partly solved there - the correct letters do appear, but in some cases the immediate pre-neighboring letter is changed into something mysterious. I would like very much to know if you have any suggestions on how to get around these phenomena.

Best, thank you in advance, 

Steen

Hi @jfw, This is a very interesting topic: How to grade free form questions. Because such questions are really good for testing at the higher ends of the learning taxonomy. Incidentally, I have tried to make a MathApp question much in the same direction as the one you describe. Below please find the cloud link to the corresponding worksheet, which you can download and use directly as a MapleTA question or simply off-line just via the worksheet itself. It may not be precisely what you are looking for, but in the corresponding startup code you will find a Maple evaluation procedure that can be used as is or changed to fit your needs appropriately? Link: Param_Construct 

Best, Steen

Hi @mschneider, Although you posted this question quite some time ago it may still be useful to have a look into a possible solution? I have tried to modify the original startup code according to your wishes. The modified MathApp worksheet is called MathApps-Resistors_02.mw. It is ready to be downloaded, inserted, and run as a MapleTA question with built-in grading on your MapleTA platform.  I have posted it to the Maple Cloud and you can access it via the link below. Also, for your convenience, I have annotated that same worksheet (in the file MathApps-Resistors_02_Comments.mw) with comments, by which you can inspect directly the corresponding modifications of the startup code - as well as the modifications of the original worksheet itself. The commented file is accessible via the other link below. I hope it works and that it can be useful. Best, Steen. 

Links: MathApps-Resistors_02.mw   and    MathApps-Resistors_02_Comments.mw

Hi @jmtrik, Thank you for your interest in this question! I know that you have been working on this for the other types of MapleTA questions. In MathApp questions we seem to have a good opportunity to sort of 'communicate' via the startup code with the student and have his/her input automatically guided in the direction of the correct solution. The correction of syntax of an answer given into e.g. a TextArea box  is one first important issue. Another is the use of 'forbidden' operators in the answer box, i.e. like int(x^3, x)  when asked to hand in the value of the integral etc. A third issue is the possibility of communicating adaptive guidance towards the correct answer. All within the same single (possibly even randomized) question. I have uploaded two MathApps to the Maple Cloud as illustrations. You will see from the startup codes, that the syntax check there (by try/catch) is still somewhat ad hoc, and that in fact this particular check cannot catch the error stemming from the missing comma in e.g. [[8,9] [4,5]]. Moreover, some error messages are not particularly informative to the student. An example is obtained when you miss a parenthesis in e.g. [[8, 9], [4,5] .Other error messages are quite informative, for example the one you get when you write int(x, x = ...). I know that you can, of course, just count the parentheses etc. and communicate errors of such type easily to the student, but it would be very nice to have a general descriptive 'unfold' of all possible errors like for the int(x, x= ...). Do you know if such a list exists? And if it exists how can then the try/catch machine be used to show the 'unfolding' of a given error? I enclose here links to the two mentioned examples in the Maple Cloud (direct uploads of *.mw to the present platform seems to be impossible from this end): Input_Check_01 and  Input_Check_02 , Best, Steen

Hi @Grapheur, I tried a few minutes ago to upload  [ScaleAndSolve_05.mw] (via the upload ikon) together with an answer to your question, but somehow it seems to have gone astray. I now try to upload the file again with this new note. If it is still not attached properly, I would appreciate, if someone could explain how to do an uploading properly to this platform. Best, Steen.

Hi Grapheur, I think your idea and suggestion to construct a MathApp for this purpose is interesting. I have tried to do something in that direction in a MathApp worksheet, which is uploaded with this answer and named [ScaleAndSolve_05.mw]. I do not know which lines you want the student to draw in the coordinate window, but I am sure this can be facilitated as well - maybe even with embedded ikons for the relevant actions - as in the built-in question template? I have instead embedded another (somewhat silly, sorry about that) question into the MathApp to show an example of communication with the student. I hope it can be useful and modified for your purpose? Best, Steen.

Hi, Math app questions facilitate a nice automatic 'communication' with the student via MapleTA, concerning e.g. the syntactical correctness of the student's input before evaluation and grading. I have managed to use the try-catch statement on parsed string versions of the students input in startup codes for this purpose, but in simple cases only. The procedure will disclose simple syntax errors (wrong number of parentheses etc.) without creating halting error messages at the student's front end and at the same time allowing the student to reset and correct his/her input. My question is this: Is there a general way to set up a Maple procedure in the startup code which in the same way will take in an expression (including errors) from the student and return - not the error statement, but a last exception type statement, that can then be communicated from the math app startup code in a controlled way  to the student to be used effectively for resetting and correcting his/her input? I hope it makes sense? Thank you in advance for any suggestions in this direction! Best, Steen

Thanks for looking into this! Unfortunately we do not (yet) have a local server for MapleTA, but this security issue could be an argument for becoming self-hosted. One way around the concrete problem (without self-hosting, I think) is to embed the needed (if not all) *.mla procedures directly via manual copy-paste into the startup code from the worksheet that defines the *.mla file. But this, of course, is much more cumbersome than the wished-for simple one-line reference to the *.mla file itself.

Your answer, however, then also induces a similar question concerning the use of repository files inside MapleTA itself, as thoroughly explained in:
[https://mapletacommunity.com/topic/64/how-to-create-and-use-a-maple-repository-in-maple-ta].
Admittedly, I did not check this out yet, but the question is, if this functionality also has been depreciated or blocked in the meantime?

Thank you very much in advance!

Hi, I am curious about how to apply commands from an *.mla repository file in the startup code for a MathApp question. I have put a repository file called GEO3.mla into our server folder [https://. . . ./Public_Html/] (which contains all the other material, figures, etc., for our class), so that the full path to the repository file is [https://. . . ./Public_Html/GEO3.mla].

How do I then make sure that a given startup code will be able to find and run the commands in GEO3.mla? I have tried to insert various libname extensions into the head of the startup code, e.g. as follows:

libname :=  libname, "https://. . . /Public_Html/";
with(GEO3);

but it does not seem to activate the commands in the repository file when calling them via the MathApp question in MapleTA. Does it require a special type of libname extension or a special location of the *.mla file?

Thank you very much in advance!

Yes, of course, thank you very much! My mistake was to think, that everything could be 'driven' from the startup code. I see now that this is neither possible nor in fact necessary when using TA both to set up the variables for the MathApp and to give the precise and individual feedback.