Re: Developing Moodle resources/sites with Org Mode

[Leo Butler]

On Thu, Jan 18 2024, Edward Doolittle <ejdoolittle@outlook.com> wrote:

> Thank you for your thoughts.
> I have used org-mode to do all my STACK question authoring for a few
> years now [1]. I do all the writing in emacs and then copy/paste into the
> STACK textareas, test, repeat. It is not elegant, but it is easier than
> working in a web-browser. It would be really nice to be able to create
> the entire question in emacs, because defining graders in STACK is
> pretty tedious.
> I had a look at the message you refer to. It is a good summary, and in
> line with what I thought was straightforwardly do-able. I haven't
> uploaded any of my problems to STACK yet but that's how I imagined it
> going: cutting and pasting like you say. In the long run I'd like to
> be able to export to Moodle XML, then automatically upload the XML to
> the Moodle site.

Yes, that would be nice to have. 

>
> I have been making use of tex1 and texput in Maxima to generate
> LaTeX. It is alarming to me that they may not be supported by default
> in Moodle/STACK. I decided to do most of the LaTeX generation in
> Maxima instead of writing the LaTeX and filling in the values of
> variables because of situations like the following: If Maxima has
> a0:-3 and I write LaTeX \(x-{@a@}\) I will get \(x- -3\) which is
> exactly what I asked for but unconventional. If I define Maxima
> output0:tex1(x-a0), Maxima will do the algebra and LaTeX
> \({@output0@}\) will be \(x+3\) as we would normally expect. Lots of
> little things like that made me prefer assembling expressions in
> Maxima and exporting them whole hog instead of one bit at a time.

Yes, I have gone down a similar path. I prefer to ask STACK/Moodle to do
as little as possible. One additional reason for this is that the list
of "disallowed" Maxima functions grows with each release of STACK.

>
> Some more thought will have to be given to how to create the grading
> trees. I'm sure it's documented somewhere but I'll probably just
> create a question with some complicated grading trees and export it
> from Moodle to see what the XML looks like. I think I won't go there
> for now because the Maxima fragments on the grading side run in the
> same session as the Maxima initialization on the question side in
> STACK, but that is rather awkward to fake in Org until there is a
> session capability in the Maxima blocks, I think. So it might be
> possible to write the grading trees in Org but would be difficult to
> test them.
>
> There is no export from Moodle to XML but there are external packages
> that will do it ... with what quality, I don't know. But once the Org
> file is in "Org XML" it should be relatively straightforward to
> transform it to the XML required by Moodle using XSLT or
> whatever. Lots of details, but that's my big picture strategy. I'd
> like eventually to export directly from Org to Moodle XML but that's
> currently beyond my skill set.

> I agree that we need ob-maxima.el to properly handle sessions. Note that
> you can use Maxima to create graphs, too.
> I posted my kludge to work around the lack of sessions to 
> https://github.com/edoolittle/org-moodle.  It's pretty ugly but works for now.

I have attached a different type of work-around. It uses Maxima's `save'
command and the :prologue and :epilogue header arguments.

>
> Again, the work to sessionize Maxima is probably straightforward but
> lots of details that are currently beyond my skill set. I am not
> proficient at Emacs Lisp. For now I'm concentrating on the low-hanging
> fruit that I can do quickly.

I have toyed with putting in session support. It does not seem too
difficult, but I have needed a reason to do it. Good is the enemy of
better.

>
> I have avoided for now using the Maxima "plot" command. Actually, it's
> "plot2d" in Maxima/Org and "plot" in Maxima/STACK. Note they are two
> slightly different things, which means that one must always be
> conscious of the context and not use any of the nicer "plot2d"
> features when writing questions that will eventually find their way
> into Moodle/STACK.
>
> Also "plot" is just too restrictive in some cases. I can graph two
> curves (parametric curves even) and put dots at their intersection
> points but I can't figure out how to label those dots. Which is A and
> which is B?

Oh, I encountered this problem a while ago when I submitted a patch to
the STACK documentation. IIRC, there is some undocumented numbering,
etc. etc.

I believe that `draw' support is a project goal, but I think that
jsxgraph has attracted much more attention.

> So even though I've used it in the past, I think I'd rather put my
> energy into figuring out how to generate diagrams with JSXgraph which
> is modern, sophisticated, and beautiful compared to plot. A difficulty
> is how to get the {#maxima-variable#} out of the maxima results and
> into the JSXgraph block. I /think/​ that's just a minor issue with
> noweb.

Yes, that's right. If you have a small example, please feel free to share.

>
> One thing that I am not sure I understand about your thoughts: do you
> envision a Moodle emulator based on org-mode, or do you just want to be
> able to write Moodle questions or glossaries with org-mode?
> I think an emulator is a bridge too far for now. What I want to do is
> run Maxima blocks to get a paper version of the exam with an answer
> key (for graders) and complete solutions (as an "exam wrapper" to
> return to the students with their graded exams so they can learn from
> the correct answers). Both questions and answers will have to be
> generated (the variable parts anyway) by Maxima because I want the
> capability to generate multiple different paper versions of any
> question/exam, perhaps even one version of the exam per student. Then
> for versatility I want the questions to be in a form that can at least
> be cut-and-pasted into Moodle, so I can use last year's exam questions
> as this year's problem set questions. With some tweaks, I hope to
> eventually automate the procedure of getting the questions into
> Moodle. The hurdles are correct XML format, grading tree, "publishing"
> process to include correct image files, the whole randomization and
> quality control subsystem (what STACK calls "deployment of
> variants"). I don't know how the latter can be made sense of in Org
> Mode. Even things like the random number seeds that index different
> variants might be interpreted differently in Org and STACK, breaking
> the connection between Org and STACK variants of a question. So lots
> of work to do.
>
> An emulator is possible ... we can run a Moodle server on our local computers 
> and see how we can get it to talk to Emacs.  But that is beyond my skill set 
> for now.

Ok, that clarifies things somewhat for me.

Best,
Leo

>
> Edward
>
> (Apologies for any formatting awkwardness; my Windows computer wants me to 
> write all outgoing mail with Outlook.  Need to figure out how to send 
> directly from Emacs.)