The latest version of the Quiz software and this documentation is
available from:
http://www.usask.ca/~earl.fogel/src/quiz.pl
http://www.usask.ca/~earl.fogel/src/quiz.txt
Description
===========
The quiz software chooses a random selection of questions from a pool
of questions, and conducts a quiz, displaying one question at a time,
and displaying a score at the end.
Invoking the Quiz
=================
The program is invoked via a form, on which you specify the following
fields:
quizdir - directory containing the pool of questions
quizhome - the quiz 'Home Page'
nquestions - the number of questions to ask
Two additional fields may be used for debugging:
questions - a set list of questions to ask
debug - produce debugging output on screen
Here is an example form:
The Questions
=============
Each question (along with it's multiple-choice answers) is stored in a
separate html file, so you can change the questions and adjust their
appearance as much as you like.
Each question is a form, with a separate "submit" button for each of
the possible answers. Following the question there are several named
sections of html (the answers), corresponding to the value's of the
submit buttons in the form. After a question is answered, the response
for that answer is displayed.
Here is a sample question file:
True or False. The federal government passed legislation
suspending Chinese immigration to Canada?
tags
- the responses are surrounded by ... tags
- the "value"s in the question must match exactly the "name"s in the
responses (apart from leading and trailing whitespace)
- the correct response must always be listed first in the file
(but the choices may appear in the question in any order)
- all of the question filenames should end in .html
- three special files may appear in the question directory; these
let you customize the look and feel of the quiz:
HEADER - stuff to be displayed at the start of every question.
FOOTER - stuff to be displayed at the end of every question.
CREDITS - stuff to replace the standard credits which appear
at the end of the quiz
- the quiz uses temporary files to prevent people from cheating.
By default these are stored in the /tmp directory, but you can
change that by changing the value of '$tmpdir' in the program.
- there is currently a bug in the program so that if you have any text
that you want to appear at the end of the document (after the responses)
there must be a blank line after the last response
- try not to split the special tags onto more than one line, ie:
this is good
this is bad
Earl Fogel
February 1997