Texam

Create PARKIN01 exams for TeX

The code Texam produces a tex file ready to be converted by the word processor TeX into a dvi file. The drawback is that the difficulties of dealing with a word processing language are added to the difficulties of using Parkino1. The advantage is that TeX can handle multiple fonts, equations and figures. The result is a book quality exam. The RK-20's which measure the effectiveness of the exam increase noticeably over the old exams.

A good reference to the TeX language is Computers and Typesetting by Donald E. Knuth, published by Addison Wesley, 1986. For visualization and debugging by indivduals preparing exams a minimal subset of the free emtex is available. A more complete free tex for windows can be found on the web fptex. In addition there are many unix version of tex available. In the physics department we use PC-TeX.

Unzipping btex.zip forms a folder btex with subfolders fortran and quests. The folder Fortran contains the executable texam. The folder Quests contains bat files texam, btex, and view. These along with the que and various output files allow the exams to be viewed on a dos like screen. The file commands.hlp directly under btex gives some directions for manipulating the emtex on the screen. the files reside in addition to all of the information about the individual exams. The source code, protected by Cathy’s password is in TEXBATF.ZIP.

Create your question file following the format of one of the Example TEXAM question files. Of course, the macros section can and should be saved as a separate input file. The directions can also be saved separately if this is practical for you---that is, if you don't have to use different directions for each exam.

Note: Do not start a line in your question file with a '{'. When the exam code reads this, it will interpret the left brace as the beginning of a set of answers, and you will get an error.

After creating your question, texam quefile. Your output will be quefile.tex

I use a file called exam.tex to typeset quefile.tex where I input the macros file and any other file you may need (such as psfig.tex, etc.).

The files necessary to run and possibly compile Texam are located at http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~coldwell/texam .