[LON-CAPA-users] Item-property problem

[Ray Batchelor]

Hi Hon-Kie,
   If you are looking for an immediate solution to the matching lists type of 
problems....    This may not be what you want, but I offer these observations 
for consideration.            
   What I am doing is:  translating my CAPA code with convert and 
keeping many of  the &map and & choose functions, but trying to avoid leaving 
any html or TeX in them.  What I end up with is a sort of hybrid based on a 
simple option response question in which the foils' text blocks contain 
randomized variables from the perl script, (and any html or xml tags that I 
might need).  The optional responses might be something like the letters a 
through j.  In the main text block, I include  a list or table of a - j with 
accompanying randomized variable statements which were also defined in the 
perl script. 
  I find this simpler (when converting CAPA questions) -- i.e. to have say 
only four or five foils containing variables &mapped from a much much longer 
list of possible choices in the perl script.    
   I realize that the loncapa way would be to have a lots of 
foils....though I would still have to use the perl script to create the 
randomly selected and permuted matching list (I think).   Maybe there is a 
better way though?

   I am currently thinking of trying to use simultaneous option response 
blocks so that I can have the options individualized for each foil using 
variables as the options (i.e. doing away with my a - j letter labels).  It 
would be nice is these options could contain mark-up tags as well as text 
(perhaps even little <img>s..... One can but dream).

  Actually what would be nicer is to do-away with the option drop-boxes 
altogether and just be able to click on the text string or in-line images 
that one wants to choose!   (click on the image questions would also be a 
nice option...)  However, what I am doing above doesn't take much effort and 
works....and we shall see how/if it prints soon I hope.
  
Cheers,
Ray

PS One thing I still need to do after using 'convert' on my CAPA stuff is to 
search for strings that were assembled with '+' because that has to be 
replaced with '.'