Automatic generation of exams in PDF format.
exams2pdf(file, n = 1L, nsamp = NULL, dir = ".", template = "plain",
inputs = NULL, header = list(Date = Sys.Date()), name = NULL,
control = NULL, encoding = "UTF-8", quiet = TRUE, transform = NULL,
edir = NULL, tdir = NULL, sdir = NULL, texdir = NULL, texengine = "pdflatex",
verbose = FALSE, rds = FALSE, points = NULL, seed = NULL,
attachfile = FALSE, exshuffle = NULL, ...)
make_exams_write_pdf(template = "plain", inputs = NULL,
header = list(Date = Sys.Date()), name = NULL, encoding = "UTF-8",
quiet = TRUE, control = NULL, texdir = NULL, texengine = "pdflatex")exams2pdf returns a list of exams as generated by xexams.
make_exams_write_pdf returns a function that is suitable for being
supplied as driver$write to xexams.
character. A specification of a (list of) exercise files.
integer. The number of copies to be compiled from file.
integer. The number(s) of exercise files sampled from each
list element of file. Sampling without replacement is used
if possible. (Only if some element of nsamp is larger than
the length of the corresponding element in file, sampling
with replacement is used.)
character specifying the output directory (default:
current working directory). If only a single PDF file is produced
and no dir is explicitly specified, the file is displayed on the
screen rather than saved in dir.
character. A specification of a LaTeX template. The package
currently provides "exam", "solution", "plain",
among others. The default is to use the "plain.tex" file unless
there are Rmd exercises in file for which "plain8.tex"
is used. For further details see below.
character. Names of files that are needed as inputs during
LaTeX compilation (e.g., style files, headers). Either the full path
must be given or the file needs to be in edir.
list. A list of further options to be passed to the LaTeX files.
character. A name prefix for resulting exercises, of the same
length as template. By default (if name is NULL)
the base name of template is used.
A list of control arguments for the appearance of multiple choice results (see details).
character, ignored. The encoding is always assumed to be UTF-8.
logical. Should output be suppressed when calling
xweave and texi2dvi.
function. An optional transform driver passed to
xexams (by default no transformation is used).
character specifying the path of the directory (along with its
sub-directories) in which the files in file are stored
(see also xexams).
character specifying a temporary directory, by default
this is chosen via tempfile. Note that this
is cleaned up (i.e., existing files are deleted) and only certain
temporary files are preserved.
character specifying a directory for storing supplements, by
default this is chosen via tempfile.
character specifying a directory for running texi2dvi
in. By default this is chosen via tempfile (and deleted
again) but, if specified by the user, the temporary LaTeX files from the last
iteration are preserved and not deleted. This is intended especially for debugging purposes.
character. Passed to latexmk if tinytex is available.
logical. Should information on progress of exam generation be reported?
logical indicating whether the return list should also be saved as an RDS data file.
integer. How many points should be assigned to each exercise? Note that this
argument overules any exercise points that are provided within the expoints tags
of the exercise files (if any). The vector of points supplied should either have
length 1 or the number of exercises in the exam.
integer matrix or logical. Either NULL (default), logical, or a
matrix of random seeds for each possible exercise to be set prior to calling
driver@sweave. If NULL no random seeds are set. If a matrix,
the number of rows must be n and the number of columns must
correspond to unlist(file). If TRUE a suitable matrix of seeds
is sampled.
logical. Should the LaTeX commands url and href
be replaced by attachfile commends when used for supplementary files?
This enables embedding these supplementary files directly into the PDF when
template loads the attachfile LaTeX package.
logical or integer. If the exshuffle
argument is non-NULL it is used to overrule the exshuffle
tag from the file (e.g., exshuffle = FALSE can be used
to keep all available answers without permutation).
further arguments passed on to xweave.
exams2pdf is a more flexible re-implementation of the old (version 1)
exams function (Gruen and Zeileis 2009), using the new extensible
xexams framework (Zeileis et al. 2014). A detailed
introduction is provided in vignette("exams", package = "exams"), also
pointing out relative advantages of the new interface.
exams2pdf proceeds by using make_exams_write_pdf to set up a custom
driver$write function on the fly before calling xexams.
This custom driver combines each exams with the desired template
(and inputs etc.) and then calls texi2dvi
on the resulting LaTeX file to produce PDF output.
For a single exam (n = 1) the resulting PDF is displayed on
screen (unless dir is explicitly specified) while for n > 1
the PDF files are stored in the output directory dir.
The argument control is specified by a named list, currently with elements
mchoice.symbol and cloze.collapse. mchoice.symbol
has to be a character vector with elements True and False,
specifying the symbol used for the questionnaire output in the final PDF file.
cloze.collapse specifies the character used for collapsing mchoice/schoice
alternatives within a cloze exercise. By default, these are separated by " / "
but with cloze.collapse = "\\\\" each alternative would be in a new line.
Finally, cloze.collapse = "enumerate" can also be used which employs a nested
enumerate environment. In the latter case, the questionnaire uses exclozechoice
rather than exmchoice (see exam.tex or solution.tex for an
illustration.
Gruen B, Zeileis A (2009). Automatic Generation of Exams in R. Journal of Statistical Software, 29(10), 1--14. tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.18637/jss.v029.i10").
Zeileis A, Umlauf N, Leisch F (2014). Flexible Generation of E-Learning Exams in R: Moodle Quizzes, OLAT Assessments, and Beyond. Journal of Statistical Software, 58(1), 1--36. tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.18637/jss.v058.i01").
xexams,
exams,
texi2dvi
## load package and enforce par(ask = FALSE)
##
## additionally, for simplicity, enforce using the basic
## tools::texi2dvi() LaTeX interface instead of the more
## flexible/robust tinytex::latexmk()
library("exams")
oopt <- options(device.ask.default = FALSE, exams_tex = "tools")
if(interactive()) {
## compile a single random exam (displayed on screen)
exams2pdf(list(
"boxplots.Rmd",
c("tstat.Rmd", "ttest.Rmd", "confint.Rmd"),
c("regression.Rmd", "anova.Rmd"),
"scatterplot.Rmd",
"relfreq.Rmd"
))
}
options(exams_tex = oopt$exams_tex)
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