Release notes for WeBWorK 2.8

This article is under construction. Use the information herein with caution until this message is removed.

Cautions

Warning :

Because new tables and fields have been added to the OpenProblemLibrary and for new MathAchievement features upgrading from stable webwork (WW-2.7) will require:

• Upgrading the tables by visiting the admin page. (The main change will be to add the field "description" to the set and user_set tables.)
• Updating the library collection webwork-open-problem-library
• Running webwork2/bin/OPL-update to update the library tables.

 sudo -E webwork2/bin/OPL-update # you may need the sudo if you don't have permission to write new files in webwork2/htdocs

• To use these instructions your server will require at least perl version 5.10.x (5.12.x would be better, 5.18 is the current version) to run weBWorK release/2.7. Type perl --version on the command line of your server to check.

What's new?

• Installation and administrative updates (including course upgrades)
  • New CPAN modules:
    • Add requirement for JSON.pm (for sage)
  • Tweaks to update course page -- slightly less scary error messages. -- adding harmless: in front of the message helps but we should change the color on these.
• Configuration updates
• Library updates
  • OPL is now default library for sure
  • You can now search for problems by level
  • Tagging buttons can be enabled for certain users
  • OPL taxonomy also stored in json file created when OPL-update is run.
  • More like this button in OPL
• Homework manager updates
  • Datepicker (calendars) in Homeworksets1 & 2
  • Add homework set descriptions as well as file names -- helps keep file names short. (requires database upgrade?)
• Classlist manager updates
• Authentication updates
  • Cosign.pm -- fix typos
• Theme updates
  • Math4 theme updates. (Goehle and Hsu)
• Other instructor interface updates
  • Instructors can choose to show paths on hardcopy (or not).
  • Fixed glitch in Statistics graph
• MathAchievement updates
  • Add tabs to Achievement editor.
  • New "potions" -- allow for perks for doing well on homework.
    • (requires database upgrade?)
• Accessibility updates
  • MathJax configured to provide better accessibility. Configured now only defaults.config.
• Student problem interface updates
  • numOfAttempts should now gives the expected results in homework sets. Previously the number of attempts might be off by one. (Gatewayquizzes need more testing.)
  • Removed old methods of displaying math
    • Should ascii math be restored?
    • Should LatexMathML be restored?
    • Should jsMath be restored?
• Localization/Translation updates
  • Chinese and Korean translations added.
• PG updates
  • Updates to probability and statistics macros (Kelly Black)
  • PGstatisticsGraphMacros.pl
  • Sage cell macros added (sage.pl added)
  • AskSage() call defined.
  • GeoGebraWebApplet added -- support for Geogebra HTML5 applets
  • contextComplexJ -- allows j to be used for square root of minus one -- for engineering classes
  • Chromatic.pm -- added to standard distribution -- used in graph theory problems.
  • New Matrix MathObjects features: MatrixCheckers.pl MatrixReduce.pl MatrixUnits.pl
  • CompoundProblem2.pl -- new support for writing sequential problems
• Database updates
• Minor bug fixes and tweaks
  • Fix PGalias bug where files have the same name but different extensions.
  • Essay answers can have new lines.
  • add _init function to contextTypeset.pl so that it is not reloaded.
  • Move text2PG.pl from Union macros to the main macros file folder pg/macros
• Under the hood changes
  • WEBWORK_DIRECTORY is insured to be defined in WeBWorK::Constants.
  • js directory reorganized (again :-) )
  • Massive number of tweaks to make the basic WeBWorK CMS interface validate to W3 standards. Problems will usually not validate, mainly because of the use of $PAR which is not a container.

What could possibly go wrong?

• There are warning messages at the bottom of the page labeled Harmless: .... .
  • These indicate that many older courses have an extra field named published. This field was replaced by the field "visible" and has not been used for some time. In a future version of WeBWorK this field will be automatically removed, but we leave it in place for the moment for those rare cases where there is important data in the field. The extra field does no harm and the warning messages simply alert you that the unused field is still there.
• There are a series of warning messages that $displayMode is undefined.
  • This is most likely because you were using one of the display modes for showing equations that is now deprecated (e.g. jsMath). Click on the radio buttons in the lower left of the page to switch to MathJax or images mode. Also reset the default choice for displayMode in localOverrides.conf. You may also need to reset the default courses for individual courses on the Course Configuration page.
• There is a warning message that your modelCourse is not up to date
  • See Release_notes_for_WeBWorK_2.7#Update_modelCourse_and_Library
  • Construct the link using

  cd webwork/courses
  sudo mv modelCourses modelCourses.old
  sudo ln -s ../webwork2/courses.dist/modelCourse modelCourse

On deck for next release

• New field hide_hints will require course upgrade
  • This allows disabling of all hints so that a homework set can be used as a quiz with all the hints removed.
• Mathjax is replaced by a link to a folder at webwork/MathJax. This simplifies some git processes, but
  • you must verify the link is pointed correctly if you are not using standard layout
  • if you switch to a previous branch you will have to create and commit this link -- the mathjax submodule will be wiped out
• To set all of the file permissions in webwork use

  sudo -E /opt/webwork/webwork2/bin/setfilepermissions

• • In particular the directory pg/lib/chromatic needs to have write permissions for the server since the C code color is compiled into it.

• Minor bug fixes