** Using WeBWorK **

Thanks, Tom

<| Post or View Comments |>

The reason that the answer shows up in italics is because the preview is processed by LaTeX, and (in the absense of other TeX commands) text will be typeset as though it were variables (i.e., using the math italic font), and spaces will be ignored. The reason that it is in upper case is probably because the answer checker has put the answer into upper case to do a case-insensitive check against the expected answer.

You might be able to solve the problem by adding a post-filter the answer checker that puts an \hbox{...} around the student's answer, so that it will be typset as normal text. Note, however, that if the student has entered TeX special characters (like $ or %) as part of his answer, this can cause problems for the previewer (whether you put the \hbox in or not).

Davide

<| Post or View Comments |>

Sorry, about not posting that information. WW1 seems like a long time ago. We're using WW2.1.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get your suggestion to work. Here's the situation we're looking at. We have a multiple choice question and the initial code is below:

# Make a new checkbox multiple choice

$tf = new_pop_up_select_list();

$tf->ra_pop_up_list(["?"=>"Select Answer", "No Solution" => "No Solution", "Infinite Solutions" => "Infinite Solutions", "Unique Solution" => "Unique Solution"]);

Changing the second entries by inserting a hbox or mathrm negatively affects what the student sees.

Changing the first entry causes an ugly display when Webwork checks whether the student's answer is correct.

Currently, the problem is that when Webwork checks the student's answer, the entries showing up in the "Answer Preview" column are all in upper-case, italics, which can be very hard to read. The "perfect" solution would be for normal text to be printed in this column. For this type of problem, we can control what the answers look like, so we don't have to worry about a student entering in special TeX characters.

Thanks, Tom

<| Post or View Comments |>

  ANS(str_cmp($tf->ra_correct_ans));

Davide

<| Post or View Comments |>