Re: DOCBOOK: Re: Markup for exercises

[martin.gautier@myrnham.co.uk]

>     <exercise>
>      <exerciseinfo>...as in sectioninfo...</exerciseinfo>
>      <setup>...information on what is needed to setup the exercise,
> student data etc...</setup>
>      <scenario>...</scenario>
>      <question>...</question>
>      <answer>...</answer>
>     </exercise>
>
...
>> Therefore <question>s and <answer>s should be allowed to appear in 
<problem> 
>> and <solution>, respectively. An <answer> should only be allowed when 
the 
>> <problem> has had a <question>. Unfortunately, this dependency is not 
>> context-free and therefore not expressible in a DTD.

Sure. Assuming that a <question> must actually be a question and <answer> 
is actually an answer to that question (<qandaset> can do that job). 
Perhaps we should think of these tags at a higher level. ie. <question> 
contains the objective of the exercise - which could be a question or it 
could be a task - whichever way <question> is interpreted, <answer> would 
contain the solution. Maybe it's as easy as saying the tag names should be 
<objective> and <solution>? 

Actually, thinking about it, <qandaset> wouldn't work as you'd need it's 
<question> and <answer> elements seperated...

I don't like this approach, it's too rigid.

Another complication is that an exercise may be more than one objective. 
Subsequent objectives might rely on the success of the previous objective. 
ie.

1. Write a program that outputs "Hello World"
2. Modify the program to make "Hello" blue and "World" red
3. Make the red "World" flash

Perhaps an element structure similar to <qandaset> (called <task> here) 
could be used to create:

     <exercise>
      <exerciseinfo>...as in sectioninfo...</exerciseinfo>
      <setup>...information on what is needed to setup the exercise, 
student data etc...</setup>
      <scenario>...</scenario>
      <task>
        <objective>...</objective>
        <solution>...</solution>
      </task>
      <task>
        <objective>...</objective>
        <solution>...</solution>
      </task>
      ... 
     </exercise>

Some method of controlling Stylesheets would be required to enable authors 
to display <solution>s or not depending on the documentation required. For 
example, a Student version of the document might not contain <solution>s 
whereas the Tutor version of the document would contain everything.

Mart