The QUEST tool to produce multiple-choice answers pages

Introduction
On the web we can find a few tools that produce tests and quizzes for the inter- or intranet. However, these tools are not specialized to deal with high level math and to develop multiple-choice questions cointaining special caracter and formulas is often difficult and/or boring. In this section we describe how a teacher can easily create a PHP training page by starting from a simple Word or LaTeX document.

Basic idea
Several programs can translate a scientific Word or LaTeX document in an HTML document (eg LaTeX2HTML, for LaTeX, and MathType, for Word). However, to produce a training page we need to automatically add same radio buttons and a process that allow to check the correctness of each answer. In an HTML file the symbol '$' is not processed. This means that if the scientific document contains, for example, the special word $command$ this string will not be corrupted when we translate the scientific document in an HTML document. So, we can:

1. write with the favourite word processor a document where are planned multiple-answer questions;
2. add to the original document some simple keywords in between two dollars symbols;
3. translate the document into an HTML document;
4. convert the HTML document in the final PHP page substituting the keywords in between the two dollars with appropriate PHP code.

Figure 1 shows an example of document containing several keywords that will be interpreted by the QUEST tool. Here, all the keywords are in capital letters in order to differentiate them from the regular text, but the QUEST program is case insensitive.

Figure 1 - Example of document containing a few keywords that are interpreted by the QUEST tool.

QUEST keywords
As shown in Figure 1, at the beginning of the document is mandatory to insert the keyword $START$ followed by the name of the PHP file (name of the training session) that the QUEST program will create at the end of the process. Then, excluding the keywords $SCORE$ and $NEXTPAGE$, all the other keywords has to be specified in between the $START$ and the $END$ keyword. In particular, the $END$ keyword will be replaced with the 'Submit' button. We have planned that the document is divided in several sections having a progressive number. Each section can contain one or more multiple-choice questions. Furthermore, for each multiple-choice question only one is the correct answer. To specify a new section we have to insert the keywords $QUESTION$. This keyword will be replaced by a progressive number N and all the following radio button will be referred to the question number N.1. For example, the first time we have the question number 1.1, the second time the question 2.1, and so on. If inside a section we specify the keyword $SUBQUESTION$ all the following radio button will be referred to a question number equal to N.2. Each time the keyword $SUBQUESTION$ is specified into a subsection, the digit on the right is increased by an unit. To show in the final document a radio button we have to write $RF$ for a false answer and $RT$ for a true one. The number of $RF$ keywords is arbitrary but only a one $RT$ keyword must be present. The keyword $RESULT$ specifies where, after one has submitted the page, has to appear one of the following messages:
      OK,        This is not the correct answer
We can also associate with a wrong or correct answer a longer message. To do this we can use one of or both the following keywords: $MESSAGEFALSE$<<message_body>> $MESSAGETRUE$<<message_body>> where message_body has to be replaced by the text of the message. Moreover, two additional keywords can be introduced (see Figure 1 at bottom). The first is $SCORE$ and will be replaced by the number of correct answers. The second is $NEXTPAGE$< >. This last keyword will be replaced by the link specified in between << and >> only if all the answers are correct.
Below we show the result obtained by applying the QUEST tool to the page of Figure1.