Quiz Master Copyright (C) Moose O'Malley, ----------- March 2015. +===========================================================+ | T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S | +===========================================================+ | * Introduction | * Using this Program | * Question and Answer File Format | * Quiz Results File Format | * The Future | * Reviews / Awards / CDs | * Freeware Information | * Warranty | * Amendment History | * Contacting the Program's Author +===========================================================+ Introduction : -------------- Paper Quiz Generator is for IBM compatible PCs, desktops, laptops, netbooks, etc running any version of Windows from Windows 95 onwards, which includes Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, etc, 32 and 64 bit. This program is free software. Anyone - any person, any company, or any business - can use this program for free. No fees or payment is required. See "Freeware Information" below. Paper Quiz Generator is a program that enables you to generate paper based true/false and multiple choice quizes - consisting of a random selection of questions and the randomised answers for each question - from files of questions and answers that you provide. Paper Quiz Generator is ideally suited for generating the true/false and multiple choice (A,B,C,D,E,etc) question sections of paper based exams, assignments, tutorial questions, and so on. Paper Quiz Generator enables you to: - Select a file containing the Questions and Answers or drag and drop a file from Windows Explorer (see "Question and Answer File Format" below), - Specify the number of questions to ask (questions are selected at random from the question and answer file), - Specify various other settings such as: * Appending an auto-incremented sequence number to output file names so you can generate many question and answer files by just repetitively clicking the "Create" button. * Whether to include a quick marking summary at the top of each answer file. This makes it much faster and much easier to mark quiz attempts. * Whether to show a success message dialog after each quiz is created. * etc - You can view / edit the questions and answers file, and the generated quiz questions file and quiz answers file by clicking the "Open" buttons to the right of each file name's data entry box. Paper Quiz Generator is very easy to use. A couple of minutes (or less) and you will be an expert in using Paper Quiz Generator. For information about the required question and answer file format, see "Question and Answer File Format" below. A sample Questions and Answer file is included in the ZIP file for this program. See file called "Moose's Sample Quiz.qiz". Also, two sample quizes generated from this Questions and Answer file, and their corressponding answer files, are included so you can very easily see what this program does. See files "Moose's Sample Quiz_1_questions.txt" and "Moose's Sample Quiz_1_answers.txt", and "Moose's Sample Quiz_2_questions.txt" and "Moose's Sample Quiz_2_answers.txt". Notes: (1). This program is only suitable for quizes where all of the questions and answers are written in plain text. It will not and cannot display images, sounds, videos, fancy formulas, specially formatted text, etc in your quizes, then this program is *not* for you. (I might add support for this in the future - see "The Future" below). (2). The question and answer files for this program are 100% compatible with my Quiz Master software. However, Paper Quiz Generator questions can have 100's of possible answers for a question (or even millions, if you want), whereas my Quiz Master software has a limit of 5 answers per question (because it has to display the answer to each question in up to 5 radiobuttons on the screen). I actually developed this functionality many years ago - way back in the late 1990's by adapting my Quiz Master program to provide what I needed. Over the years, I have generated literally 1,000's of multiple choice quizes for courses I have taught using the paper quiz generation features I built into my Quiz Master program. However, this was a hacked together solution, that was disabled and hidden in all released versions of my Quiz Master program because and it was not polished or suitable for public release. In February 2015, I dusted off my old code, completely re-wrote it to streamline everything and make it super adaptable and re-usable in other projects, extended it to handle questions with anything from 1 - 1+ million answers, extracted everything to an easily adaptable and re-usable Quiz Engine (behind the scenes) and used this Quiz Engine created for my Paper Quiz Generator. Using this Program : -------------------- To use this program, unzip the contents of the ZIP file to a directory - such as c:\Paper_Quiz_Generator\ - and run the executable file Paper_Quiz_Generator.EXE. To make the user interface more streamlined / compact, all of the buttons have just an icon - no words or text in the button. However, all buttons have tooltips (little pop-up help bubbles) that appear when the mouse pointer hovers over them. For further information about all of the program's functionality, see the "Introduction" section above. For information about the question and answer file format, see "Question and Answer File Format" below. Question and Answer File Format : ---------------------------------- The format of each Questions and Answers file is identical to the required by my Quiz Master program. The following explains the format of the Question and Answer file. Comment Lines : ! - Any lines starting with an exclamation mark (!) are ! treated as comments and are ignored. Each Question must consist of : Q:: The Question to be asked - all on one line. A:: A line of answers - all on one line and with each possible answer option seperated by '::'. This answer line must immediately follow the question line to which it relates. And, the first answer in the list must be the correct one ! i.e. there can ONLY be 1 correct answer and it must be 1st. The answer options are randomised when the quiz is generated, otherwise the quiz taker could just answer "A" for everything. You can have anything from 1 up to millions of possible answers per question. Most questions will have between between 2 and 5 answer options - and only of these will be correct. In addition, "QT::: is used to hold the Quiz Title (only one per quiz), for example : QT::General Knowledge Quiz Example: ! ! Moose's Sample Quiz. ! QT::Moose's Sample Quiz ! Q::What is the capital of France ? A::Paris::Berlin::London::Prague Q::If 3 Men can move 7 tonnes of gravel in a 8 hours, how long would it take 11 Men to move the same amount of gravel ? A::3.2 Hours::3.5 Hours::3 Hours::8 Hours Q::Which Day Is Named After A Planet ? A::Saturday::Monday::Wednesday::Friday Q::What Is The Larva Of The Fly Called ? A::Maggot::Grub::Wiggler::Flyet And so on - just keep adding questions and answers in the above format. Each question can have 1 - 1+ million possible answers. Just make sure the 1st answer on each line is the correct one. Piece of cake ! :) The following files are included in the Paper Quiz Generator ZIP file: * Moose's Sample Quiz.qiz Sample question and answer file (as per the above sample). The Future : ------------ In the future, many improvements could be made to this program, such as : - Import quizes in other formats / from other software. Need this ? Email me and let me know. - Support various options for formatting the resulting quiz questions and the list of answers: For example, some people may like this format: (1). What is the capital of France ? (A). London (B). Paris (C). Prague (D). Berlin while other people may prefer: 1. What is the capital of France ? A. London B. Paris C. Prague D. Berlin Or some other format. It may seem like a small point, but formatting is important, and schools, universities, etc may have standards that need to be followed for quiz questions. It's not much fun re-formatting questions and answers manually. So, if you need a specific format - let me know ! :) - Support for non-text items in the quiz, such as images, sounds, videos, fancy formulas, specially formatted text, etc. This will require special output files (non-text) - see next item. - Generate Quiz questions in HTML and/or Javascript so they can be added as interactive quizes to web pages, and so that they can support images, sounds, videos, fancy formulas, specially formatted text, etc. - An auto-marking / auto-grading functionality to automatically "mark" attempts at each quiz, keep logs of attempts, and so on. - Anything else ? If you would like any of these improvements, or would like to suggest more, please email me and let me know. How much more work I do on this program depends entirely on what support I get, how many people use the program, how many people have registered, etc. Reviews / Awards / CDs : ------------------------- None so far. Freeware Information : ----------------------- This is free software. Anyone - any person, any company, or any business - can use this program for free. No fees or payment is required. However, if you find the program useful, then please consider making a PayPal donation to support my efforts. (To make a donation, please run the program and select the "About" option under the Help menu, and then click the PayPal link on the "About" screen). Warranty : ---------- This software and the accompanying files are provided "as is" and without warranties as to performance or merchantability or any other warranties whether expressed or implied. The user assumes the entire risk of using this software. If you do find any faults with this program, email me and let me know. Amendment History : -------------------- Vers Date Description 1.0f 20-Mar-2015 First Public Release. (748 lines of code / comments / blank lines in primary source file.) (49,047 lines of code / comments / blank lines in all primary, library, and include files.) If this program was not downloaded from my Home Page, then it is possibly an old version. The latest version of this program is available from my WEB page - see below. Mike "Moose" O'Malley ____________________________________________________ Moose's Software Valley - Established July, 1996. WEB: http://moosevalley.fhost.com.au/ ____________________________________________________