pyqgen 0.1.1

Generate questions from orgmode files

PyQGen

• Author: Giuseppe Lipari
• Email : [e-mail]

PyQGen is a command line script to generate a randomized list of questions taken from a orgmode file. It can be used to prepare exams for large classes.

What you need in addition to PyQGen :

• Emacs with org-mode;
• A LaTeX environment.

Overview

The original list of questions must be redacted according to the org-mode format. The first level heading in this file represent groups of questions; the second level headings represent the questions ; deeper level headings represent solutions.

An example of database of questions is available HERE.

PyQGen produces an org-mode file which contains the exams. This can later be transformed into a PDF file via LaTeX.

Installing

I recommend installing PyQGen using a virtual environnement and pip. For example :

virtualenv pyqgenenv
source ./pyqgenenv/bin/activate
pip install pyqgen

PyQGen depends on orgparse to parse the org-mode file, pip automatically takes care of the dependency.

Command line options

The command is :

pyqgen [OPTIONS] output

where output the generated file that contains the exams. The following options are possible :

• -h, --help shows the help message
• -d DB, --db DB specifies an input file. By default, this is equal to file db.org.
• -t TITLE, --title TITLE Specifies the title of each exam sheet (default: "Examen")
• -i IFILE, --ifile IFILE Text file containing the instructions to be printed on each exam (default: none)
• -n NCOPIES, --ncopies NCOPIES Number of exams to generate (default: 1)
• -g [NG ...], --ng [NG ...] Number of questions per group (default: [1, 1, 1]). Therefore, the default assumes that the input file defines 3 question groupes, and for each exam it will randomly select one question per group. Make sure that you specify at least one number per each group (see example below).
• -e HEADER, --header HEADER Org-mode file header. This is used to personnalize the output style. Typically, you can specify the size of the sheet (using the latex package geometry), the font, the font size, etc.

Full example

TODO