Development update: November 2021

[Christian Lawson-Perfect]

Hi everyone,

I've just published a development update on the Numbas blog, at https://www.numbas.org.uk/blog/2021/11/development-update-november-2021/.

This sums up development since the last update in June. There isn't a huge amount, because I've mainly been working on v3.0 of the LTI provider and that isn't ready yet. I hope to have it finished by the start of December.

People running the LTI provider should note that there's a new minor version, v2.13.4, with a few bugfixes.

One nice thing that I've added recently is autocompletion in the JME editor, and when you refer to a variable anywhere in a question, it's automatically added to the Variables tab. I hope these will make writing Numbas questions a bit easier, especially for new authors.

Christian

[Ben Brawn]

Hi Christian, 

the new feature "when you refer to a variable anywhere in a question, it's automatically added to the Variables tab" has caused issues. Say I want to display $\simplify{(x-{x0})^2}$ in the question prompt. Here x0 should be the only variable, but x and x0 are both added as variables. I don't think this is the intended behaviour. I can't just delete the x variables from the list of variables because it is constantly updated from the prompt. To get around it I would need to add a dummy value to the variable x but then because of the issue below, every time I edit the equation I have to reenter a dummy value.

Another consequence is that if I write the question prompt with a bunch of variables, go and define all the variables, and then go back to the prompt and edit the only equation the variable is used in (even just deleting a bracket and putting it back) the definition in the variables list will be deleted and be replaced with an empty definition. This only happens when the variable you delete isn't used by any other variables (or anywhere else in the question) so maybe it isn't an issue.

Autocompletion looks very cool!

Thanks

Ben

[Ben Brawn]

I can only assume you have fixed it because it is no longer behaving undesirably. Many thanks.