worksheet printing and adding space

[Chrissy Safranski]

My comments are really about worksheets not workbooks, so I thought it'd be better to start a new thread, but they are partially prompted by the workbook design thread, so if I should have replied to that one or another one instead, mea culpa.

Oscar noted in yet a different thread that printing a worksheet from the html *almost* works now if you change the scale in the print dialog box after hitting Print.  He had said that 90% worked for him, but I usually need to change the scaling to 89%, or even lower for some of the test worksheets (85% for the network one linked below), and then the page breaks are correct, there are no extra pages, and it's passable as is. Weird.

Something I've noticed that doesn't seem to be tested in any of the samples Rob linked (I looked at the source, but can't be sure I didn't miss an example) is the behavior of adding a workspace attribute to an exercisegroup element.  In my own project, in the html, after hitting US, the specified amount of workspace is added to each exercise in the exercise group, and that space remains after hitting Print.  This was the behavior I was expecting and seems right to me.  When I built the pdf however, no workspace was added at all, not to each exercise, nor at the end of the exercisegroup, which is the other behavior I might have expected.  I have an example of the behavior I'm talking about in html here: Worksheet and I've attached the corresponding page of the pdf I generated from the source, not from the html, to show the difference.  

One thing I would like from worksheets is more ability to add space.  I know workspace can be added to exercise, exercisegroup, and task.  Maybe activity?  But one way of solving my worksheet problem numbering issue on -support is if I could add workspace to list elements, because maybe the proper markup for what I'd like to do is really a list, and lists already have columns and markers.  But even more than that specific use case, take something like the network or geometry worksheet from the samples Rob linked. https://pretextbook.org/beta/workbook-article-2024-12-03/worksheet-networks-letter.html  I could see wanting space between the theorems for students to write notes.  Maybe something about meaning, or things to watch for, or in what situations to apply the theorem or formula.  

The ability to add writing space apart from (inside, appearing at the end of) an exercise or task would enable producing something like guided notes.  Oscar mentioned at dropin the idea of maybe following the WeBWorK model of an element specifying length, or length and width, when allowing for some student input.  I think a really cool feature would also be allowing a "lined" attribute on such an element.

I confess that I know almost nothing about fillin, whether this already does it, or could be used for this purpose.  I know that in what I'm visualizing, I would like the ability to have the space just be empty, not underlined or boxed or shaded.  I would also be fine with (prefer?) not having the extra space show up in html, only in pdf or after clicking US and Print, like workspace does.

Chrissy

[Oscar Levin]

A course document I don't think we have discussed is "guided notes" where the instructor hands out half-completed course notes that students are supposed to complete while attending lecture.  This would be a good use for a "fillin" or "notespace" sort of element, which can go anywhere, but only shows up inside a <worksheet> or <worksheet>-like.

Also, producing a graph-paper grid inside this note-space would be excellent.  Also also, this would make sense for slides.

[Rob Beezer]

On 12/4/24 11:43, Chrissy Safranski wrote:
> My comments are really about worksheets not workbooks, so I thought it'd be
> better to start a new thread,

Well, I almost lost it while reviewing the thread I started for this purpose.

Please see the omnibus reply (just now), and specifically the fourth bullet near
the start.

> Something I've noticed that doesn't seem to be tested in any of the samples Rob
> linked (I looked at the source, but can't be sure I didn't miss an example) is
> the behavior of adding a workspace attribute to an exercisegroup element.

That sounds like a bug on the LaTeX side. Can you make an issue? Thanks.

Rob

[Chrissy Safranski]

Sorry!  I misunderstood what you wanted from that thread.  I wasn't sure my comments fit there because they weren't about workbooks, and I didn't want to hijack your thread with my worksheet reports/requests.   

> That sounds like a bug on the LaTeX side. Can you make an issue? Thanks.

Just made an issue!

Chrissy

[Alex Jordan]

> Something I've noticed that doesn't seem to be tested in any of the samples Rob linked (I looked at the source, but can't be sure I didn't miss an example) is the behavior of adding a workspace attribute to an exercisegroup element.

With an exercisegroup in a worksheet, you can add an @workspace attribute. The code for building LaTeX output is *trying* to respect that. Technical details: since it is an exercisegroup, it is implemented as a tcbraster. The tcolorbox~s within that tcbraster are styled using the key `after=...`.  For whatever reason, at least in my version of texlive, that is not respected with a tcolorbox inside a tcbraster. I have discovered I can use `after upper=...` and then it is respected and I get the expected workspace in the output.

I can open a PR changing that `after` to `after upper`. I am unsure if there is a reason not to do this. Do we actually sometimes leverage tcolorbox~s upper/lower breakdown?

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[Rob Beezer]

I'm not sure we do much with upper v. lower for tcolorbox. Partially because
I'm not sure I really understand the philosophy behind the distinction anyway.

Right now, I think you know as much as anybody about things like "after" v.
"after upper".

So if you have a PR in you that tests out OK with existing examples, than I'd
love to see it.

Rob

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[Alex Jordan]

PR opened at

https://github.com/PreTeXtBook/pretext/pull/2427

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[JACOB DENSON]

I have two related questions feature requests related to spacing in worksheets, based on the work Mitch and I have been doing converting discrete math worksheets from Latex into PreTeXt. One feature that would really help us is the ability to implement variable spacing depending on the build option used to produce a document. For instance, Mitch and I are envisioning building PDF / LaTeX versions of worksheets to be printed off by TAs for handing out in Discussion Sections, and building a separate HTML version to be available for students to access online, which can be printed for use on a tablet or for students to print off separately. To save paper, we'd hope the PDF build thus has much less spacing per exercise than the HTML version.

[Alex Jordan]

This may or may not be helpful, but there's an oft misunderstood aspect of workspace in worksheets. The idea is that when you declare 1 inch of workspace, you are saying that this is the *minimum* vertical space that should be provided for the worksheet to provide reasonable space for a reasonably large subpopulation of students to have enough space to do it all on paper. The actual space in the end product is often more, as leftover space gets distributed proportionately. So if the author understands that, it's hard to see scenarios when it would be one thing in some settings and something else in others. The minimum needed is the minimum needed. Is the intention for students to actually use the whitespace, or not?

Maybe worth noting: there is a publisher option to completely collapse workspace to zero.

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