[Juan Carlos Bustamante]

Dear all,

I'm working on a PreTeXt-based textbook project that is currently under active development. So far, we haven’t integrated any interactive exercises, but we plan to focus on this in the coming months and want to make informed decisions early on.

We’ve identified a collection of WeBWorK problems (around 300) that would be pedagogically appropriate. However, we do not currently have access to a dedicated WeBWorK server. This raises a few questions:

• Is a running WeBWorK server required only at the time of PreTeXt compilation (e.g., to generate static HTML or embed problems), or is persistent server access needed for the final deployment?
• Are there any community-hosted or lightweight options for testing and rendering WeBWorK problems within a PreTeXt workflow?

We’re not planning to host the textbook on Runestone (though we’re open to discussing it). Being based in Canada, we likely wouldn’t be able to use it for full course delivery (some legal stuff).

The only server we might have permanent access to is running WeBWorK 2.16, which has shown compatibility issues with some existing problems. So even if we manage to set it up, the usable subset of our problem bank may be significantly reduced. I may be able to borrow a newer version, but occasionally only.

Any guidance on best practices, tooling, or hosting options would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
JC

[Alex Jordan]

A very new feature (less than a week) is that you can have a local PG installation on your computer and use that to process WeBworK exercises into static versions.  The details are hopefully clear here:

https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/webwork-local-pg-static-processing.html

But you should report if you hit obstacles and we could improve the guide there.

As far as I know, this is not yet available using the CLI.

An upcoming feature (submitted for a PR within the next few days) will be that you can have local .pg files along with the current two options (.pg files on a host webwork2 server, or problems written natively with PreTeXt). That should help with your 300 .pg files.

The HTML book currently will still need a webwork2 server to render the interactive versions of the exercises. But yet another coming feature is to use a lightweight rendering service that should be easy to get running on your web server. That last piece may take a bit longer, as we (the WeBWorK developers, not the PreTeXt developers) iron out some issues with it.

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[Sean Fitzpatrick]

If you need a server based in Canada, I have one that's dedicated to PreTeXt and I can give you access. 

The only catch: for a few reasons, I jumped the gun on upgrading to WeBWorK 2.19 before PreTeXt was ready for it, so a few things (mostly Runestone-related, I think) don't work as expected. 

But I think PreTeXt will be ready for 2.19 soon.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/CA%2BR-jrf%3DgrUqwvrtTYQgfB9wFcJMnyRd017Z3vde1n8oquMoLQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Alex Jordan]

> But I think PreTeXt will be ready for 2.19 soon.

It should be already! As of a merged PR within the past 24 hours.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/CAH%2BNcPa-2GJVx97U1EKZ0cpni5bxoW%3DCoznVKqjiioExZJMsKw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

Nice! Soon Brad can stop complaining about my "dev" server, lol

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/CA%2BR-jreV1wtJ%3DpONWLTsTX4bQtk0uZ6hP5Ckb-8x3S9T_jVb5Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jane Butterfield]

I have a related question (I thought I had posted it earlier today, but it looks as if I deleted it by mistake, so apologies if this comes through twice).

Our PreTeXt project lost the "activate" option on our WeBWorK exercises some time between last August (2024) and yesterday. I have been re-reading the documentation in Chapter 7 and Chapter 38 from the PreTeXt Guide https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/guide-toc.html to try to work out what may have happened. I see from one of the comments in this thread that PreTeXt only recently became compatible with WeBWorK 2.19, and also that the default server used for PreTeXt projects is https://webwork-ptx.aimath.org/ Our sysadmin tells me that AIM has recently changed to WeBWorK 2.20, so I wondered if that could be the problem?

Either way, I think we probably want to change our project to use our own WeBWorK server, and I couldn't work out how to do that. Chapter 38 has clear instructions for configuring the server and the course, and Chapter 7 has clear information about how to author the problems themselves. I just couldn't work out how I tell my project that it should look to my server instead of the default one. What am I missing? (It is almost certainly something really obvious and trivial.)

Apologies again if this question comes through twice. The project I'm working on is https://web.uvic.ca/~jvbutter/PreCalcReview/ 

[Alex Jordan]

When I go to this page:

https://web.uvic.ca/~jvbutter/PreCalcReview/module-1.html

and open the first checkpoint knowl, I do see an Activate button. Were you saying that you "lost" it in the sense that it's not there? If there is some other exercise where it is missing, can you link to a direct page where that is the case?

Then when I click to use the button, it won't load because there is a CORS error. However, this is a distraction and should be resolved because of the following.

Looking at the source for the page, your pages are still trying to use 2.17 WeBWorK js. This indicates that you haven't rebuilt the WeBWorK representations (and then the HTML) since the upgrades. Do you follow the pretext-announce mailing list? There was an alert there on August 4th (and 12th) with instructions. Here is the part that may be what you need to do:

After the upgrade, you will need to rebuild. Starting with a new static representations file, and then also rebuild new HTML.

• Using the CLI:
  pretext generate webwork [-t target_name]
  pretext build [-t target_name]
• Using pretext directly:
  pretext/pretext/pretext -p pubfile -c webwork mainfile
  pretext/pretext/pretext -p pubfile -c all -f html mainfile
  ("pubfile" should be a path to your publisher file, and "mainfile" a path to your project's root source file.)

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[Alex Jordan]

Sorry, I forgot about the other part of your question:

> I just couldn't work out how I tell my project that it should look to my server instead of the default one.

That is here:

https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/webwork-publisher.html

At minimum, you want to follow through 38.2, 38.3, and 38.5. The specific place where you declare the address for the WW server is in 38.5, where publication file attributes are described.

It looks like your institutional WeBWorK server is using version 2.17. With 2.19 or 2.20, the embedded WW exercises in PreTeXt have nicer feedback and MathQuill input features.

[Jane Butterfield]

Our book's WeBWorK exercises have all stopped rendering (static versions are fine, but the activate button just produces a perpetual loading icon). I asked our local sysadmin about it, hoping that UVic was just blocking the AIM server, but he thinks it may be because AIM recently transitioned to WeBWorK 2.20 - is that likely to be the problem? This thread makes me think that it could be.

I'm almost certain our project uses the default https://webwork-ptx.aimath.org/ server; we don't use this for actual homework and so didn't think we'd need to link it to our own. Book is https://web.uvic.ca/~jvbutter/PreCalcReview/root-1-2.html 

I haven't made any updates to it since last August (2024), when it was working fine, so something changed more recently than that.

I've also been reading Chapter 38 of the PreTeXt Guide, trying to work backwards to figure out whether our project was linked to our own server or not, just in case I am wrong. I can't actually work out how one would do it; there's information here about how to configure the server or the course, but I can't see the place where I tell the project itself which server to look to when building the interactive exercises. Chapter 7 is only about writing the problems themselves, so I'm of course missing something. If the default AIM server is no good for us any more then I'll have to work this out.

[Jane Butterfield]

Thank you, the part at the end of 38.5 is what I needed and kept missing!

[Jane Butterfield]

"Lost" in the sense of "the button no longer works". Indeed I haven't rebuilt since last July; I was hoping not to this year - my fault for not catching a relevant update notice. That's my problem, then, and that's something I can work with so thank you! I'll go read the announcement properly.

(My institution did upgrade to 2.19 last Dec/Jan, yet another reason to rebuild this project so that our problems look more like the ones students will see in their classes next month.)

Thank you, the end of 38.5.1 is what I was looking for and kept missing.

On Wednesday, August 20, 2025 at 12:13:54 PM UTC-7 jordancanonical wrote:

When I go to this page:

https://web.uvic.ca/~jvbutter/PreCalcReview/module-1.html

and open the first checkpoint knowl, I do see an Activate button. Were you saying that you "lost" it in the sense that it's not there? If there is some other exercise where it is missing, can you link to a direct page where that is the case?

Then when I click to use the button, it won't load because there is a CORS error. However, this is a distraction and should be resolved because of the following.

Looking at the source for the page, your pages are still trying to use 2.17 WeBWorK js. This indicates that you haven't rebuilt the WeBWorK representations (and then the HTML) since the upgrades. Do you follow the pretext-announce mailing list? There was an alert there on August 4th (and 12th) with instructions. Here is the part that may be what you need to do:

After the upgrade, you will need to rebuild. Starting with a new static representations file, and then also rebuild new HTML.

• Using the CLI:
  pretext generate webwork [-t target_name]
  pretext build [-t target_name]
• Using pretext directly:
  pretext/pretext/pretext -p pubfile -c webwork mainfile
  pretext/pretext/pretext -p pubfile -c all -f html mainfile
  ("pubfile" should be a path to your publisher file, and "mainfile" a path to your project's root source file.)

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 11:43 AM Jane Butterfield wrote:

I have a related question (I thought I had posted it earlier today, but it looks as if I deleted it by mistake, so apologies if this comes through twice).

Our PreTeXt project lost the "activate" option on our WeBWorK exercises some time between last August (2024) and yesterday. I have been re-reading the documentation in Chapter 7 and Chapter 38 from the PreTeXt Guide https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/guide-toc.html to try to work out what may have happened. I see from one of the comments in this thread that PreTeXt only recently became compatible with WeBWorK 2.19, and also that the default server used for PreTeXt projects is https://webwork-ptx.aimath.org/ Our sysadmin tells me that AIM has recently changed to WeBWorK 2.20, so I wondered if that could be the problem?

Either way, I think we probably want to change our project to use our own WeBWorK server, and I couldn't work out how to do that. Chapter 38 has clear instructions for configuring the server and the course, and Chapter 7 has clear information about how to author the problems themselves. I just couldn't work out how I tell my project that it should look to my server instead of the default one. What am I missing? (It is almost certainly something really obvious and trivial.)

Apologies again if this question comes through twice. The project I'm working on is https://web.uvic.ca/~jvbutter/PreCalcReview/ 

On Friday, July 18, 2025 at 1:40:37 PM UTC-7 wrote:

Dear all,

I'm working on a PreTeXt-based textbook project that is currently under active development. So far, we haven’t integrated any interactive exercises, but we plan to focus on this in the coming months and want to make informed decisions early on.

We’ve identified a collection of WeBWorK problems (around 300) that would be pedagogically appropriate. However, we do not currently have access to a dedicated WeBWorK server. This raises a few questions:

• Is a running WeBWorK server required only at the time of PreTeXt compilation (e.g., to generate static HTML or embed problems), or is persistent server access needed for the final deployment?
• Are there any community-hosted or lightweight options for testing and rendering WeBWorK problems within a PreTeXt workflow?

We’re not planning to host the textbook on Runestone (though we’re open to discussing it). Being based in Canada, we likely wouldn’t be able to use it for full course delivery (some legal stuff).

The only server we might have permanent access to is running WeBWorK 2.16, which has shown compatibility issues with some existing problems. So even if we manage to set it up, the usable subset of our problem bank may be significantly reduced. I may be able to borrow a newer version, but occasionally only.

Any guidance on best practices, tooling, or hosting options would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
JC

[Mitch Keller]

The WeBWorK server that your project uses is specified in the publication file, so look there to see if you’re pointing to the aimath.org server.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pretext-support/fc26d9b2-ad32-472b-a780-59ce8f7192b7n%40googlegroups.com.

-- 
Mitch Keller
mi...@rellek.net

http://www.rellek.net/

[Aaron Greicius]

HI all, 

I am facing a similar issue: that is, my WW exercises render but fail to activate. 

Here is an example: https://agreicius.github.io/euc-vec-spaces/s_systems.html#s_systems_ex-1-2

The source for the project is here: https://github.com/agreicius/euc-vec-spaces

You can see in my publication file that the WW server is set as <webwork server="https://webwork-ptx.aimath.org" />.

To process the WW exercises and deploy to my website I proceeded using CLI as follows: 

1. pretext generate webwork
2. pretext build web
3. pretex deploy

Contents of pretext support command follows. I see there are a lot of steps in Sec 38.5 of the guidebook that I don't follow here, but I was under the impression that the above was all I needed to do with the CLI.  Any assistance would be appreciated. 

Best,

Aaron

PreTeXt project found in `/Users/aarongreicius/euc-vec-spaces`.

Please share the following information when posting to the
pretext-support Google Group.

PreTeXt-CLI version: 2.22.0
    PyPI link: https://pypi.org/project/pretextbook/2.22.0/
PreTeXt core resources commit: e6f92889e1e4978f71d7417be410ca379d6e9eff
OS: macOS-13.6.9-arm64-arm-64bit
Python version: 3.11.5, running from /opt/homebrew/opt/pyt...@3.11/bin/python3.11
Current working directory: /Users/aarongreicius/euc-vec-spaces
PreTeXt project path: /Users/aarongreicius/euc-vec-spaces

Contents of project.ptx:
------------------------
<!-- This file, the project manifest, provides the overall configuration for your PreTeXt project. To edit the content of your document, open `source/main.ptx`. See https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/processing-CLI.html#cli-project-manifest. --><project ptx-version="2">
  <targets>
    <target name="web" format="html"/>
    <target name="print" format="pdf"/>
    <target name="print-latex" format="latex"/>
  </targets>
</project>
------------------------
warning: Unable to locate the command for `mermaid` on your system.
warning: Unable to locate the command for `pdfpng` on your system.
warning: Unable to locate the command for `liblouis` on your system.

[Aaron Greicius]

(I thought I posted this message last night, but don't see it now in the thread. Apologies if I am repeating myself!) 

I am experiencing the same issue: namely, embedded WW exercises are correctly rendered but not able to be activated. 

Example: https://agreicius.github.io/euc-vec-spaces/s_systems.html#s_systems_ex-1-2.

You can see in the source of that project (https://github.com/agreicius/euc-vec-spaces) that the webwork server is set as <webwork server="https://webwork-ptx.aimath.org" />.

I used the CLI to process the WW exercises as follows: 

1. pretext generate webwork
2. pretext build web

1. pretext deploy

Any assistance would be appreciated. Contents of pretext support command follow.

Best,

Aaron

%%%%%%%%%

PreTeXt project found in `/Users/aarongreicius/euc-vec-spaces`.

Please share the following information when posting to the
pretext-support Google Group.

PreTeXt-CLI version: 2.22.0
    PyPI link: https://pypi.org/project/pretextbook/2.22.0/
PreTeXt core resources commit: e6f92889e1e4978f71d7417be410ca379d6e9eff
OS: macOS-13.6.9-arm64-arm-64bit
Python version: 3.11.5, running from /opt/homebrew/opt/pyt...@3.11/bin/python3.11
Current working directory: /Users/aarongreicius/euc-vec-spaces
PreTeXt project path: /Users/aarongreicius/euc-vec-spaces

Contents of project.ptx:
------------------------
<!-- This file, the project manifest, provides the overall configuration for your PreTeXt project. To edit the content of your document, open `source/main.ptx`. See https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/processing-CLI.html#cli-project-manifest. --><project ptx-version="2">
  <targets>
    <target name="web" format="html"/>
    <target name="print" format="pdf"/>
    <target name="print-latex" format="latex"/>
  </targets>
</project>
------------------------
warning: Unable to locate the command for `mermaid` on your system.
warning: Unable to locate the command for `pdfpng` on your system.
warning: Unable to locate the command for `liblouis` on your system.

On Friday, August 22, 2025 at 9:43:35 AM UTC-5 mi...@rellek.net wrote:

[Aaron Greicius]

(Hmm, it looks like the message I've tried to post here keeps getting deleted. Trying one more time with less possible content flags.)

I am having the same issue: WW exercises render correctly but are not able to be activated. 

Example: https://agreicius.github.io/linear-algebra/s_systems.html#s_systems_ex-1-2

The webwork server is set to <webwork server="https://webwork-ptx.aimath.org" /> in the publication file. 

My CLI workflow is as follows:

1. pretext generate webwork
2. pretext build web
3. pretext deploy

Best,

On Friday, August 22, 2025 at 9:43:35 AM UTC-5 mi...@rellek.net wrote:

[Oscar Levin]

Hi Aaron,

It seems you are not getting the 2.20 webwork javascript in your static folder, which I am guessing is due to using an older version of the CLI.  

Try upgrading (`pretext upgrade`) and then update your project with `pretext update`.  You should be able to build and deploy successfully then (running pretext generate webwork couldn't hurt)

Cheers,

Oscar.

[Aaron Greicius]

Thanks, Oscar! Updating the CLI did the trick.