Text formatting in questions and/or answers

[Mike Lewis]

Is it possible to apply formatting to the text of questions and/or answers, that is, the text on the Data page of the quiz creation tool?

When I say "formatting", I mean things like bold and italic. For example, I have a question that includes a Latin phrase, and I would like to show that phrase in italics. I want to do this selectively, to certain words or phrases, not on a blanket basis for the entire quiz.

I might also want to insert special characters, like accented letters, currency symbols, mathematical symbols, etc. I've tried entering the more common accented letters by keying the Windows Alt-number codes, and that works in my browser on my PC, but I don't know if it is the correct platform-independent method.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mike

[TheCleverone (Erin)]

Use (and delete spaces) < b > for bold, < i > for italic, <sub> for smaller text. Just don't forget to close the tags at the end of each formatting section by doing </ b>, or </ i>, or </ sub>. The only thing you don't do this for is for < br>, a line break.

Also, you can enter almost any Unicode symbol by copying and pasting.

[beisaa]

I think that there's not much you can do to format an answer - I looked into it once and the tags don't seem to work there. Also, for whatever reason, the bold and italic tags don't seem to work in the question boxes, though they do in certain other places (like the quiz comments). For the questions, you do have underline < u > and < / u >, as well as < br > and < sub > < / sub > as TheCleverone mentioned. So your main choices for emphasis are underlining and (single) quotes, I'd say, unless there are other ways of doing it I'm not familiar with.

[Mike Lewis]

Thank you both for your answers. I've experiemented with the tags you mentioned, and it seems that Beisaa is correct. The only ones that work are underline, line break and subscript. All the others I tried are automatically removed as soon as you move focus off the entry.

Pity. I would like to have used italics (for non-English phrases). But never mind.

I'll experiment is the Unicode characters next. In the meantime, can I ask a related follow-up question:

One of my answers is Pelé (the Brazilian football player). That's P -e - l, followed by e with an acute accent. I can enter the accented letter correctly when setting up the answer. But when I play the quiz, and try to enter Pelé as the answer, it won't accept it. The only way I can find to work round that is to offer Pele (without the accent) as an alternative answer. But that means rejecting a correct answer from anyone who enters the accent properly.

Is there a better way of handling this situation?

Mike

[beisaa]

I assume you're using the Unicode method to enter special characters? I did a little experiment, and it looks like Unicode characters are accepted, but the Unicode entry method is treated as a copy-and-paste. (If you are to paste any correct answer into the answer box, it is not accepted immediately upon pasting, but it is accepted if you then press the spacebar.) I think you'll find if you enter a space after Pelé as you have been entering it, it will be taken. The issue wouldn't be noticeable if é wasn't the last letter to be entered in this way; I don't think that this affects international keyboards or things like the iPad's method of entering accented characters, though, just Unicode entry or pasting the symbol into the answer block.

[Erin R]

Could just be a bug...

On 5 Jan 2014, at 18:59, beisaa <beisaa...@gmail.com> wrote:

I assume you're using the Unicode method to enter special characters? I did a little experiment, and it looks like Unicode characters are accepted, but the Unicode entry method is treated as a copy-and-paste. (If you are to paste any correct answer into the answer box, it is not accepted immediately upon pasting, but it is accepted if you then press the spacebar.) I think you'll find if you enter a space after Pelé as you have been entering it, it will be taken. The issue wouldn't be noticeable if é wasn't the last letter to be entered in this way; I don't think that this affects international keyboards or things like the iPad's method of entering accented characters, though, just Unicode entry or pasting the symbol into the answer block.

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[Mike Lewis]

Beissa, What exactly do you mean by "the Unicode method to enter special characters"? I know what Unicode is, but I don't know how that refers to a method of entering characters.

You are correct about the need to enter a space if the accented letter is at the end of the answer. I have been experimenting some more with Pelé, and have found that it is accepted correctly if I enter the last letter as an Alt+number combination, and then press the spacebar. It also works if I paste it from Microsoft Word, and if I enter it via the Windows Character Map tool. In those cases, the space isn't necessary.

But the above applies only to PCs running Windows. The only other platform I have access to is Android. I find I can successfully enter accented characters using the French keyboard on my Android tablet, without needing the additional space.

So, to summarise, it seems that an accented letter will be accepted, but if it comes at the end of the answer, and if you enter it via the Alt+number method, you will need to enter a space. In all other cases, the character should be accepted straight away.

That's good enough for me. In the majority of cases, my guess is that an English-speaking player (or, more precisely, one who uses an English keyboard) will enter the un-accented form of the letter. So, provided you set the quiz up to accept that as an alternative, there should be no problem.

Mike

[beisaa]

Sorry, I was pretty sloppy with my terminology and was actually talking about the Alt + Unicode value method when I said the "Unicode method". It sounds like you figured out what's what though, and I'd agree the way you have it will handle the most important cases of people trying to enter the accented letter.

[Mike Lewis]

Thanks for the clarification, Beissa. You and Erin have both been very helpful. I'll no doubt be picking your brains again as my quiz-creating ambitions develop.

Mike