Layout detection with more than three groups of questions - error for more than 140 exam papers

Added by Vernon TAYLOR almost 7 years ago

Hello

I thought I was getting the hang of AMC - I'm on my fourth of fifth exam paper for 1000+ students.

System info: Ubuntu 16.04/AMC 1.3/AMC-TXT

Exam info: six groups of questions, groups not shuffled, a selection of shuffled questions from each group. Three groups with ordered answers. Questions in two columns with a line separator between columns and groups of questions. Total of 40 questions from a bank of 2090+. Quite a lot of Latex format commands between square brackets.

Previous exams using more or less the same general format but with two groups for 1650 exam papers - no problems at all.

This exam : development phase - I generated 10 exam papers at a time to check layout, etc. No problems.

Above 140 exam papers (found by trial and error) I get a Layout detection error message saying that there is no exam to check the layout for. Below this number layout detection works OK.

I edited the exam to three groups, keeping all the questions - Layout detection works for 2000 exam papers.

Is this some kind of limit in AMC ?

Many thanks

Vernon

source.txt - source.txt file (54.3 kB)


Replies (33)

RE: Layout detection with more than three groups of questions - error for more than 140 exam papers - Added by Vernon TAYLOR almost 7 years ago

Alexis Bienvenüe wrote:

OK. I should have asked this first: the needspace group option is not yet implemented in this version.

I thought putting:

LaTeX-Preambule: \usepackage{needspace}

... was strange/unnecessary. But in fact it allows me to use:

[[\needspace{6cm}]]

I put it at the beginning of the problem group (DIFFICULTTOEFL) and it solves the problem.

However, I'm not sure if this is applied only to the problem group or globally.

RE: Layout detection with more than three groups of questions - error for more than 140 exam papers - Added by Alexis Bienvenüe almost 7 years ago

That's another good way to solve your problem, without the needspace group option (ie. without upgrading AMC).

However, I'm not sure if this is applied only to the problem group or globally.

You have to add this command for all groups.

RE: Layout detection with more than three groups of questions - error for more than 140 exam papers - Added by Alexis Bienvenüe almost 7 years ago

I can verify that upgrading from 1.2.1 to 1.3 in the middle of a project is a bad idea. Multiple things break.

I always recommend not to upgrade in the middle of a project. However, I try to make this smooth: if you experience problems, please report them so I can try to fix them.

RE: Layout detection with more than three groups of questions - error for more than 140 exam papers - Added by Vernon TAYLOR almost 7 years ago

Thanks for all your great help, Alexis.

Alexis Bienvenüe wrote:

I can verify that upgrading from 1.2.1 to 1.3 in the middle of a project is a bad idea. Multiple things break.

I always recommend not to upgrade in the middle of a project. However, I try to make this smooth: if you experience problems, please report them so I can try to fix them.

Can't risk it - I've got about 3000 students taking various exams in the next couple of months - and the whole department depending on me !

RE: Layout detection with more than three groups of questions - error for more than 140 exam papers - Added by Alexis Bienvenüe almost 7 years ago

And you don't need to upgrade with the use of [[\needspace{6cm}]], right?

RE: Layout detection with more than three groups of questions - error for more than 140 exam papers - Added by Vernon TAYLOR almost 7 years ago

Not for this case - who knows for the next; each project I do is more sophisticated than the last.

RE: Layout detection with more than three groups of questions - error for more than 140 exam papers - Added by S. McKay almost 7 years ago

I always recommend not to upgrade in the middle of a project. However, I try to make this smooth: if you experience problems, please report them so I can try to fix them.

Well I can tell you that two things broke completely. Remember this was an (almost) completed project - I just needed student exam files for two students (because the secretaries cut off the corners - sigh).

First, I lost all name association. When I tried to run automatic name association again, there were only about 50 names (out of approximately 700) that were recognized. In the old version, all but about 50 were recognized. Even though the spreadsheet of student names that I use works well with a project created with the new version, I think something in the database must have gotten screwed up.

Second, When I created the spreadsheet again, there were many yellow and red boxes - many more than the last time. I don't know if this is a layout issue or a spreadsheet issue. However,

Third, I tried to create a "new" project and recreate the exams, and then run the scans through. Something was off enough on the boxes that automatic detection did not recognize the pages. This may not be a bug, but there was enough of a difference between exams created with 1.2.1 and 1.3 that the scans wouldn't work.

Anyway, this was not a big deal to me, because I did heed Alexis' advice and did not upgrade until current projects were complete. But there were enough problems that I just want to let people know about it.

And the new version did give me the two student exam files, which the old version would not have recognized. :-)

RE: Layout detection with more than three groups of questions - error for more than 140 exam papers - Added by Alexis Bienvenüe almost 7 years ago

Thanks very much for your report. I will try to reproduce (and I hope fix) this issue. I opened #480 to keep track of this.

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