ftp.whtech.com/ftp.whtech.com.tar/ftp.whtech.com/articles/reviews/03MIC96.TXT

Text File | 2006-10-19 | 11KB | 184 lines

     MICROPENDIUM MICROREVIEWS for March 1996
     by Charles Good

          LOAD MASTER by Mickey Cendrowski

          This is designed for the owner of a minimal  expanded disk system
     with one or two floppy drives as an aid in loading disk software.  It
     is written in extended basic with assembly language subroutines and is
     the first software I have seen that utilizes John Bull's XB Windows.
     Using Bull's product, Load Master displays drop down windows at
     appropriate times.

          As you use Load Master you are in 40 column mode and are often
     presented with several choices.  Press the first letter of the choice
     you select.  When you boot Load Master as XB DSK1.LOAD you are given
     your choice of Load manager, Funnelweb, Boot, or Exit.  You must add
     Funnelweb or John Johnson's Boot to the Load Master disk to make these
     choices operative.  Pressing "L" for Load manager gets you to the guts
     of Load Master.

          Here you have your choice of Catalog, Options, Back, or Exit.  If
     you press "O" for Options a little window appears and gives you these
     options; Colors, Drives, Printer, and Back.  Colors changes the screen
     colors.  Drives lets you specify the drive that is accessed with the
     Catalog option.  You have to go through the Options window each time
     you want to change this drive.  Path names are supported.  Printer
     lets you change the name of your printer, and you can supply a path
     name if you want to save output to a file.  Once your options are
     configured you have to press "B" to get Back to the Load manager menu.

          Catalog is by far the most significant part of Load Master.
     Pressing "C" displays a screen full of file names from the drive
     specified with the Options menu.  A cursor is positioned next to the
     first file name, and you also get a choice of Page?, Label, or Back.
     Page? asks for a number and displays that page (screen full) of file
     names if there are too many to fit onto one screen.  Label prints
     nicely formatted disk labels using superscript sized print in a format
     that fits fan fold sheets of 1x3 inch sticky labels.  If there are too
     many file names to fit on one label, Label will automatically space
     down to the next label on the fanfold sheet and continue printing file
     names.

          From a Catalog display you can put the cursor next to a file name
     and press <enter>.  If the file is DV80 or DF80 the text is displayed
     on screen.  You press a key to advanced to the next line of text.  I
     like this method of displaying text.  Some DV80 viewers just scroll
     the text continuously until you pause the scroll, and the scrolling is
     almost always too fast to read.  If the program next to the cursor is
     an XB program it will run if you press <enter>.  If the file next to
     the cursor is anything else, pressing <enter> gets you an error
     message.

          Load Master is a product under development.  What I have
     described above is v1.2, and the documentation states quite clearly
     that this version is less than finished.  The stated goal is to allow
     the user to load and run any type of runable file by placing the
     cursor next to the file and pressing <enter>.  This can now be done
     using Funnelweb's disk review.  Another goal stated in the Load Master
     docs is to inform the user of the software needed to load any file
     that cannot be run by itself, such as identifying a TI Artist picture
     file as such.  The author requests user input concerning what users
     want future versions of Load Manager to be able to do, and programmer
     input on ways to accomplish her stated goals.

          Send me $1 and I will mail you the latest version of Load Master
     on a SSSD disk.  It is fairware, and the author requests that you send
     whatever you think the software is worth.
          --------------------
          QUIZ FAMILY by Charles Kirkwood Jr.

          This is a group of separate but related extended basic programs
     to help teachers create multiple choice and true/false examinations
     You type in data banks of your own test questions and the software
     creates nicely exams with a specific number of questions from these
     data banks.  You can either manually select particular questions from
     one or more data banks, or the software will randomly pick the
     specified number of exam questions for you.

          As a university professor I am familiar with this type of
     software and have used several packages similar to Quiz Family.  There
     are at least two similar products for the 99/4A.  One was created by
     Jim Peterson, and one was published years ago on Home Computer
     Magazine.  There are many similar programs in the PC world.  Almost
     any textbook publisher of high school or introductory level college
     textbooks will supply such software free to teachers, complete with
     already created test question banks keyed to particular text books.
     In my opinion almost all of these 99/4A and PC testmaking software
     packages are difficult to use.  Editing existing questions in a test
     bank is cumbersome, and you almost always need a hard copy printout or
     bound hard copy of the test bank questions in order to create an exam.
     With the PC software I have seen, if you lose the book containing the
     exam questions in the data banks you are out of luck.  Your only other
     option is to view on screen the data bank questions one at a time and
     select or not select that question for your exam.  This is very very
     cumbersome.  You can't check them in big bunches because the software
     only displays the questions one at a time.

          Based on my experience with similar products I consider Quiz
     Family to be as good as any and better than most, which means I rate
     it quite highly.  This is because of the ability to use any DV80 text
     editor such as the Funnelweb editor to enter, edit, and quickly view
     exam questions in a data base.  The other quiz making programs I have
     tried don't give you this ease and flexability.  Alternatively, you
     can create your quizes using an included extended basic program called
     BuildQuiz.  This uses several lines in xbasic's 28 column screen
     display to simulate a single 80 column text line.  This is workable,
     but the results are visually kind of confusing.  There is no word
     wrap.

          Whether using a DV80 text editor or BuildQuiz, you have to
     preface each 80 column text line (record) with an upper case code
     letter to let the software know what to do with the line of text.  The
     first text line of a question starts with a "Q".  Each subsequent line
     of the same question starts with a "C".  The first answer line must
     contain the correct answer and start with "A".  For a true/false
     question, the first and only answer line might read "ATrue".
     Subsequent answer lines, such as in a multiple choice question, start
     with "C".  The question/answer group ends in a line containing only
     "E" (for "End") in the first column of the line.

          I had no trouble modifying my existing DV80 files of multiple
     choice questions to this format.  I just inserted the appropriate
     upper case letter at the beginning of each line of the DV80 file.
     Since these are DV80 files, they are very easy to go into and edit
     questions, add questions, or delete questions.  DV80 question files
     are than run through a supplied program called Convert to make them
     into the Internal/Fixed 80 format needed by Quiz Family to generate
     quizes.  These exam question data files can also be directly
     manipulated (edit add or delete questions) with a program called
     Correct if you don't mind the 28 column screen.

          PrintQuiz is the real guts of the Quiz Family software package.
     This program actually creates and prints your exams from the question
     data bases.  Questions are printed in random order, and the possible
     answers to multiple choice questions are also printed in random order
     even though you always entered the correct answer first.  You tell
     PrintQuiz how many questions to put in the exam.  You then tell
     PrintQuiz which exact questions to include or you let PrintQuiz
     automatically randomly select questions from the data base.  The exam
     can have any combination of personally selected and/or automatically
     randomly selected questions, a feature not found in other quiz making
     software I have used.  You can tell PrintQuiz to generate several
     different versions of the same quiz each containing the same questions
     but in a different random order, discouraging students sitting next to
     each other from paying attention to their neighbor's answers.  A
     record of the quiz, listing which questions in the data bank are used
     in the quiz and the correct question answers, can be saved to disk.

          A couple of additional utilities are included in this very
     complete package.  A program called MergeQuiz lets you combine several
     data banks into one larger bank.  The program Select lets you make an
     exam file using questions from several different database files.  You
     can you get a hard copy of a question data bank, complete with correct
     answers indicated, using ListQuiz.

          If you are a teacher who has access to a textbook publisher's IBM
     compatible test bank of questions for a particular text book, you can
     convert  these questions to a DV80 file on a TI disk for use with Quiz
     Family.  Using an IBM compatible computer print the entire question
     test bank to an ASCII disk file on a 360K IBM disk.  Almost all IBM
     quiz making software will let you do this.  Then on your 99/4A or
     Geneve with a DSDD disk controller use the commercial product PC
     Transfer to convert this list of questions to a DV80 file on a TI
     disk.  This is what I have done over the last several years.  For the
     college courses I teach, all my exams are created with the Funnelweb
     editor using questions I write myself or questions that have imported
     from publisher's IBM compatible test banks.

          Quiz Family is public domain.  The author doesn't request any
     money for his work.  Send me $1 and I will mail it to you on a SSSD
     disk.
          ---------------------
          ACCESS:

          Mickey Cendrowski (LoadMaster author): 100 Pine St.  Russellton
     PA 15076

          Charles Kirkwood Jr. (QuizFamily author): P.O. Box 1241, Clemson
     SC 29633

          Charles Good (your humble columnist): P.O. Box 647, Venedocia OH
     45894. Phone [phone]. Email [e-mail]
     (preferred) or [e-mail]