Last week I had a very tedious task to perform: I had to make 40 music theory exams as an ODT document (1). Each student should have his own unique exam, containing a specific number of tasks. The ODT document contains several sections as embedded objects (like pictures) sections and formatting styles for various elements.

How can I create these exams? Well, the hard way. First I can make an ODT template with some questions. Second, I open the template, add to each question specific content (such as pictures of musical scores and specific instructions as constructing four-note chords) and save the document. I’ve to do this 40 times. To be honest, not my job.

So, I thought about a less tedious solution. The results of my thinking so far:

1. With VisualNEO Win, I can do repetitive tasks easily: creating 40 files is in fact running a loop for 40 times.
2. Pandoc (2) is an excellent command line document converter. Pandoc can convert -amongst others- a HTML-file (3) and Markdown file (4) into an ODT document. Example:

pandoc -o test.odt test.md

Many command line options are available. “Pandoc is your swiss-army knife”, the developers say.

3. The choice between generating a HTML- or Markdown file with VisualNEO Win was an easy decision: the Markdown syntax is simple. In addition, Markdown can handle HTML commands!

So the easy way was:
a. create a md-file (md = Markdown) – with help of VisualNEO Win and
b. convert the md-file into an ODT document using Pandoc.

The last question was how to create a Markdown document. Well, I found a handy tool: Typora (5), a lightweight plain text editor that makes creating a .md file very easy: it renders what’s typed on the screen in Markdown format. You can e.g. type the string ‘my word’ and to make it bold, select it and press CTRL+B (or via the Menu -> Format). Typora now replaces ‘my word’ into the Markdown command **my word**. However, Typora has a clean interface: you’ll see the Markdown-code only when you click ‘my word’ (or via the Source Code Mode: Menu -> View).

Tip 1: explore in Typora the right mouse click-menu!
Tip 2: Typora has an excellent built-in Markdown Reference (Menu > Help)

So, I made an example-exam with Typora and looked into the source code, for knowing how to write my VisualNEO Win commands.

Well, if you are inspired to make a VisualNEO Win application, you can read now some suggestions. For demonstration purposes, I’ll show only the making of a header and 2 questions. For you, the next Markdown commands will be sufficient (but you can extend them easily);

Heading like <h1>: #header-like-html-h1
Heading like <h2>: ##header-like-html-h2
Bold: **this bold text**
Italic: *this is italic text*
Unordered lists: 
- item1
- item2

 

Okay, now my suggestions.

1. Define first a semicolon separated list of students and parse that list. Tip: do not use spaces in the student’s name.

StrParse "[list-of-students]" ";" "[student]" "[no-of-students]"

2. Define variables for the automatically generated question 2 (see below)

SetVar "[types]" "major;minor;dominant;diminished;half-diminished"
StrParse "[types]" ";" "[type]" "[no-of-types]"

SetVar "[pitches]" "C;C#;Db;D#;Eb;E;E#;F;F#;Gb;G;G#;Ab;A;A#;Bb;B;B#"
StrParse "[pitches]" ";" "[pitch]" "[no-of-pitches]"

SetVar "[inversions]" "first;second;third"
StrParse "[inversions]" ";" "[inversion]" "[no-of-inversions]"

3. Create the Markdown documents

Loop "1" "[no-of-students]" "[x]"

.make a header and write the result into a document with the name of the student in the filename
.note that Markdown has LN [#10] as line ending

SetVar "[header]" "##University of Arts[#10]"
SetVar "[header]" "[header]#Exam Music Theory - January 2021[#10][#10]"

FileWrite "[PubDir][student[x]]-doc.md" "Append" "[header]"

.do some processing for question 1 and extend the current document
.note that I insert a picture by the traditional HTML command

SetVar "[question-1]" "**Question 1:**[#10]Study the next example. Which modulation technique uses the composer?[#10][#10]"
SetVar "[question-1]" "[question-1]*Enter your answer below the example*[#10][#10]"
SetVar "[question-1]" "[question-1]<img src='question-1-[x].png' />[#10][#10]"

FileWrite "[PubDir][student[x]]-doc.md" "Append" "[question-1]"

.do some processing for question 2 and extend the current document

Random "[no-of-types]" "[type-selection]"
Math "[type-selection]+1" "0" "[type-selection]"

Random "[no-of-pitches]" "[pitch-selection]"
Math "[pitch-selection]+1" "0" "[pitch-selection]"

Random "[no-of-inversions]" "[inversion-selection]"
Math "[inversion-selection]+1" "0" "[inversion-selection]"

SetVar "[question-2]" "**Question 2:**[#10]Construct a [type[type-selection]] seventh chord with root [pitch[pitch-selection]]. Write it out in the [inversion[inversion-selection]] inversion.[#10][#10]"

FileWrite "[PubDir][student[x]]-doc.md" "Append" "[question-2]"

EndLoop

Now you’ve 40 .md documents, that need to be converted by Pandoc:

– download the portable version of Pandoc (6) and unzip it into the folder you want.
– put the .md files you want to convert in your Pandoc directory.

In case of my 40 .md documents, I used the following with VisualNEO:

FileList "[PubDir]*.md" "Files" "[all-md-files]"
StrParse "[all-md-files]" "[#13]" "[fname]" "[number-of-md-files]"

Loop "1" "[number-of-md-files]" "[index]"

ExtractFileName "[fname[index]]" "[students-filename-and-extension]"

.remove the extension
StrReplace "[students-filename-and-extension]" ".md" "" "[students-filename]" ""

Run "cmd" "/c pandoc -o [students-filename].odt [students-filename].md" "Normal" "" ""
EndLoop

That’s it! Within a TEAMS session, each student got his own exam as an ODT document, answered the questions (within limited time) and send the filled-in exam to me. It was the best answer I could give now to prevent cheating on online exams.

Thanks for reading!

Reinier Maliepaard

(1) ODT documents can be opened with word processors like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer or AbiWord.
(2) https://pandoc.org/
(3) https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_basic.asp
(4) https://www.w3schools.io/file/markdown-introduction/
(5) https://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-SOFTWARE/Programming/Pandoc-Portable.shtml
(6) https://typora.io/