Cloze question: limit of possible characters

1 Requirements

Now the number of possible characters for a gap is unlimited and it is impossible to determine the number of characters.

Many question authors are interested in defining the number of the inserting characters for each gap.
That means, they would even determine a different number of characters for each single gap.

This is in great demand by authors, teaching foreign languages.

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Release 5.0
• Funding: Funded by Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
• Maintainer: Björn Heyser

• Implementation of the feature is done by Databay AG
• Contract settled: Yes
• Tested by / status: Fred Neumann, fred.neumann@fau.de / (testing completed)

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: Claudia Dehling / dehling@uni-duesseldorf.de

4 Discussion

BH 14 Oct 2013: I do not see any technical problems implementing this feature, but we have to define some details:
 

• Should the text field on the test page itself limit the entered string?
• Or is the string to be limited server side?
• Is the submitted string to be shortened or to be nulled if the string is beyond the limit?
• Should the entered value actually be limited?
• Or should the calculation of points respect the limit?

Fred Neumann, 29. Oct 21013: The feature is related to Cloze Question: Separately configured gap lengths which was already appreciated for 4.4 but could not be implemented due to limited ressources. Now we have probably a funding available.
 
My proposal is to have a common setting for each gap that is used both as visual size and input limit. The gap fields are single line, so the size and maxlength attributes of the input element should be sufficient to implement this.

JF 25 Nov 2013: We appreciate this extension  as described above and in the comment by Fred and schedule it for 4.5.

JF 13 Oct 2014: We accept the feature, if empty values are represented by empty strings, not by "0".

5 Implementation

NA 06 May 2014: Implemented

Fred Neumann, 4 Sept 2014: tested and bugs reported (see Refactoring of the Cloze Question type).

MJ 4 Sept 2014: Bug #13863 is fixed.

NA 14 Okt 2014: Fixed the presentation of the default valur for textfield length. If there is an empty value,  an empty string will be shown except "0".

BH 19 Jan 2015: Implementation Description
 
There is a new setting for each gap, that defines a maximum length. This length value is used to set the visual size as well as the input limit for the gap inputs that are shown to the participants. The participant is not able to enter more characters, than the limit allows to, anymore.

6 Test Cases

1. Create a test object
2. Add a cloze question to the test
3. Enter a cloze text with gaps and press the 'Create and Refresh Gaps' button.
4. Now you can define the gaps: Choose the gap type 'text gap' or 'numeric gap'
5. Define the gap size and maxlength attribute by entering a number in the field "text field length" for each gap.
6. Save the question and start the test.
7. Check if the gap-fields are shown with the given "text field length"
8. Check if the input of the gap-fields are also limited. Enter a number of chars that fits the given "text field length"
9. Export/Import the test and check the "text field length" for each gap

6.1 Selenium Test Cases

Selenium Test Preconditions:
 

1. Login to ILIAS
2. Disable the TinyMCE in the ILIAS administration
3. Switch your language to English
4. Enter a category
5. Play the test case