Format exam papers
The released versions are shown below. In general, you should use
a release version unless you have been advised otherwise. Please do
test the betas, though (marked -bN below) and let Norman
know of problems.
| Version | Download | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| guexam-1.4.1 | tarball or zip | Requires a LaTeX/TeXLive dating from at least 2020. |
| guexam-1.3.6 | tarball or zip | Bugfix only, but works with pre-2020 LaTeX. |
sample/ directory in the distribution
for the source of this. That demonstrates the final version of the
paper, as opposed to the ‘draft’ and ‘compose’ versions; there’s also
a version with this layout but
showing the solutions.Unpack the distribution tarball or zip
file, and move the directory move-to-texmf/ (or its
contents) to some
location on the LaTeX search path. You're probably looking for a
directory called texmf-local, or something like that.
The distribution includes a file gulogo-snapshot.zip,
which contains the files required to supply the GU logo. The guexam
class will work without error in the absence of these files, but
won't, obviously, produce the logo on the exam papers. To install,
unpack the zip file, and move the files in move-to-texmf/
to a suitable place. Typically, only the exams convener will need to
care about this, since question authors use only the
[compose] mode, which does not attempt to use the
logo.
‘Move…to a suitable place’ is admittedly very vague. Here are some pointers, however:
kpsewhich
guexam.cls will show you which class file LaTeX will use (so if
it produces no result, that's telling you that LaTeX won't find the
files); also kpsepath tex will display, in an admittedly
very oblique form, the list of places where TeX will search....\Users\yourname\AppData\MikTeX, (ii) create a
sequence of folders so that you end up with
...\MikTeX\texmf\tex\latex\guexam, and (iii) put the
distributed .sty and .clo files in the
latter folder. The directory ...\MikTex\texmf is your
‘user-managed TEXMF root directory’, and you should add it to MikTeX's
search path using the instructions above.Various people within the School use various LaTeX implementations. Amongst these are:
For exams, we don't recommend you use Overleaf, though Overleaf is otherwise a good idea. This is for the fairly obvious reason that it's off-campus. Don't store exams in a cloud service!
With the version 1.1 release, the interface should now be regarded as rather stable. However version 1.1 was the first to be released outside Glasgow University, so there may be some changes to the interface which will emerge with broader use, as well as some bug fixes. The interface may, therefore, yet change. If you use this class to produce exams, you should therefore include a copy of the class file locally, rather than relying on a central version. If you need an earlier version of the class, let me know.
\units macro produces a one-time-per-document
warning that it will be removed in the next version.\partmarks commands in an
environment is now detected as an error (it was documented as an
error, but not checked, so the extra \partmarks
commands were simply ignored).\partmarks: the \partmarks
indicator can now go inside most environments, including
list, quotes, unnumbered equations, and the various amsmath displays. In these
cases, the indicator will automatically appear at the end of the
environment. The starred variant of the command still exists, but
should rarely be necessary.v1.3.6 now actually is usable with LaTeX earlier than 2020.
This compatibility is of course the point of the retained 1.3.x branch, but it appears that I tested this inadequately, and left a spurious format-version test enabled.
Versions 1.3.x are now bugfix-only. Use versions 1.4 in preference.
There are no functional changes from 1.3.5-b4.
The documentation now explicitly advises against using the stix2 and siunitx options together, with a LaTeX older than 2020, but also gives some advice on dealing with that if you do have to do that.
Bugfix: the [stix2] option now uses STIX2 as the text font once more.
Temporarily revert the STIX2/uprightpi support, to retain/regain
compatibility with LaTeX 2020/10/01 (yes, I thought I'd achieved that
with -b2, but my testing missed a case). This means that
[uprightpi] is not supported for Xe/LuaLaTeX. This
support is now planned to appear in v1.4.0.
Adjust the \partmarks fix, to avoid adding a
dependency on TeXLive; we now work with TeXLive post-2019 again.
\partmarks, in
compose mode, when a paragraph fills the last line.\part to override part numbering.xcolor package for colour management, instead
of the core color package (the xcolor
package is well-known and stable, and this means that we are
compatible with TikZ).\partmarks in solutions no longer gobble trailing space
(doing so is probably right in questions, and is still the case, but
\partmarks in solutions tend to be more interspersed with
text).\label within a \part now refers to the
part number (as opposed to the question number).[siunitx] option, indicating that we should
load the siunitx package (default no).
This is now preferred to the \units macro, and the latter will be
removed in a forthcoming release.A1.clo to clearer myclass.clo\partmarks comments now appear as footnotes.\normalsize.\defaultpartmarkscategory
so it can be invoked within a .clo file straightforwardly.[uprightpi] option to set \pi
as an upright character, as appropriate for a constant (this is
implemented fully only for the [mtpro2] and
[stix2] options)..\units macro is likely to be deprecated
in a forthcoming version, and replaced by a recommendation to use the
standard [siunitx] package.xcolor package for colour management, instead
of the core color package (the xcolor
package is well-known and stable, and this means that we are
compatible with TikZ).\partmarks in solutions no longer gobble trailing space
(doing so is probably right in questions, and is still the case, but
\partmarks in solutions tend to be more interspersed with
text).\label within a \part now refers to the
part number (as opposed to the question number).[siunitx] option, indicating that we should
load the siunitx package (default no).
This is now preferred to the \units macro, and the latter will be
removed in a forthcoming release.A1.clo to clearer myclass.clo\partmarks comments now appear as footnotes.\normalsize.\defaultpartmarkscategory
so it can be invoked within a .clo file straightforwardly.[uprightpi] option to set \pi
as an upright character, as appropriate for a constant (this is
implemented fully only for the [mtpro2] and
[stix2] options)..\units macro is likely to be deprecated
in a forthcoming version, and replaced by a recommendation to use the
standard [siunitx] package.\partmarks comments now appear as footnotes.\normalsize.\defaultpartmarkscategory
so it can be invoked within a .clo file straightforwardly.A2CT.clo class option (may still need some adjustment)A345.clo, to match those of the
redefined SI in 26th CGPM resolution; these are in force from 2019 May 20. See
text of resolution (other .clo files don't quote
constants to enough precision to make a difference).\partmarks, and
add \defaultpartmarkscategory.*.clo constants sheets,
after a report of STIX-related problems with \rm in maths
(which was deprecated a couple of decades ago).\end{document}, in \includequestion (author) files.{figure*} and {table*} now produce an error.\vec now produces correct greek bold maths.class-test.clo rubric.stix2 option, to use the
STIX2 font set.\rubric and \baserubric within a .clo file.
This was advertised as being possible, but it seems it had never been tested!Earlier release notes are available