[OS X TeX] References across files

[Alain Schremmer]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:53 PM, Alan Munn wrote:

> This was set by Knuth, and I guess many people know it, but new  
> command writers often encounter it, so it's clearly not advertised  
> enough!

Considering that I have now been LaTeXing for, I think, four years  
and that this is the first time I ran into it …
>
> I've been following this thread a little, and although I understood  
> your genealogical analogy better than your actual requirement, I've  
> been thinking that you might want to do this with the datatool  
> package, which would allow you to keep your question in an Excel  
> file and access the questions that way.

Would you believe I have had Talbot's data tool since it came out?

Well, I am always done transferring my data into arrayjob so that's it!

The irony is that my requirement became a necessity because of  
Talbot's probsoln because the latter allowed me to implement  
seriously an idea of mine.

Say you teach addition. Eventually, you will want to know the extent  
to which your students "understand addition". The only thing, though,  
that I can do is to settle on a number of "checkable items". For  
instance, you may decide that part of the understanding of addition  
is to be aware that there is a neutral element. And that is a  
"checkable item" inasmuch as you can ask the question "5 + 0 = ?".

But of course that covers only a tiny little bit of one's  
understanding of addition. So, maybe you want to find out if your  
students know about "carry over". For that, you may ask the question  
"5 + 7 = ?" which would be another "checkable item".

To check the understanding of the magnum opus, though, requires a lot  
of checkable items and I had gotten to the point where I couldn't  
keep track of them. But now I have one style sheet where all the  
checkable items are listed.

By the way, I have no idea of the extent to which dealing correctly  
with checkable items corresponds to any "understanding". I just  
couldn't think of anything else. And now, when somebody tells me "Ah  
but they also have to be able to do X", I just add X to the list of  
checkable items. And, should this person wish to use the stuff, s/he  
need only uncomment a line in a list for that checkable item to be on  
the multiple-choice exam!

Regards
--schremmer

Alan
>
> -- 
> Alan Munn						amunn at msu.edu
> Department of Linguistics
> and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages		Tel. 	517-355-7491
> Michigan State University, East Lansing MI 48824 USA	Fax	517-432-2736
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