The Personal Self-Assessment Environment

Project 7 Software Requirements Specification

Last modified: Tue Nov 16 19:03:11 HST 1999

Overview

This semester, you will be incrementally constructing a "Personal Self-Assessment Environment"---a small software system that you can use to build assessment quizzes on topics of your choice. You can think of this system as a flexible, configurable set of "intelligent flash cards" that you can use to help you learn factually-oriented material. Each assessment quiz consists of a set of multiple choice questions, where one or more of the potential answers can be correct. No "short answer" or "essay" question types are allowed so that the system can automatically grade and correct your answer on each question. Some example application areas for the personal self-assessment environment are learning vocabulary words in a foreign language, important events in history, or technical concepts relevent to a certification exam. Note that many technical certification exams are multiple choice and automatically graded, making this software ideal for certification self-study.

Project 7 Increment: Menubar and HTML formatting mode

This increment involves yet another redesign of your GUI and the implementation of a menubar.

First, the software must conform to all of the requirements stated in prior projects. See the Module 15 Home Page for complete details.
This is version 7.0. You know what that implies by now.
The software must support the optional command line argument "-HTMLgui".
This command line argument indicates that the each question and each answer in the PSAE file should be interpreted as HTML, not plain text, and should be presented in a formatted way. There are several ways to do this and get a "professional" looking GUI as a result. The following screen dump shows one reasonable approach to an HTML layout for questions and answers.

Note that this approach must allow question writers to embed images in their questions and answers via the "img" html tag. You should test your system to make sure this feature works.
The software must now include a menubar. The menubar should include at least the following menus and menu selections:
- File menu: This menu should include:
  - "Open": allows the user to select a new .qa file to open. The contents of this file should replace the contents of the current .qa file in memory.
  - "Close": allows the user to discard a current .qa file.
  - "Exit": closes the application.
- Quiz menu: This menu should include:
  - "Start quiz": command that starts the quiz from the beginning.
  - "Show score window": command that displays a window containing the cumulative score on each question at this point in the test. Note that this menu command allows the user to see their score so far during a test without having to wait until the end, when this score window comes up by default.
- Help menu: This menu should include:
  - "Instructions": opens a window that explains how to use the system. This should be enclosed in an HTML window and nicely formatted. A good approach is to provide an instructions.html file in your .jar file which is read by your program and formatted in this window. The professional approach is to use the JavaHelp system, but I won't make you go there this semester :-).
  - "About PSAE...": pops up a dialog box indicating the current version number and author of the system.

Philip Johnson