In the following documentation some images are out of date: the Start and Stop buttons are now replaced by menu items under the File menu.

New Features

Here I describe new features that have been added after the bulk of this documentation has been written. If you are new to exert read the documentation on the old features too.

Old Features

Startup

Start it by using the following item from the Start Menu: Start->Exert->Exert. A startup window will open showing the Exert logo.

The bottom left corner shows some status information during the loading of the various modules. It runs off the bottom of the window and that is normal in this release.

After the modules are all loaded. The main window will appear.

The meaning of items that should be self-evident to anyone who has used GUI software for a while is not going to be described here. The Start and Stop items under File are used to start and stop an automated timer mode. In this mode, Exert pops questions at a regular interval configurable through the preferences. Also, in this mode, interactive use of Exert for practice is disabled. Right now this mode has limited functionality due to the fact that Exert doesn't pop to the forefront or otherwise get the user's attention when a new question is generated. The Tools menu contains a hierarchy of various language tools.

Under the menu bar a button bar contains the functions most used when working with Exert. The button Ask is available when an exercise is selected from the list of exercises. Clicking it causes Exert to ask the user a question from the exercise selected. This button remains grayed out until the user is finished with answering the question. (More on that later.) The Cancel button is used to bail out of the current exercise. It is especially useful when the exercise consists in a series of challenges. The Preferences button brings up a configuration window to change settings that affect Exert as a whole.

Input

Exert uses various input methods to handle foreign scripts. They are described on a separate page.

Exercises

The exercise tree appears on the left. Some exercises in the tree may be disabled due to the proficiency level settings. For instance, if the current proficiency level for Sanskrit is set to a chapter that doesn't contain any lessons about conjugation, then all exercises that deal with conjugations will be turned inaccessible. They may become accessible again after the proficiency level is changed to a setting that covers some conjugation lessons.

When the user selects an exercise on the left by clicking once, a small description is displayed on the right. If the item in the list cannot be used for questioning the user, Ask is grayed out. Selecting a group like Sanskrit leaves Ask grayed out. Selecting an item like Verb Analysis under Attic Greek makes Ask fully black indicating that the button may be selected.

Clicking Ask after an exercise is selected starts the exercise. (Double clicking on an exercise does the same as clicking Ask.) While the exercise is running, Ask, Start and Stop are disabled. An exercise may ask a question consist of one or multiple challenges. For instance, the "Verb Conjugation Series" exercise asks questions consisting of multiple challenges: you have to conjugate all possible forms of a given verb in order and each form is one challenge. The status bar at the bottom of the screen shows two numbers separated by a forward slash: the first number is the current challenge number in the series and the second number is the total number of challenges in the current exercise. For instance, "2/3" would mean that you are working on challenge 2 of a question containing 3 challenges. The following image shows a question that has 167 challenges! This is where the Cancel button comes in handy: clicking it cancels the current exercise even in the middle of a series of challenges.

You may also notice in this example how questions are asked. You have two ways of answering a challenge. The first is to give an answer (here, you must type it in) and click Submit. Exert will then compare the answer against the correct one and gives feedback: a red "Incorrect!" or a black "Correct!". A correct answer also shows the list of acceptable answers so that you can see if other answers would have worked here. The second way to answer is to click Show, in which case Exerts simply shows the correct answer. Doing either ends the current challenge. If the challenge is the last of the question asked by the exercise, then the exercise is also over and the exercises on the left become accessible again.

Also to note that in cases where a module uses multiple textbook sources to structure its proficiency levels, the source of a question will be displayed. The following image shows such a case: the question was generated from a term appearing in Coulson's Teach Yourself Sanskrit, Chapter 2.

Which brings us to an important discussion. When a module supports multiple sources, some caveats are in order if you try to use multiple sources at the same time (by setting more than one proficiency levels for a given module to a level higher than zero). You have to pay attention to where a term comes from because sources don't all define the terms in the same way. If you use source A and source B and source A defines "baba" as "to say" and source B defines "baba" as "to talk", Exert still doesn't accept "to say" and "to talk" interchangeably for "baba". You have to check the Source as displayed on the screen when "baba" is presented and use the appropriate definition. Some rationales behind this:

• Using multiple sources at the same time should be rare. (Even though I'm myself doing it for Sanskrit.)
• The cases where incompatible definitions would cause problems are also limited. Most often, different sources will define the same term with partially compatible definitions. (eg. "baba" defined as "to say, to talk" and defined by another source as "to say": "to say" is common to both definitions.)
• Support for multiple sources should not complicate support for single sources. In other words, if Joe uses the Sanskrit module and wants to only deal with Coulson's textbook, he shouldn't have to worry about Desphande's textbook support interfering with his study.
• Exert is not used to grade people and it doesn't keep a tally of correct vs incorrect answers, so if it erroneously faults you for an answer, it is of no consequence. If you screw up on a question because you didn't notice the source and your answer is correct after all, then just stick your tongue out at your computer and move on.
• It would be in theory possible to make Exert nicely handle the case where a user uses multiple sources with different definitions but that's a lot of trouble for little added value.

Some exercises can give explanations about what rules are used to produce the acceptable answers that Exert expects from the student. This can be useful if one is puzzled by what Exert is expecting. An answer for which Exert can provide explanations is followed by a button labeled with a + symbol. (Note that the following image also illustrates the use of the splitting bar between the list of exercises and the exercise itself. By using the arrows you can completely hite the list.)

If you click on the symbol, an explanation is displayed at the bottom of the screen

Tools

The next image gives an example how the AtticGreek/Conjugation Tool looks like when you start it.

The Dismiss button closes the window. The Display button is accessible after a verb is selected from the list on the left. Clicking it, will fill the table on the right with various forms of the verb. Exert currently doesn't display alternative forms where those exist. Exert is currently not able to sort the list of verbs in proper Greek alphabetical order. Exert is currently limited in the various voices, moods and tenses it can display by my knowledge of Greek so the table is not yet complete.

Preferences

The Preferences window has two tabs in it. One for sound settings and the other to set parameters for the question timer. (Remember the Start and Stop buttons that control the timer?)

Sound Preferences

The check-box at the stop enables and disables sounds. If disabled, no sound will be produced by Exert even if sounds are defined under the check box. Under the check-box, you find fields and Browse buttons used to associate sounds with certain events. Right now, you can associate sounds only with a successful answer to a question or a failed answer to a question.

Timer Preferences

The Delay between questions field gives a delay in minutes between the time the user finishes a question and the next question is asked. The tree under that field shows which exercises are made available from the pool of exercises, any exercise with a red bar over it or with a parent that has a red bar over it is not available. In the example above "Attic Greek/Verbs/Verb Analysis" is not available because it has a red bar over it but note that "French/Vocabulary: French to English" is also not available because its parent, "French", is not. If you want to use the timer, make at least one exercise active. You do this by right-clicking on the exercise and selecting the On check-box. The example below has one exercise enabled.

Configuring Individual Exercises

If you right click on an exercise, a small menu appears. The only item currently present in the menu is Configure. If you select this item, you can bring up a configuration window proper to the exercise. Note that the configuration of one exercise affect all the other exercises in the same language. For instance, checking Dual Enabled option for Attic Greek/Word Declension will affect all exercises under the Attic Greek exercise. The image that follows shows the menu in question.

Here is an example of configuration window.

Setting a Proficiency Level

Proficiency levels now appear right over the exercise area when an exercise is selected.

The first pull down menu offers a choice of textbooks for which proficiency levels have been implemented. The second pull down menu indicates the current level for the textbook selected in the first pull down. The C check box selects whether the setting is "Concept-inclusive" and the L check box selects whether the setting is "Lexicon-inclusive". When the setting is "concept-inclusive", Exert combines all concepts seen in previous levels up to the current one, otherwise it concentrates on concepts seen in the current level. When the setting is "lexicon-inclusive" Exert combines all lexical terms seen in previous levels up the the current one, otherwise it concentrates on terms seen only in the current level. The Notes button is enabled if there are notes associated with the textbook selected in the first pull down.

Notes:

• Chaging proficiency levels during an exercise cancels that exercise.

• Changing the first pull down menu only affects how the next pull down and the following check boxes work: it has no other effect. For instance, selecting "Deshpande" in the first pull down, does not mean all questions will come from "Deshpande" only. What determines where questions come from is whatever the second pull down and the check box are showing for each textbook.

  Let's illustrate what this means. Let's say the system is currently configured to take questions only from Coulson, Chapter 3. The student wants to switch to questions from Deshpande, Lesson 2 only. It is not enough to change the first pull down to Deshpande and then select lesson 2 in the second pull down. The student must also make it so that when Coulson is displayed in the first pull down, the second pull down shows "Off".

There are mostly 3 ways a user would want to use these settings:

• when first starting on a new chapter: the "unit level" would be set to that chapter and both inclusions would be turned off: this allows to work only on lexical terms and concepts proper for the chapter.
• when the chapter has been studied: the inclusion of previous concepts is turned on: the student continues to concentrate on the current chapter but conjugation and declensions will cover what has previously been seen.
• eventually the student turns on both inclusions to be drilled on all concepts and lexical terms seen so far.

The "Enter" cycle

This hasn't been documented until version 0.4.0 but since version 0.1.0, Exert has been designed so that a student working through multiple questions from a specific exercise doesn't have to use the mouse much. It works by using the Enter key.

• Select an exercise in the exercise list.
• If you hit Enter, Exert will use that exercise to ask a question.
• At this point, hitting Enter performs the same action as clicking Submit. So you can type in your answer and hit Enter.
• If it is incorrect, you can try another answer and keep using Enter to submit.
• If it is correct, pressing Enter again will go to the next question.
• Note that if Show is ever used, pressing Enter after using Show asks the next question.

So it is possible to work on multiple questions without having to use the mouse very much.

More

There is more to say about Exert. This documentation will be expanded later.