How to write and layout the xourse and Ximera documentClass file to build an assignment.
Titles and abstracts help users find your content. Typically, activites need titles and an abstract. For example:
\documentclass{ximera}
\title{Title of your activity}
\author{Your name here}
\begin{document}
\begin{abstract}
A one-sentence description of the activity.
\end{abstract}
\maketitle
\end{document}
makes a blank Ximera document with the title “Title of your activity” The \title
command is what generates the title of the tile, and the subtitle for a tile is generated
using the ‘abstract’ environment - the content of that environment is what gets put
as the subtitle/description. The title command should be placed before the
\begin{document} command, whereas the abstract should be placed after the
\begin{document} command. Finally, in order to make the title and subtitle to
appear on the tile, you must use the \maketitle command. This is especially
important, since otherwise the tile is blank and remarkably difficult to see on some
devices.
To help make a book, Ximera provides syle commands for the titles of the activities. These should be used in the xourse file.
\documentclass{xourse}
\title{Title of your activity}
\author{Your name here}
\begin{document}
\begin{abstract}
A one-sentence description of the xourse (optional).
\end{abstract}
\maketitle
\chapterstyle
\activity{path-to-someActivity.tex}
\sectionstyle
\activity{path-to-someOtherActivity.tex}
\end{document}
The xourse documentClass contains the paths to the course files, and the nature of those tiles is determined by the command used to load them. There are two options, the \activity command creates a full sized tile, with a title and description displayed, and the \practice command creates a thin tile that shows only the progress bar, without a title or description. These commands are effectively an \include command, so they should point to a Ximera documentClass file (note that the file itself doesn’t need any special configuration to be an activity versus practice).
You can also use the \part command to make a darker tile that is not clickable, which can be useful to divide up your content. Moreover, there is also a \chapterstyle and \sectionstyle command, which make all activities after those commands have slightly different coloring - e.g. chapterstyle makes the tile slightly darker than section style, which is the default. Thus you could have a xourse file that looks something like:
\documentClass{xourse}
\input{preamble}
\title{Example Assignment}% Title of the tile
\begin{document}
\begin{abstract}% Write the description
This is an example assignment containing a few tiles of problems.
\end{abstract}
\maketitle% Make sure to display the title and description
\part{First Assignment Type}% Declare first assignment block via a large darker tile
\activity{folderOne/assignmentOne}% Load assignmentOne.tex in the subfolder folderOne
\practice{folderOne/practice/practiceOne}% Make a thin practice tile out of the file ‘‘practiceOne’’ contained in the subfolder ‘‘practice’’ in the subfolder ‘‘folderTwo’’.
\part{Second Assignment Type}% Declare second assignment block via a large darker tile
\chapterstyle% Acitivities are going to be shaded darker until we reset to styletype
\activity{folderTwo/assignmentOneLeadIn}% a lead-in for the assignments, so it gets special coloring
\sectionstyle% Return to normal tile coloring.
\activity{folderTwo/assignmentOne}% Load assignmentOne.tex from the subfolder: folderTwo
\practice{folderTwo/practice/practiceOne}% Make a thin practice tile out of the file contained in the subfolder ‘‘practice’’ in the subfolder ‘‘folderTwo’’.
\end{document}
Note that when online at (BADBAD Give link to official docs!)you can go to the xourse file for this documentation by going back to the page with all the tiles, then append “.tex” to the end of the url and see the xourse file that generated this page to get a real-life example.
Ximera documents are meant to be compilable either indvidually or as part of a Xourse. In order to have consistent behavior between Ximera class files and Xourse files, and to avoid option clashes, the best-practice is to create a separate preamble file. When compiling the Xourse document, the Ximera document’s preamble can only contain objects like
\documentclass...
\title...
\author...
\date...
\input... ????