LON-CAPA Help

This panel lets you set various display options for content.

• Default XML style sheet

• Visibly Separate Items on a Page

• Disable Display of Problem Receipts

• Force use of a specific math rendering engine

• Set default options for < m > tags when converting L^AT_EX to html.

• Student formula entry uses inline preview, not DragMath pop-up

• Molecule editor uses JSME (HTML5) in place of JME (Java)

• Chemical reaction response uses inline preview, not pop-up

• Display of external resources

Style files (.sty extension) created in Authoring Space and published to the shared content pool can be selected for use when rendering resources in the course by clicking the Select Style File link. See the "Resource Types" item in the "Introduction to LON-CAPA Authoring" section in the Authoring manual for more information about .sty files. An alternative to the use of .sty files is to create a CSS file (.css extension) in Authoring Space, and publish to the shared content pool. Note: in this case you would use a problem parameter "CSS file to link (cssfile)", accessed via Content Settings, instead of Course Settings, to apply the style to resource(s) in your course.

Composite Pages include two or more resources on a single web page. By selecting "Yes" for visible separation, adjacent resources will be separated by a horizontal rule.

Problem Receipts will be displayed by default when feedback on correctness is being displayed to a student, and the student has submitted the correct solution. See the "Verify a Submission Receipt Number" section ().

If "Force use of a specific math rendering engine" is set to none, then the math display mechanism used to render LaTeX within <m></m> tags is determined in the following order, with the first one set being the one in effect:

1. User's own personal preference set by the user hovering over the user's name at top left of a LON-CAPA page, and selecting Preferences > Math display settings

2. Domain default set by a Domain Coordinator

3. System default set for the LON-CAPA version installed on the server (tth in 2.11 and earlier)

The behavior of the textboxes where students enter either an algebraic formula (formularesponse) or a chemical reaction (reactionresponse) is inherited from settings in the domain. The default, in the absence of a specific domain setting, is to use an inline preview which appears below the textbox, as the expression is typed. The domain default can be overridden within a specific course if it is preferred to use the old pop-up window displays in either case.

Similarly, the the molecular editor display will use the domain setting, unless overridden within a specific course. If nothing is explicitly set in the domain or the course, then the default is to use JSME instead of its JME predecessor.

The Course Editor can be used to add the URL for an external resource to be displayed within a LON-CAPA course. By default, the remote content will be displayed in an iframe with standard LON-CAPA menu links/icons present in the page header above the resource. LON-CAPA attempts to gracefully handle mixed active content issues for external resources by injecting usehttp=1 into the query string for the LON-CAPA URL, in order to force serving of an http:// external URL in an http:// LON-CAPA page, where the LON-CAPA server uses https:// by default for all other pages. A separate session cookie which confers reduced rights is used when usehttp=1 is present in the query string because LON-CAPA's standard session cookie includes the 'secure' attribute.

LON-CAPA also attempts to circumvent the lack of scrolling for multi-page PDFs in iframes on iOS by replacing inline display in an iframe with a link when viewing on a mobile device. Another instance where LON-CAPA replaces display of an external resource in an iframe with a link to display the resource in a separate browser tab is when Content-Security-Policy or X-Frame-Options prevent display in an iframe.

The automatic display adjustments described above occur on a case-by-case basis depending on the external resource itself.

The "Display of external resources" item can be used to force display of all external resources in a course in either a separate browser tab, or in a new browser window. In the latter case an optional width and height (in pixels) can be specified. When tab or window are selected, there is also an option to re-use the same (named) tab or window when displaying different external resources in a course in order to limit the number of tabs or windows which may be created by browsing in a single course.