Overview of the Doenet Cinematic Universe (DCU)

Discussion
1

Document Authoring

PreTeXt

Local Install (ptx)

Codespaces (ptx)

PreTeXt.Plus

Prefigure

Markdown

Obsidian (md)

Quarto (md)

LaTeX

Local install (tex)

Overleaf (tex)

Typst

Activities/Exercises

DoenetML

WebWorK

MyOpenMath

Numbas

STACK

Hosting/Deployment

Runestone

GitHub Pages

PreTeXt.Plus

QUBEShub

LMS

SCORM / HTML Upload

HTML Embed

Student Data Collection

Doenet.org

Runestone

SCORM

SPLICE

2

Integrations

Doenet

  • Embeds in PreTeXt
    • Coming soon to PreTeXt.Plus
  • Embeds in Obsidian
  • Embeds in HTML
  • Renders Prefigure (WIP?)
  • Can assess on Runestone powered by SPLICE/PreTeXt
  • Can assess in LMS powered by SCORM/PreTeXt
3

Accessibility

General note

Accessibility requires authors to provide appropriate alt text and/or annotations. “Accessible” below assumes that has been done.

LaTeX

  • Naively produces non-compliant PDFs
  • Tagging project produces somewhat accessible PDFs (text reflow only in proprietary software e.g. Adobe Acrobat Pro, FoxIt)

Markdown

  • Produces screenreader-friendly HTML
  • Basis of many document authoring workflows
  • Via Pandoc can be easily converted to other formats
  • Markdown-style PreTeXt (currently only on PreTeXt.Plus)

PreTeXt

  • Produces screenreader-friendly HTML and ePub
  • Produces tactile braille
  • Produces printable (non-accessible) PDFs
  • Enhanced greatly when using Prefigure for diagrams
  • Designed for scholarly STEM documents

Doenet

  • Produces screenreader-friendly HTML
  • Support for Prefigure
  • Authoring tools flag accessibility concerns
4

Conversions

XSL

  • For XML documents → XML or HTML or plaintext
  • Used by PreTeXt (with Python and other tools)

Pandoc

  • “Biggest” tool
  • Readers/writers for many formats
  • Powers Quarto

PreTeXt

  • Outputs several formats
  • Accepts LaTeX/Markdown-style markup (currently only on PreTeXt.Plus)
5

Why Doenet?

When should Doenet be used?

  • Best suited for interactive/randomized educational documents with real-time feedback based upon student activity
    • Documents could be formative/summative exercises, or just as student activities
  • The content can be described semantically in DoenetML (e.g. no arbitrary code execution)
  • The content can be distributed and read electronically, typically on the web

How does it compare to other solutions for these needs?

LaTeX/Typst/PDF output

Best suited for print-only documents. Can alternatively get print via PreTeXt in addition to other outputs.

PreTeXt

Better suited for large documents with lots of static content, but Doenet can be embedded within PreTeXt. Has maximum support for accessibility.

Prefigure

Better for accessiblily (screenreaders + tactile braille) in static diagrams (though support via DoenetML is in progress).

WebWorK/MyOpenMath/etc.

These tools are focused more on randomized exercises without interactivity. Tools often need to be hosted on a server (while Doenet can be hosted as HTML+JS or via Doenet.org).

However, exercises in these tools are often expressed in a programming language, allowing for more flexibility by authors for tasks that cannot be expressed semantically in DoenetML.

Geogebra/Desmos

Not (fully) open source. Geogebra is WYSIWYG/point-click authored. Desmos is equation-based. Can be used for quickly authored visualizations/animations when supported.

6

Chatting with Oscar, he said if he were starting a new project, he would use Unified.js for conversion. So adding that here for the record!