St. Cloud State University

                     Academic Computer Services



                               Grader


                       written by Steve Jennen

                            May/June 1990









                             DISCLAIMER



This software is provided "as is" and St. Cloud State University
provides no warranties of any kind.  This software is also hereby
submitted to the Public Domain.  You may copy, modify and  distribute
this program as long as this title page remains intact.

If you find any bugs in the program or have any comments about the
program, I'd like to hear about it.  Send mail to:

                  jennen%tigger.decnet@msus1.bitnet


               SCSU Academic Computer Services Grader



    I.  Introduction
   II.  Installation procedure for VAX/VMS
  III.  Installation procedure for PC/MS-DOS
   IV.  General information for both PC/MS-DOS and VAX/VMS





I. Introduction


This is YAGP - "Yet-Another-Grading-Program".  This type of program
must have been written hundreds of times over by every computer
science student there is.  I myself, ironically, had to write a simple
program to tally the number of A's, B's, C's, D's and F's given a list
of student's scores for a CSCI class AFTER I had received the go-ahead
to do this project.  The SCSU Grader is over 6000 lines long, written
in C.  My CSCI project was only 150 lines written in Modula-2.  Of
course, my CSCI project wasn't written to interface with humans.

The SCSU Grader can do more than just total the student's scores,
compute percent and report back the student's letter grade.  It will
also allow the user to weigh individual tests, quizzes or assignments
and then compute percent and letter grade.  Furthermore, the SCSU
Grader allows the grouping of tests, quizzes or assignments and
assigning weights to the group as a whole.  These methods of computing
grades should satisfy most instructors.

Another feature of the SCSU Grader is the capability to run on both
the VAX under VMS and on the PC running PC/MS-DOS.  At any time, the
user may transfer their class files from one system to the other by
following a simple procedure.  Most users, I think will use the SCSU
Grader on just one system, and not use the file transfer capability of
the program.  That's OK.  However, it's there if you need it.

When running on the VAX, the reports may be directed to any print
queue the user desires and printed on any size form.  By directing the
reports to a staff print queue, the instructor is assured that their
reports won't accidently be picked up by a student as he's rummaging
through his printout drop-box.  Or perhaps the instructor just wants
his report laser printed.



II. Installation procedure for VAX/VMS


There are two things that must be done:

	1. Compile and Link the program ( Grade.C )
	2. Setup the QUEUES.DAT file and logical

Compiling and linking the program is relatively straigtforward.  I use
CC/NOOPTIMIZE GRADE.C and LINK GRADE.  I use nooptimize when compiling
because it's roughly twice as fast and doesn't produce any smaller
code.

Setting up the QUEUES.DAT file is also easy.  The file format is as
follows:

	Queue_name	Form_Width	Form_Length
	-------------------------------------------
	sys$print	132		99999
	gismolw		80		60

Note that if there are two queues (as above), the actual text file
(QUEUES.DAT) should only be two lines long.  It should NOT contain the
header you see above, that is simply for informational purposes.  The
delimiter between the three fields may be any amount of whitespace,
either spaces or tabs or both.

The Logical that is expected for the location of the QUEUES.DAT file
is SCSU$GRADER.  The logical name may be changed, but the file MUST
exist with at least one print queue in it.  This same logical is used
for the location of the help file (HELPFILE.DAT).



III. Installation procedure for PC/MS-DOS


If you do not have a copy of the executeable and you would like to
compile the program, then you need a copy of Microsoft's QuickC
version 2.0 or above.  I haven't tested it with any earlier versions
of QuickC, but I didn't use anything real fancy either, so it may
compile just fine.

Before compiling, you need to set the stack size to 32K and you may
set the RELEASE version compiler flag.  By setting the release flag,
the compiler will produce an executeable approximately 50K smaller in
size.   When compiling, you will run into 3 warning messages.  These
warnings will not affect the program in any way and may just be
ignored.  I don't know why I don't get the same warning when compiling
with VAX C, but that's another story.

There is one other file that should be distributed with the GRADE.EXE
file and that is HELPFILE.DAT.  This file must be in the current
default directory location during operation of the program.


IV.  General information for both PC/MS-DOS and VAX/VMS


Please note that the SCSU Grader will only search the current default
directory for grading files.