ExamWritePad

[Cogwhirl]

Hello!

 

Apologies if this has been asked already - I have searched this thread using the thread search function but couldn't find it, and I hope you'll forgive me for not trawling all 150-odd pages for it!

 

Our students were undertaking a Performing Arts exam this morning and found they're unable to use footnotes as the function doesn't appear to exist in EWP, so I've had to switch them over to Word for the purposes of getting their exam sorted. Is the possibility of adding footnotes a feature that could be under consideration?

 

Thanks,

 

Andrew

[ass17]

Hello!

 

Apologies if this has been asked already - I have searched this thread using the thread search function but couldn't find it, and I hope you'll forgive me for not trawling all 150-odd pages for it!

 

Our students were undertaking a Performing Arts exam this morning and found they're unable to use footnotes as the function doesn't appear to exist in EWP, so I've had to switch them over to Word for the purposes of getting their exam sorted. Is the possibility of adding footnotes a feature that could be under consideration?

 

Thanks,

 

Andrew

 

I can certainly look at doing it.

 

Leave it with me :-)

[BarraHeist]

Hi

We've recently setup ExamWritePad for our Prelims starting soon

Im typing up a summary for staff for them to know how the software works

Once of the biggest differences is the use of Autosave as we used Wordpad in the past

Can you let me know how often the Autosave kicks in and saves changes?

Is it time based or by how much text

 

Thank you

[ass17]

Hi

We've recently setup ExamWritePad for our Prelims starting soon

Im typing up a summary for staff for them to know how the software works

Once of the biggest differences is the use of Autosave as we used Wordpad in the past

Can you let me know how often the Autosave kicks in and saves changes?

Is it time based or by how much text

 

Thank you

 

If you are using the defaults values then it is set to 60 seconds.

Autosave and autobackup, same for both.

 

Autosave relates to the master copy of the working document.

Autobackup relates to keeping a copy of the working state. Therefore created multiple files because they are dateTime stamped and hidden from the user, to only be used if the working copy is not correct or is missing.

[BarraHeist]

Good morning

 

Apologies for another question but just trying to get to grips with the software

Im looking to setup the dictation feature on a Windows 10 laptop but when I click the Dictation button within EWP I get the bar to along the top to say its listening but also that 'Dictation isnt fully supported in this app'

Online Speech Recognition is On but wondered if ive missed something

 

Thank you

[ass17]

Good morning

 

Apologies for another question but just trying to get to grips with the software

Im looking to setup the dictation feature on a Windows 10 laptop but when I click the Dictation button within EWP I get the bar to along the top to say its listening but also that 'Dictation isnt fully supported in this app'

Online Speech Recognition is On but wondered if ive missed something

 

Thank you

 

What happens when you proceed to talk into the mic? Does it write the spoken text into the EWP document or in a box for you to copy and paste?

[BarraHeist]

No it doesnt do anything really - nothing on the EWP document and nothing in a box - only the bar at the top to says its listening and not fully supported

Im getting a reading on the microphone when testing so the laptop is recognising my voice

[ass17]

No it doesnt do anything really - nothing on the EWP document and nothing in a box - only the bar at the top to says its listening and not fully supported

Im getting a reading on the microphone when testing so the laptop is recognising my voice

All my devices are Windows 11 and when I tried, it worked as expected, it did pop with a message with some feature may no work, but that is normal. What I did notice is that it does state on Microsofts website that for dictation to work on Windows 10 you need to be connected to the internet. This is as much as I can help becuase dictation is a built-in windows feature and out of my control, sorry.

[BarraHeist]

I think it was the laptop on this case mate - I was able to get it working as expected on a couple others

Thank you for having a look

[ass17]

Ok great thanks for letting me know [emoji1303]

[badders]

Is there a way to just open the reader feature without having to enter candidate details and create an examwritepad file?

[ass17]

Is there a way to just open the reader feature without having to enter candidate details and create an examwritepad file?

 

There sure is, you can run EWP as Reader only using the December release version.

 

In the config is a setting “PDFReader_StartFullScreenReadersOnly” and set it to 1.

[thimon]

Hi. ExamWritePad crashed during an exam today. I have noticed that all of the backup files are only a few KB in size and produce a blank document when opened in ExamWritePad. Do you have any recommendations? I've also got reports of the files not automatically saving to the Desktop, which I have set, or disappearing. Thank you.

[ass17]

Did you rename the examtextbackup file extension to examtext? This is necessary for them to open in EWP.

[thimon]

Sorry, didn’t know I had to do that. Renamed the file and yay their work is there! Thank you so much. I think the Desktop saving issue is a local issue, need to put some time into that.

[ass17]

Sorry, didn’t know I had to do that. Renamed the file and yay their work is there! Thank you so much. I think the Desktop saving issue is a local issue, need to put some time into that.

 

No worries, it’s was done that way to stop pupils from opening them up direct, more deterrent than anything…

 

Any further help just drop a comment here…

[MyGutFeeling]

Is there a list of IP addresses, URLs or ports the application uses to communicate out to the Internet with? We have seen issues whereby laptops without Internet access can sometimes take nearly half a minute to launch, whereas devices with Internet access launches the application within a few seconds. Wondering if some license validation is trying to occur at launch which the firewall might be blocking.

[ass17]

Is there a list of IP addresses, URLs or ports the application uses to communicate out to the Internet with? We have seen issues whereby laptops without Internet access can sometimes take nearly half a minute to launch, whereas devices with Internet access launches the application within a few seconds. Wondering if some license validation is trying to occur at launch which the firewall might be blocking.

 

Only on the trial version, and it queries ExamWritePad.com

 

The full licensed version doesn’t access the internet unless you have turned on check for updates on startup in the config?

[thimon]

No worries, it’s was done that way to stop pupils from opening them up direct, more deterrent than anything…

 

Any further help just drop a comment here…

 

I don’t know how, but the default saving destination is %userprofile%\\Desktop instead of what I would’ve expected to be %userprofile%\Desktop

 

A mistake my end in the config file (I need to look tomorrow), or does the software read the location like this?

[ass17]

I don’t know how, but the default saving destination is %userprofile%\\Desktop instead of what I would’ve expected to be %userprofile%\Desktop

 

A mistake my end in the config file (I need to look tomorrow), or does the software read the location like this?

 

I’m pretty sure it was how it was written in JSON but I will check.

 

Just check when you load the config file in the ConfigEditorGUI app, does the path just have a single backslash?

Then open up the config in notepad and how does it look there?

 

I’m not near a PC to check at the moment but I’m pretty sure I have tried single and double in testing.

 

Be interested to know your outcome..

[thimon]

Thank you. I’ll check when I’m back in school. Had a few reports of files not saving to the Desktop. I’ve asked for affected laptops to be isolated next time for me to check. Mocks almost over!!!

[ass17]

Indeed the JSON config file save single backslashes as double due to the nature of strings when saving to the file.

 

I’ve just tested %userprofile%\Desktop which is written as %userprofile%\\Desktop in the config, and when I launched EWP it resolved it to c:\users\manager\desktop\

Which is correct on my test machine.

[ass17]

Just to let you all know there is a new release coming by the end of Feb.

 

One of the additions will please the deployment police :-) which I thought I would share with you, about time too!

 

Deploy the License file and the ExamWritePadSettings.json file during the MSI install using the LICENSEKEYFILE and SETTINGSFILE properties.

For example:

ExamWritePad.msi LICENSEKEYFILE="\\Servername\Share\license.lic" SETTINGSFILE="\\Servername\Share\ExamWritePadSettings.json" /qn

 

 

Amongst the other 28 things coming of which 11 are NEW, 10 are FIXES, 6 are CHANGES and 1 is REMOVED

[Sephiroth]

Hi @ass17. I'm testing this for our upcomming exams season and am loving it so far. I do have a couple of minor issues and one slightly less minor one...

 

So minor it's unbelievable:

• Clicking on 'Assembly Checking' removes the option and brings the next item up to focus
  
• Description text is the wrong way round for 'Disable_KeyCombo_CTRL{O|N}' options
  
• Description text for 'PDFReader_AutoPlayTextSelection' has capital 'I' in 'DIsabled'
  
• Description text for 'PDFReader_SplitScreen' states 505/50, presumably shoud be 50/50
  

(all in the 'EWP Config Editor')

 

More pressingly:

I have set the application to be full screen and set a password to exit so that candidates can't muck about with Windows when they shouldn't be. However, when the password prompt comes up at exit, ALT+F4 closes the application regardless. I have already disabled the Windows keys and looked through any options in the config editor to try to stop this. Any chance you can disable this please.

 

Slighly linked; without the Windows keys disabled and fullscreen enabled, candidates can still press the Windows key to bring up the start menu. Any applications or files opened here open behind EWP, but the taskbar and start menu are visible and accessible at that point. I don't necessarily expect a fix for this as there's only so much you can do I expect, but thought you'd be interested to know.

 

Thanks

Edited February 6, 2024 by Sephiroth

[jessica]

Not a major issue, but we've noticed when using Screen Masking through the Read&Write toolbar the Candidate Information Screen doesn't get the mask.