Gapfill

Hi Camille
This issue was fixed in the most recent release (1.7). Sadly the standard PHP string function would not deal properly with anything except basic ASCII, so I had to switch to a more recent bit of code.
Here is the text from the releasenotes
There is a fix to ensure proper handling of string comparison. Previously
tolower was used which would not work correctly with text containing accents.
This has been changed to use mb_lower.
I now include a new sample question that illustrates the handling of text containing more than basic ASCII
Here is the text of that example question
The gapfill question type can be used with non ASCII characters. For example the Cyrillic alphabet.
Moscow is the capital of [Россия]
The french word garçon has an accent on the letter c [garçon]
(Hmmm perhaps french should have an upper case F)

Hi Marcus, Hi Liz,
I encountered the same problem with french accents such as "é" on moodle 2.9.2+ (Build: 20151016). The answers containing accents won't be considered right if the option 'case sensitive" is not activated.

Hi Liz, I have just tried your question in Moodle 2.7 with Gapfill 1.7 and it appeared to work. I will get an install of Moodle 2.8.6 and try it with that (there should be no difference but you never know with these things).

Hi Liz, can you also import the sample questions that come in the sample_questions.xml file and in particular run the question/s with the title "Other scripts and accents". This illustrates non ASCII characters, a word in Cyrillic and the a french word with an accent.

Can you export your questions as XML and send them to me (I will send my email address directly to you)

Hello,
I am also experiencing an error in grading. I am trying to use drag and drop on a Spanish quiz. It marks all answers that have an accent incorrect. Moodle 2.8.6, Gapfill 2006082515 1.7, Clean theme. Is there a fix for this? Or should we use a different question type? Thanks!

Hi Stuart, can you install the example questions contained in xml file in the package and get screen shots of them, can you take a look at the display using the clean theme (you may be able to switch to it by adding &theme=clean in the URL bar), I will send my email address directly to you via Moodle messages...

This is a really useful plugin that we are just beginning to use for language teaching. For some reason the gaps are nowhere near as wide as in the examples I've seen online, and in one question a word is truncated after it is dropped into the gap (banana in the screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrlnn3rlwgzp4hk/Screen%20Shot%202015-08-24%20at%2014.26.18.png?dl=0). This happens with both Fixed Gap Size on and off. Perhaps this is font/theme-related? We're using the campus theme but have not made any changes to the theme's defaults.

Klaus, could you tell me what version of Moodle you are running. I have just done that upgrade with sql server and Moodle 2.9 and it worked OK, so I am now curious about the Moodle API

Thanks Klaus, I will set up the 2006082513 version up on an instance of Moodle with SQL server and try the upgrade myself.

2006082513 to 2006082515

What version are you upgrading from (the value will be in your version.php file of the gapfill question type)

Doesn´t work with MS SQL database anymore:
"Debug info:
Error code: invalidmssqlnativetype
$a contents: tinyint
Stack trace:
line 591 of /lib/dml/mssql_native_moodle_database.php: dml_exception thrown
line 456 of /lib/dml/mssql_native_moodle_database.php: call to mssql_native_moodle_database->mssqltype2moodletype()
line 150 of /lib/ddl/database_manager.php: call to mssql_native_moodle_database->get_columns()
line 63 of /question/type/gapfill/db/upgrade.php: call to database_manager->field_exists()
line 541 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to xmldb_qtype_gapfill_upgrade()
line 1630 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
line 433 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()"
Any ideas, how to solve?
thanks!

Hi Daniel, the problem is in the underlying php function strtolower (see http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtolower.php). It doesn't handle extended ASCII properly as you can see from that link. In 1.7 so it won't work properly with umlauts etc. I have switched to using mb_strotolower which will handle the extended ASCII. If you check the box on a question that says "Case sensitive" on the 1.6 version it doesn't run the strtolower function and it should work as you expect. However it is probably better to upgrade to the 1.7 version.

Thanks Marcus. I am using Gapfill 1.7. So you say Gapfill o PHP wouldnt accpet letters like ß ü ä ö?