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warnPartialMatchArgs=TRUE. (#779)Added “swirl_is_fun” option to
swirl_options().
Added Portuguese menu translations.
Added new answer test:
calculates_same_value().
Now compatible with versions of testthat later than 0.11.0.
Added support for multiple languages, including Spanish, French,
German, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, and Korean. The default language
can be changed using the function
select_language().
Added install_course() in order to install swirl
courses that are distributed in the .swc format.
The directories where swirl courses and where user data is stored
can now be explicitly specified. These options can be set using the
function swirl_options().
It’s now possible to log and collect a student’s progression
through a swirl course. Enable logging with
swirl_options().
Improved support for displaying non-ASCII character sets through UTF-8 encoding.
Now compatible with
swirlify::demo_lesson().
Add basic developer API to swirl, courtesy of @filipsch and @seankross.
Change license to MIT, which is slightly less restrictive than GPL-3 and will make it easy for developers to tap into the new API.
Add mirror argument to
install_from_swirl() to accommodate installing courses from
the Bitbucket mirror of our swirl-courses GitHub repository. (Prompted
by India’s blocking of GitHub.)
Check for existence of variable in swirl.R to address issue with
using rm() command.
omnitest due to typo (thanks to
@reginaastri).uninstall_all_courses function.Fix small bug in omnitest due to missing exclamation
point (thanks to @wilcrofter).
Add delete_progress function (thanks to @seankross).
Use of partner.coursera.org websites for Coursera
submission is enabled.
Omnitest uses rmatch_calls (recursive
match.call) to deal with legitimate variations of function
and S3 method calls.
Fix bug in install_from_swirl() that was causing
install_from_swirl("R Programming") to install both
R Programming and R Programming Alt.
Fix troublesome links to the swirl_courses repo.
Add ?InstallCourses, which gives a brief overview of
installing swirl courses and includes links to all relevant help
files.
Add email_admin() feature, which allows the user to
automatically generate an email to be sent to
info@swirlstats.com. The email includes space for a
description of the problem along with the output from
sessionInfo().
Clean up swirl’s core function, swirl() in swirl.R,
so that we can view the administrative environment e with
as.list(e) without complaint from R.
Add empty cran-comments.md to appease new devtools
release().
Add a new script question type, which allows an
instructor to present a preformatted R script to the user for editing
and submission. swirl was originally designed for interactive
programming at the prompt. It now accommodates multiline input, which
allows for exploration of topics like writing functions and control
structures, as well as more extended function calls.
Allow user to make swirl feedback less playful with
options(swirl_is_fun = FALSE).
In welcome.default(), make sure the user doesn’t put
any special characters (using the [[:punct:]] regex) in his
or her name, as this might lead to an invalid file path for their user
data. Thanks to @Sarpwus for bringing this to my
attention.
Trim leading/trailing whitespace when reading lesson dependencies from dependson.txt.
Add dev argument to
install_from_swirl() to allow installation of courses in
development from the swirl_misc
repository.
Update phrases.R to include new praise and ‘try again’ phrases. Thanks to @sagevann for the suggestions.
Use capture.output() to avoid double printing due to
second evaluation by safeEval() when
AUTO_DETECT_NEWVAR is TRUE.
Add testit() to functions for callback to ignore, so
that swirl plays nicely with swirlify.
Add from/to feature for testing specific units of content during course authoring.
mergeList arguments in
swirl.R.Alternate user progress tracking strategy without previous lag or freeze problems. Backwards compatible with existing course content. Tracks large or small lesson data sets by default, but these may be excluded by sourcing with local=FALSE from the initLesson.R file.
Make course installation success/failure messages more robust.
Add documentation for ?AnswerTests.
Create a file for manual submission to Coursera immediately after the user enters his or her credentials. This way, no matter what happens during the submission process, manual submission is still an option. The file is deleted if automatic submission succeeds.
Add any_of_exprs() to library of answer
tests.
Fix bug related to user entering their Coursera Course ID with quotes.
Fix bug causing swirl to fail when exiting from course menu.
Add packageStartupMessage() that detects a cluttered
workspace and warns the user that this may cause swirl to run
slowly.
Add main() function, which allows user to return to
the main menu while a lesson is in progress.
Add which_course argument to
install_course_zip() that will facilitate manual
installation. In particular, if a student downloads a zip file from the
swirl courses repo, it comes with all courses in it. This function will
allow the user to install only those that she wants.
skip() count not resetting upon
lesson completion.Add confirmation step to Coursera submission process.
Stash Course ID along with other Coursera creds.
Display correct answer when user skip()s a
question.
Instructional content is no longer shipped with swirl. Instead,
it is located in our course repo. When
the user starts swirl, he or she is given the option to install the R
Programming course automatically or be taken to the course repo page.
Courses can also be installed with the install_from_swirl()
function.
Content authoring tools have also been removed from the swirl package. We’ve created a new package called swirlify, which is a comprehensive toolbox for swirl instructors. Instructions for authoring content are on the Instructors page of the swirl website.
Package dependencies for a lesson are now managing by including a
file called dependson.txt in the lesson directory, which
lists required packages one line at a time. This strategy is mainly for
backwards compatibility and will take a different form for new content
in future releases. When the user begins a lesson with package
dependencies, swirl attempts to load each package in turn and prompts
the user to automatically install any packages not found.
Added help files for answer tests contained in
answerTests.R.
Added progress bar feature using
utils::txtProgressBar().
Added test mode for compatibility with the swirlify
package.
Integrated with Coursera API to allow enrolled students to receive credit for swirl lessons associated their Coursera course.
rmd2df() can finally handle figure and
video units of instruction.
parse_content() now parses content (at runtime) in
its original form (R Markdown, YAML, etc.), making conversion to CSV
files unnecessary. The appropriate parsing method is called based on the
extension of the lesson file. Creating a new course authoring format is
as simple as writing a new method for parse_content() that
accepts the content as input and returns a properly structured
lesson object.
author_lesson() function creates and opens a
customized lesson template for authoring content.
Suite of functions for installing (and uninstalling) swirl courses:
install_course_directory(): Install a course from a
course directoryinstall_course_dropbox(): Install a course from a
zipped course directory shared on Dropboxinstall_course_github(): Install a course from a GitHub
repositoryinstall_course_google_drive(): Install a course from a
zipped course directory shared on Google Driveinstall_course_url(): Install a course from a url that
points to a zip fileinstall_course_zip(): Install a course from a zipped
course folderuninstall_course(): Uninstall a coursezip_course(): Zip a course directoryCourse authors can add custom tests for student responses.
Revised suite of answer tests (contained in answerTests2.R) using a more natural function call syntax.
Revised user progress tracking and restoration.
Message notifying the user when she’s completed a lesson, just prior to returning to the main menu.
Miscellaneous big fixes
Uses addTaskCallback() as a mechanism to capture
user input directly from the R prompt.
During instruction, info() brings up a menu of
options including bye(), skip(),
play(), and nxt().
skip() allows the user to skip the current question.
swirl automatically evaluates the correct answer in the user’s workspace
in case future questions depend on the result.
Includes a library of answer tests based on testthat, an R package designed by Hadley Wickham for unit testing.
Tests user responses for correctness based various combinations of the aforementioned answer tests. A user is judged to have answered a question correctly when the answer tests specified for that question are satisfied.
The answer tests operate on the R expression entered by the user, as opposed to the string representation of it (see swirl 1.0). This avoids marking a user incorrect for stylistic discrepancies such as including single spaces between function arguments, etc.
Makes heavy use of R’s S3 object oriented programming dialect to promote an easily extensible architecture. Incorporating new functionality simply requires writing new methods for existing “core” functions.
Instructors can now author content in an R Markdown (.Rmd) file,
then use rmd2csv() to create the CSV file from which swirl
reads content. This is an experimental feature based on syntax employed
by slidify, an R
package designed by Ramnath Vaidyanathan for creating interactive web
presentations.
These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.