Hdoc Converter Project

The goal of this project was to explore the possibilities of a generic transformation of quizzes written in OpenDocument Format into Opale Format.

The main problems encountered during this project was the way the OpenDocument Format handles the quizzes. Indeed, in the ODT files, the quizzes (cloze) are managed using graphic elements.

This particularity is the biggest obstacle to find a perfect solution for the transformation. There are some predictable cases which provoke a bad transformation (Known bugs). It's almost impossible to create a 100% reliable and stable solution except if we add more constraints for the creator of the files.

So a good solution to solve this problem might be to add a constraint for the creator of the quizzes. He/she should respect a specific schema to compensate the lack of logical (or formal) rules of the OpenDocument Format for this case.

The current converter has good results for 70-80% of the transformations. Moreover the the solution can be used to transform several projects. So the current converter can be used to do most of the transformation work, then the converted files can be cleaned by a humain.

This project was an interesting exploratory project. It was a good opportunity to use the OpenDocument Format, and as we saw before, it is quite difficult to perform a transformation from a format (exOOOs format) which is based on not logical nor format rules (in this case, the exOOOs format uses graphic rules).

A solution to that lack of rules could be to add a meta-logic over the format so we can perform a reliable transformation.