This document is a beginner's guide to writing and debugging problems
in WeBWorK's pg-language. More extensive and higher-level
references are available in the technical
<#65#>http://webhost.math.rochester.edu/docs??<#65#><#66#>documentation section<#66#>
of the WeBWorK distribution. Also a great source of help is available via
the discussion group on Rochester's site.
The first <#67#>http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/webwork??<#67#><#68#>Newbie Guide<#68#> was written as a primer for a colleague who decided to jump into the WeBWorK fray. I was starting from scratch as well, and I chose to include a collection of problems the format of which was fairly representative of the problems he would have to design for his course. At the time WeBWorK was in version 1.4, and since then, a large number of things have changed. This seemed a good time to make a number of updates to the document, and to include a few goodies which I have picked up along the way.
You should understand that each pg-problem that you write is essentially a Perl script in which you are producing text which can be translated into LATEX, HTML, or text. Familiarity with LATEXwill be a distinct advantage, as will some basic programming experience, although there are enough sample problems in the distribution, that one can make only a few line adjustments to in order to render most simple problems.