Professor Calhoon
Professor Calhoon was a quiz program that appeared on issues of the diskmagazine Loadstar for the Commodore 64. The program was published along with quiz files, but users could make their own quizzes with a text editor (such as Edstar on Loadstar #134 and Mr. Edstar on Loadstar #243); instructions were given on the issue, and submissions of quiz files were accepted for publication.
Format
Files are in PETSCII format, in mixed-case mode. They are saved as type PRG, with a filename prefix of "pc.".
The first line contains an identifier for your quiz of up to six lowercase letters, ending in a period. This is used as the prefix of a filename for saving "Dean's List" scores for your quiz.
The second line is for the author credit, in all lowercase starting with "quiz by: " and ending with a greater-than sign (>).
The third line says "Professor Calhoon" (in mixed upper/lowercase exactly as written) for the C-64 version, or "Calhoon University" for the C-128 version. (The rest of this description is for the C-64 version; things may differ for the C-128.)
The fourth line, and subsequent lines until two blank lines are encountered, has the name and description of the quiz in mixed case, up to 34 characters per line.
Then there are two blank lines to end the header portion.
Finally, there are the quiz questions themselves, up to 100 questions, each of which has a block of exactly 10 lines like this:
- Question number, formatted like "Q-1"
- Answer indicator ("#a", "#b", etc., depending on which lettered answer is correct)
- Question line 1
- Question line 2 (if not needed use single asterisk)
- Question line 3 (if not needed use single asterisk)
- Answer a
- Answer b
- Answer c
- Answer d
- Blank line
Questions and answers are in all lowercase. Question lines are limited to 34 characters, and answer lines to 16 characters. Don't use # sign except in answer indicator. Also don't include double quote ("), greater-than (>) or less-than (<) signs except at particular places where required by syntax as noted elsewhere. The at sign (@) can be used where you want a double quote to show, and the English pound (£) for an underline, or five English pounds for a long blank.
The end of the quiz is marked by a less-than sign (<) on a line by itself.
