Preparing and Submitting Non-Programming Assignments

Steven J. Zeil

Last modified: Dec 21, 2019

Contents:

This document explains the procedures for preparing and turning in non-programming assignments in this course. For information on programming assignments, see here.

1 General Guidelines

When asked to write essays or reports or to answer questions, you should prepare a document with your answer, using your favorite text editor or word processor, and then use the “Submit” button on the assignment page to submit that file(s). Normally, each assignment will call for a single document.

The document should clearly indicate problem numbers and other identifying information associated with the assignment. If this is a team assignment, make sure that all team members’ names are included.

Note that, in this course, the non-programming assignments generally revolve around preparing documentation of software, models, designs, etc. Documentation is all about communication. Anything that gets in the way of communication, including careless organization, missing information, unreadable graphics, or non-portable document formats, is therefore likely to be penalized.

2 File Formats

Unless otherwise instructed, your document must be in one of the following formats:

Why do I not accept .doc, .docx, .odf, etc. in submissions? These formats are designed for preparation of documents. What i actually see if you give me one of these depends on what operating systems you and I use, what versions of the word processor we use, what fonts happen to be installed on our machines, etc. And the fancier you get in your use of advanced features in a word processor, the more likely it is that I will see something very different (including, sometimes, nothing at all) when I view it.

By contrast, PDF is a publication format. It is the most common of a handful of file formats that include not only the text of your document, but also includes the fonts you chose to use, includes specific data on the placement of each character and graphic on the page, etc. It is designed to guarantee that what I see is exactly what you saw when you completed your document.

plain ASCII text, saved as a .txt file.

In some instances, this will not be acceptable. For example, if you are told to prepare a report that is to include graphs or other images, you obviously cannot submit in plain ASCII text.

Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), saved as a .pdf file.

You can produce these if your system has the Adobe Distiller software installed. Most word processors (including Microsoft Office, Google Docs, OpenOffice, and LibreOffice) allow you to generate PDF directly.

You can also produce PDF from any Windows program if you have installed PDF Creator, CutePDF, or a similar program that adds a “pdf file printer” to your list of available printers.

Do not assume that I will accept other document formats unless you have checked with me first! You will lose 10% of the assignment value for submitting in an unapproved format, 20% if you force me to switch to a different machine that has software capable of reading your document, and 100% if I cannot find such a machine.

3 Graphics and Drawings

In assignments that ask you to prepare charts or diagrams, you should use the appropriate drawing tools to prepare your graphics. With many such tools, you will then need to export the final diagram into a portable graphics format.

These should then be copied-and-pasted or imported, as appropriate, into a word processing document, submitted in one of the approved formats listed earlier. Do not submit multiple separate graphics files.

Do not take screenshots of your drawing program in edit mode. These typically include grid-lines, selection handles, and other artifacts intended to aid in the editing of your drawings. They are also almost always captured in raster formats. The end result is almost always distractingly awful.

There are many good quality drawing programs available for free. There are several installed on the CS Dept network. Please do not use a “trial version” of a non-free program that stamps obscuring info over the final result until you actually pay for the software.

3.1 Raster and Vector Formats

An important part of working with graphics is the distinction between “raster” and “vector” graphics formats.

Raster graphics formats are oriented towards producing colored pixels and subtly shaded areas, useful in photographs and artistic drawings. When images in these formats are resized or even just viewed on a device with a different resolution than the one in which it was drawn, the colors of adjacent pixels may be mixed (aliased) without noticeable degradation.

Most of the diagrams that you are likely to produce in this class are line drawings mixed with text. Raster formats do not work well with these. When these are resized, the same mixing process results in fuzzy lines or may cause lines to disappear entirely.
Common raster formats include bmp, gif, jpeg, and png. Use these with photograph-like images, not with line drawings. (If you absolutely must use one of these for line drawings, jpeg is probably the worst choice for this purpose.)

Vector graphics formats are oriented towards the drawing of lines and geometric figures (including text). When images in these formats are resized, the lines are stretched by simply moving the coordinates of the end-points. Vector formats work very well with line drawings, remaining sharp and clear no matter how many times they are resized.

They can be awkward with photographs or other images requiring subtle shading, but most vector formats will allow you to embed “boxes” of a common raster formats within a larger vector-format drawing.
Common vector formats include pdf, ps, eps, svg, wmf, and emf. Use these with line drawings.

It can be a bit harder to find graphics programs that produce vector formats, and some word processors will let you paste vector images into a document but will not display it to you until you print.

A tip: if you have a Windows drawing program that lets you move lines and shapes after placing them on the screen, it probably is using a vector format (wmf or emf) internally. In that case, if you copy-and-paste directly from your drawing program into your word processor, the graphic is probably being copied as a .wmf or .emf image even if the program does not allow you to save in those formats directly to a file.