I've been studying and searching the forums but I can't find instructions on where to start using GIFT. Is the filter already installed in Moodle? If I make a GIFT text file what next? Where is it in Moodle? It doesn't sound like mySQL is involved. Is it?
Thanks for your help, I've been searching for an hour already.
Are you familiar with the part of Moodle where you add questions to a category? In your Moodle version, do you have a button that says "Import questions from file"? If you don't have this, you may be running Moodle 1.1, (pre-GIFT).
If you do have the Import button, try clicking the help Icon next to it. That should explain more about imports. If GIFT isn't mentioned in the help, you don't have the latest Moodle.
I run Moodle 1.2 Beta, where GIFT is pretty well developed. I used to run Moodle 1.1, and there I had to download and install GIFT separately. Somebody other than me is probably better suited to talking about how to get GIFT and install it in Moodle 1.1.
With Moodle 1.2, the general process is:
1. On your local computer, prepare an ASCII file with the questions in it. Once you find the documentation, you should have no trouble creating the files. Best place to find it is in the help. It's also in the php code course/quiz/format/gift (from memory, may not be quite right).
2. "Import questions from file" lest you select the ASCII file on your local computer, upload it, and add the questions in it to a Moodle category, all in one operation.
3. Once imported, you add the questions to a quiz as usual.
Thank you!
BTW, it's a good idea to get the latest GIFT version. Paul Shew has made several enhancements recently: one to handle multiple response questions, and another to allow special characters in feedback.
Any message in this forum from Paul is definitely worth a read.
In fact, try using the message search to find 'Paul Shew'. You will get, among other things, the full GIFT documentation.
Success! I was able to get a "test batch" of questions posted last night. It's very easy once you know how 
Thank you very much for your help, Marilyn.
Re: the extra bells and whistles, this was a brand new install and I used the latest beta version from the moodle site so I'm assuming it contains the latest files.
Thank you very much for your help, Marilyn. Re: the extra bells and whistles, this was a brand new install and I used the latest beta version from the moodle site so I'm assuming it contains the latest files.
I've been traveling for a couple of weeks and haven't been able to post here, but it's good to see that others picked up the slack in helping you find info on GIFT.
I find that the Help File Index is extremely useful for locating information about all sorts of things. It's a good link to keep handy:
http://moodle.org/help.php?file=index.html
I find that the Help File Index is extremely useful for locating information about all sorts of things. It's a good link to keep handy:
http://moodle.org/help.php?file=index.html