Fix Hint Template Inheritance

[jeffinitelyjeff]

And it is purposefully turned off because it is incompatible with normal templating (if/for) in hints until there is a way to apply templating without also rendering <code> blocks. Related to #135.

[jeffinitelyjeff]

This issue is caused by the fact that applying templating also renders <code> blocks as MathJax. Hint template inheritance works by keeping two parallel arrays of hints---one with the <code> blocks stored intact and one with them rendered by MathJax. The problem is that, once templating gets involved, the arrays of hints will probably NOT line up. So templating needs to be applied before sorting the hints into arrays. <-- wrote this down so I would remember what the root of the issue actually is.

Hint template inheritance is being used in: exponents_1, exponents_2, exponents_4, and even_and_odd_functions.

[jeffinitelyjeff]

The exercises that use hint template inheritance have been gracefully rolled back to not use it, and the code that uses the inheritance stuff is in a separate branch.

The code that handles displaying hints and rendering them is in a really half-baked state right now.

[marcia]

closing this since #429 reflects the current hint inheritance situation

[jeffinitelyjeff]

ack, sorry. this bug is meant to be "get hint template inheritance working", whereas the other one is supposed to be "remove the traces of hint template inheritance that are still lurking around until we have time / need to actually get hint template inheritance working"

[marcia]

yeah i'm with you -- i just didn't see us having "the time / need to actually get hint template inheritance working". besides #429, not sure when any work on hint template inheritance would be done

[jeffinitelyjeff]

Well, once #135 is fixed, it would actually be really easy to implement. The problem is tackling #135 seemed like a big task. But if #135 needs to be tackled for other reasons (I think @spicyj mentioned in that issue that he might have to for other reasons), then this would be easy.

As far as how useful this is, meh. I found it slightly nicer looking in a couple exercises I was working on, and am okay with not using it in them, but @igorT was just telling me today that he thought it would be really useful.

[marcia]

hmm just because something is easy doesn't mean it is useful or that we should do it. let's talk tomorrow and figure this out together.

[marcia]

made a note of this elsewhere, closing it here to reduce clutter