About This Contest          Fri Sep 21 09:21:54 EDT 2001


Welcome to the BOSPRE 2001 individual practice contest.
This contest is similar to the BOSPRE 2001 contest that
will be held on Saturday October 13.  The main features
of this contest that are not shared by BOSPRE 2001 are:

1. You are given a password for this contest.

2. Several team members can log in at once and work
   on different problems.

3. Print commands email postscript files to the email
   address contained in the file ~/PRINTER which you
   can edit.

4. You must get problems one problem at a time using
   hpcm_get: see below.  The time measure for a problem
   is the time between when you get THAT problem and
   when you submit a correct solution.

We promise you there will be included in BOSPRE 2001 one
dynamic programming problem, one exhaustive search
problem (like a crossword puzzle), and one 2D geometry
problem.  There are advanced help files on 2 of these
three problem areas.

The command `help' will display this file.

This is a `informal' contest.  The command

	help informal_contest

displays more details about informal contests.

You have been given a password and an account name.  If
you have an xterminal, the xcsh command will make more
windows: see `help xterminals'.

The command `hpcm_get' will get a demonstration problem
into your directory ~/demos/count (~ denotes your home
directory).  Read ~/demos/count/README and ~/demos/
count/Makefile and practice submitting the demonstration
problem.

To find out what problems are available use the command
`help problems'.  The command `hpcm_get problems/foo'
will get the problem named `foo' into your directory
`~/problems/foo' where you can work on it.  See `help
solving'.

The command `scoreboard' will display the scoreboard.
The time of a problem is the time between when it is
gotten with hpcm_get and the time a solution is submit-
ted.

To display a list of the help files available use the
command `help index'.  Note that if something in the
index has the name `help/topic' you use the command
`help topic' to view it.

To send a question to the contest manager edit the
question into a file qqq and use the command:

	hpcm_sendmail < qqq

The print commands may or may not be supported for an
informal contest.  If `lpq' lists a printer, the com-
mands are supported.  You may be able to set your own
printer by creating a file named `~/PRINTER' containing
the name of the printer, or containing an email address
to which the print commands will email postscript files.

The problem descriptions are files in the problem direc-
tories that have one of the extensions .txt, .html,
.htm, .ps, etc.  These can be emailed to your home
computer.  The print commands will not currently print
.html, .htm, or .ps files.  But you can email these
files to your home computer where they can be displayed
with a browser.

In order to get good scores on problems, you must AVOID
getting a problem description (with hpcm_get) UNTIL you
are READY to swiftly solve it.

Good hunting!