About This Facility         Mon Aug 21 11:22:40 EDT 2006

This facility has three purposes:

  (1) As a programming contest practice facility,
      particularly for beginners and for prospective
      entrants into BOSPRE contests.

  (2) As an experiment in using a programming contest
      like scenario for educational purposes.

  (3) As an experiment in developing programming
      contests without time constraints in which an
      autojudge gives meaningful feedback.

See the facility web page at

    www.deas.harvard.edu/hc3/bospre/facility

for further discussion.

The important help and demonstration problem files, and
the problem descriptions, are available at this web
page.

You may use your own private accounts to solve problems
and submit solutions via email.  To send submissions and
requests to the autojudge, send email

  To: bospre-facility<hc3-autojudge@method1.deas.harvard.edu>

To submit a problem solution file named pppp.ext, send
an email whose `Subject:' field is

	Subject: submit pppp.ext

and whose body contains nothing but the file itself.
To test this with a demonstration problem, get the
file named `demos/count/count1.c' from the help and
demos web pages, rename it `count.c', and submit it with

	Subject: submit count.c
	
Other solutions to demonstration problems are on the web
pages and can be submitted.

You can also use alternative submission emails with sub-
jects of any one of the forms:

    Subject: submit pppp.ext in
    Subject: submit pppp.ext inout
    Subject: submit pppp.ext solution

The scoreboard is on the web page.  See the `scoreboard'
help file for details about interpreting the scoreboard.
If you appear on the scoreboard, and want to change your
`scoreboard name', email the web page manager, who can
map email addresses to scoreboard names.

See the `email_solving' help file for more details about
solving problems using your own personal account.

Alternatively you may get a contest account by applying
to

    walton@deas.harvard.edu

You may get an account if you are a team registered for
a BOSPRE contest or participating in any contest in the
Northeastern North America ACM Contest Region.

Once you have an account, you can get all the demonstra-
tion and contest problems into that account by executing
the command `hpcm_get'.  You can direct print commands
in this account to email you postscript files by making
a `~/PRINTER' file in this account: execute `help print'
for details.  You can use the `scoreboard' command in
this account to see the scoreboard: execute `help
scores' and `help scoreboard' for details.

In this account you can also use alternative submission
commands:

    make in-submit
    make inout-submit
    make solution-submit

Read the `solving' help file for more details on how to
solve and submit a problem using this account.

Contestants with the most correct problems appear first
on the scoreboard.  Among those with the same number of
correct problems, a ranking score is computed from the
submission types (no-feedback, in, inout) for incorrect
submissions.  A correct submission with no previous in-
correct submissions will have a score of 100.0, and the
penalties for incorrect submissions depend on submission
type as follows:

    incorrect no-feedback submit    10%
    incorrect `in' submit           20%
    incorrect `inout' submit        30%

Penalties are applied only to incorrect submissions for
problems you eventually submit correctly.  See the
`scoreboard' help file, `Feedback Contests', for de-
tails.

Good Hunting!