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Contest statements#

In addition to problem-level statements, rbx supports creating contest statements. A contest statement is typically a single document (usually PDF) that aggregates all the problem statements in a contest, often with a cover page, customized header/footer, and problem numbering.

Configuration#

Contest statements are defined in the contest.rbx.yml file, and are usually JinjaTeX statements since there's no need to define blocks (but can be rbxTeX as well if you prefer).

contest.rbx.yml
name: "my-contest"
problems:
  - short_name: A
    path: problems/A
  - short_name: B
    path: problems/B

statements:
  - name: contest-en
    title: "My Contest"
    language: en
    path: statement/contest.rbx.tex
    type: jinja-tex
    # Contest-statement specific knobs.
    match: statement-en # (1)!
    joiner: {type: "tex2pdf"} # (2)!
    override:
      configure: # (3)!
        - type: "rbx-tex" # Convert rbxTeX to TeX
          template: "statement/contest_template.rbx.tex"
      vars: # (4)!
        showLimits: true
    vars: # (5)!
      editorial: false
  1. match: Point to the name of the problem statements that should be built and joined into this contest statement.
  2. joiner: Usually tex2pdf, meaning each problem-level statement will be built into a TeX file (as opposed to the default PDF) and then, after that, joined into a single PDF file. This configuration is crucial for contest-level statements.
  3. override.configure: Overrides the rbx-tex template to use when building each problem statement. Useful because the problem template when building for contests has to be slightly different (no \document directive and such).
  4. override.vars: Variables to pass to the problem statement context.
  5. vars: Variables to pass to the contest statement context.

Building contest statements#

The build process for contest statements is slightly different. Instead of compiling each problem statement to PDF individually and merging them, rbx usually compiles the contest template which includes the content of each problem.

The contest template#

The contest template receives a few special variables.

The contest variable contains the following attributes:

  • contest.title: The title of the contest.

The lang variable contains the language of the contest (ISO 639-1 code).

The languages and keyed_languages variables contains the programming languages available for contestants, based on the languages configured in the preset. languages is a list, and keyed_languages is a dictionary with the language ID as the key. These are really useful when you want to render an info sheet.

The vars variable receive all variables defined in the contest statement configuration.

The problems variable is a list of problems in the contest. You can read more about what is available in each problem here. Additionally, it will have a problem.path field pointing to the built TeX file of the problem statement, which you can use in your contest template to include it.

contest.tex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{icpcformat} % Your custom package

\title{\VAR{contest.title}}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

% Render contest header, front-page, etc.

% Iterate over problems
%- for problem in problems
    \clearpage
    \subimport{\VAR{problem.path | parent}/}{\VAR{problem.path | stem}}
%- endfor

\end{document}

Variable overrides#

You can override problem-level settings within the contest statement configuration. This is useful if you want to change the visual appearance of problems specifically for the contest book (e.g., adding the "Editorial" block or changing time limit rendering).

contest.rbx.yml
statements:
  - name: contest-editorial
    # Other options...
    override:
      vars:
        # Sets a custom variable that identifies this as the
        # editorial. This can be used in the problem template to
        # render an additional "Editorial" block after the statements.
        editorial: true

Matching#

When building a contest statement, rbx tries to find the corresponding problem statement for each problem. By default, it matches based on language.

  • If the contest statement is en, it looks for an en statement in each problem definition.
  • You can customize this matching behavior if needed using the match field in contest.rbx.yml.

Example: Matching by Name#

If you have multiple statements per language (e.g., statement-en and statement-en-simplified) and want to pick a specific one for the contest:

statements:
  - name: contest-en
    language: en
    path: contest.rbx.tex
    match: statement-en-simplified # (1)!
  1. This tells rbx to look for a statement named statement-en-simplified in each problem, instead of just picking the first English statement.
statements:
  - name: statement-en
    language: en
    path: statement-en.rbx.tex
    type: rbx-tex

  - name: statement-en-simplified
    language: en
    path: statement-en-simplified.rbx.tex
    type: rbx-tex

Learn through examples#

Look at our default preset to see how it works and modify it to your liking.