Problem Catalog

[gettyst]

I am wondering if there is a comprehensive catalog of the problems. It would be a valuable resource, something I could annotate, highlight problems I would like to visit next, etc.

As far as I can tell, only one problem can be read at a time, and worse, some cannot be copied and pasted into a document in their entirety.

[heteroing]

I remember there being some sort of "View details of all problems on one page" tool some time back. I miss it every day. I imagine with nearly 800 problems that is infeasible, but maybe there could be an option to view all (unsolved, solved, pinned, etc) problem details 25 or 50 at a time. I would use it.

[euler]

Yes, the sheer number of problems made it unreasonable to display them all on one page. That is why we introduced pinned problems. You can mark up to 25 problems you're interested in, then on the problem table page, if you switch to Pinned problems a link will become available to show all your pinned problems on one page.

[gettyst]

Thanks for that; it is good to know about the pinned problems feature.

However, I was thinking more along the lines of a PDF that contains the problem descriptions. I understand that new problems are added occasionally, but it needn't be current to be very valuable. Even it was just the first several hundred would be to die for!

[gettyst]

Yes, the sheer number of problems made it unreasonable to display them all on one page. That is why we introduced pinned problems. You can mark up to 25 problems you're interested in, then on the problem table page, if you switch to Pinned problems a link will become available to show all your pinned problems on one page.

OK, I figured out how to 'pin' problems, but I do not know what you mean by the 'problem table page'. There is a progress page that shows my pinned problems in red, but I don't see how to switch to Pinned problems.

[euler]

On the Archives page (that shows all the problems in a table), it will say:

All (Solved / Unsolved / Pinned / Watched / Chronological) problems are being shown...

All will be emboldened, because that is the current (default) view.
Click the Pinned link, and now the problems table will only show your pinned problems.

In addition, directly below where you clicked a new option will appear:

View the details of pinned problems on one page.

where pinned problems is a clickable link allowing to see all the problem details on one continuous page. I've used CSS to create natural page breaks, if you choose to print it. Most desktops allow you to "print to PDF", so you can create your own document.

[gettyst]

Thank you.

[gettyst]

I was able to create & save a PDF of pinned problems. That is a useful feature.

The problem I have run into is unpinning them. It would be quite useful to have an "unpin all" button. Failing that, when viewing my pinned problems, it would be less efficient by still helpful to be able to use the navigation arrows to go to the next/previous pinned problem. I could then step through them and manually unpin them.

Along the same lines, It would be wonderful to have a "pin all" on a page of problems. That way I could create the catalog I had originally asked about.

[euler]

I am more than happy to add features if they benefit a reasonable proportion of members, but "unpin all" misunderstands the purpose of the pinning system. We have no problem with members collating every problem, but the pinning system is not the way to go about it. The purpose of pinning problems is to allow members to focus on a particular subset of problems, or remind them to come back to a particular problem in the future. Once they have conquered it or lost interest, they would unpin that particular problem. There is no reason why someone would suddenly want to unpin all their problems. Similarly, pinning every problem on one page is not why the pinning system was created.

Navigating through pinned problems (if the view has been set to show pinned problems) using the forwards and backwards arrows is a good idea. I'll look at that when I get a chance.

Regarding an easier way to view the problems on one page, one idea might be to show all problems on a particular page if the view was set to All problems; that would be limited to 50 problems at a time and would put less stress on the server. That feature could be useful for other members too. However, I am incredibly busy with work and home responsibilities, so you'll have to be patient. It'll either be a weekend or a term break when I get a chance to look at it.

[gettyst]

Thank you for your considered responses. I understand about the time-constraints, although I am unsure how I would discover when a new feature has been implemented. Is there some "announcement" feature on this system?

Also, when I visit this forum I see the Notification flag, but it would be nice of there were email notifications. Perhaps they exist, but if so I have not figured out how to enable them.

[euler]

Sadly, notifications are not possible because we do not keep any personal data, like email addresses.

Hopefully you spotted the news feed now that mentions I've added a feature allowing all the problems on each page of the Archives to be displayed on one page. That should help obtain what you were looking for a bit more easily and it will undoubtedly be useful for other members too.

[gettyst]

I hadn't seen it, so thanks for alerting me. I was able to find it eventually. Thanks for the new feature! I will definitely give it a go (pinning and unpinning 25 problems at a time was much too painful).

Part of the problem in finding it was that I didn't know about the posts sort feature. Once I did that to bring the newest posts to the top it was easy to locate. Is there a way to make the sort-order stick? It seems to revert to oldest first.

[euler]

I'm not sure I understand about the sort order?

By default it will sort by ID in ascending order (1, 2, 3, ...).
If you click the down arrow in the ID column it will sort in reverse order.
You can do the same by clicking the up/down arrows in the other columns to sort by "Solved By" or "Difficulty".
As explained in the privacy policy on the main site, it will use cookies to remember your settings.

You can only select to view the details of all the problems on one page if you are sorting by ID in ascending order. If you change the sort order, then the option disappears.

[gettyst]

Sorry, I meant the order that posts are presented in here on the board, not the problem archives. For example, in "News, Suggestions, and FAQ", at the bottom of the page is a dialog for "Display and sorting options". When I choose "Descending" the newest posts appear first, but that choice doesn't stick, it always reverts to Ascending.

[jaap]

Sorry, I meant the order that posts are presented in here on the board, not the problem archives. For example, in "News, Suggestions, and FAQ", at the bottom of the page is a dialog for "Display and sorting options". When I choose "Descending" the newest posts appear first, but that choice doesn't stick, it always reverts to Ascending.

You can set that in your board profile's settings.

- Go to the User Control Panel (click your user name at the top right for this option).
- Choose the Board Preferences tab.
- Choose the Edit Display Options section
- Edit the sorting settings

[euler]

Thanks, jaap.

[gettyst]

Yes, thank you jaap!