[Tex/LaTex] Breaking framed boxes across pages – or, a better design for a homework problem set

Question

My school's recommended homework document class file uses a boxedminipage to typeset problem statements so they appear in a box. However, this has the unfortunate consequence that they can't be broken across pages — so problem statements frequently tend to push themselves onto a new page.

Is there a way around this, such that the box can be broken across pages? Or does anyone have any better suggestions for a way to visually offset the problem statements from the solutions?

Answer 1

Here is a short example using the mdframed package that is capable of breaking a boxed environment across a page:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mdframed}% http://ctan.org/pkg/mdframed
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-4]

\newmdtheoremenv[outerlinewidth=2,leftmargin=40,rightmargin=40,%
    backgroundcolor=yellow,outerlinecolor=blue,innertopmargin=0pt,%
    splittopskip=\topskip,skipbelow=\baselineskip,%
    skipabove=\baselineskip,ntheorem,roundcorner=5pt]{theorem}{Theorem}[section]

\begin{theorem}[Your important theorem]
\lipsum[1]
\end{theorem}

\lipsum[1-3]

\end{document}

See the mdframed documentation for more information on how the mdframed environment can be used. In the above example, lipsum was used to generate dummy text, Lorem Ipsum style.