There seems to be a bit of updating going on in Sailwave, thanks for the time being put in.
As part of the PY scheme there is an opportunity to use " advised numbers " for club handicapping. If we were to use these RYA numbers we would have a committee room full of disgruntled previous winners ( such is the disparity and why often some boats seem to win far to frequently ) and a bar full of happy now winning sailors.
To integrate a revised handicap system of using the advised numbers as easily as possible, we would like to have dual PY colomns ( official yearly PY and club PY ) giving dual results. Unfortunately the method of over writing the PY with a new club PY file and then recalculating the results, is perhaps one step too far for some of the race officers and could lead to the club PY's being used at some of the larger events we have, by accident.
Once the dust has settled a bit over perhaps a year or two and the handicaps have settled down, we could then start using the club PY's to base trophies etc on.
So a big big please then, dual PY colomns and dual result sheets.
To integrate a revised handicap system of using the advised numbers as easily as possible, we would like to have dual PY colomns ( official yearly PY and club PY ) giving dual results. Unfortunately the method of over writing the PY with a new club PY file and then recalculating the results, is perhaps one step too far for some of the race officers and could lead to the club PY’s being used at some of the larger events we have, by accident.
Aliases doesn't work in the way a RC who isn't very computer literate can operate easily. You will be surprised how many officers struggle to imput the data let alone create aliases for every competitor.
Sailwave is not easy to manipulate files in and out of and it would be just very very very conveniant to jut have two colomns ( effectively two file locations ) which the results can be produced from.
Agreed! Which is why I don’t let them anywhere near the software
I appreciate it can be regarded as inefficient, but I much prefer them to use pen & paper so that I can judge how well they were (or weren’t) coping, and the intermediate lap times can come in handy if they really make a mess of things!
Aliases doesn’t work in the way a RC who isn’t very computer literate can operate easily. You will be surprised how many officers struggle to imput the data let alone create aliases for every competitor.
I think if aliases were easier to setup and use, it would solve your problem. I do agree however that currently they are difficult to setup and use, and my experience is that more often than not people encounter problems when using them.
Aliases doesn’t work in the way a RC who isn’t very computer literate can operate easily. You will be surprised how many officers struggle to imput the data let alone create aliases for every competitor.
Sailwave is not easy to manipulate files in and out of and it would be just very very very conveniant to jut have two colomns ( effectively two file locations ) which the results can be produced from.
At the moment aliases are a good way to use two yardstick systems at the same time. I think it's quit easy to set up aliases.
There are only a few steps for one alias. First double your competitor, open the new competitor, enter different yardstick-value, enter division or other differentiator (like "Club-YS"), on the aliases tab choose the corresponding boat. At last step you have to assign to the original boat also a differentiator ("DSV-YS") in the same field (e.g. division).
If the software administrator of a club sets up the file with the competitors and their aliases one time, other persons can use this file without problems. They enter the result for each boat one time per race - that's all. The aliases get their results automatic.
I agree that Aliases can be used but when you have in excess of 200 competitors to firstly set up and then maintain every few months, then its quite a considerable time factor for the guy looking after Sailwave. Far far easier to simply mod one " boat type " file ( Sailracer will actually automatically do this for you ) and then let Sailwave deal with the PY's simply looking up the new or alternative file.
You also have a problem with the large number of transitory members who arrive for only 1 or 2 weeks, you need a realtively computer literate person to input their data, create an alias, set up the new parameters and then delete them, its time consuming to say the least and few will do it.
This one problem is really causing us to not really use Sailwave in conjunction with Sailracer, its a shame as without info, the RYA PY scheme then ends up with huge discrepancies within the advised PY numbers. The PY system is then discredited and everyone then complains about their PY number. Its a bit of a circular problem afraid.
There is an alternative way to actually modding Sailwave, what about a small batch file which just overwrites the boat PY file with the alternative and then rescore ? any one able to write a small batch file out there ?
I’m sure we can do something for you, either an external program, or a mod to Sailwave itself. I would like to understand a bit more about your optimum solution and whether it is a solution that would benefit a lot of users or mostly just your club.
Lets look at two possible options
a) A mod to Sailwave
This would as I see it, and please tell me if this is what you want add another field to the Competitor labeled Club Handicap or Alt Handicap so that a Standard and a Club Handicap can be entered against a Competitor. Then when Scoring there would be a tick box that told it to use the Club Handicap in place of the Scoring Handicap. The state of this Tick box would have to be remembered while the blw Sailwave file is saved so that reopening it and clicking rescore would work.
The Disadvantage here is that it is another field on the Competitor screen and the obvious place to place it, is on the first screen next to the Existing Rating field, plus another option to the scoring screen. This adds to the complexity/ look that every Sailwave user will see unless we add additional complexity and put the whole option as an option in the UI setup. So the question is what percentage of users would be interested in it as it can be done using Aliases although I totally understand your comments on the added difficulty of use for the less experienced.
b) An External Program
This I could write for you and any one else interested quite quickly and it has the advantage that it does not affect any other users unless they want to use it.
Question is exactly how would this work. First thought is we use the Notes Field in the competitor to store the alternative Rating and each time you run the program it swaps the contents of the Ratings and Notes Field (With a bit of checking). This would be quick and easy, but you would loose the use of the Notes field for notes if you use it.
A bit more complicated and the external program could set the Rating based on Class or Fleet. So you select the Class or Fleet and then Standard or Club Rating and it populates the Ratings in the Competitor. Question here is the Club rating a club rating for the Class or for the competitor?
Lets have some feedback from anyone else interested or think its a good idea.
Wayne if you would like to call me on 03333443377 to discuss it might be quicker.
I agree that Aliases can be used but when you have in excess of 200 competitors to firstly set up and then maintain every few months, then its quite a considerable time factor for the guy looking after Sailwave. Far far easier to simply mod one " boat type " file ( Sailracer will actually automatically do this for you ) and then let Sailwave deal with the PY’s simply looking up the new or alternative file.
You also have a problem with the large number of transitory members who arrive for only 1 or 2 weeks, you need a realtively computer literate person to input their data, create an alias, set up the new parameters and then delete them, its time consuming to say the least and few will do it.
This one problem is really causing us to not really use Sailwave in conjunction with Sailracer, its a shame as without info, the RYA PY scheme then ends up with huge discrepancies within the advised PY numbers. The PY system is then discredited and everyone then complains about their PY number. Its a bit of a circular problem afraid.
There is an alternative way to actually modding Sailwave, what about a small batch file which just overwrites the boat PY file with the alternative and then rescore ? any one able to write a small batch file out there ?
I have been playing around with using aliases to score our series with several different handicaps this year. I agree sailwave in its current form allows you to do this. However it is long winded and fairly complicated for someone who just wants to score a basic series.
I would vote to have several rating boxes somehow in the competitor details page where the current rating box is. Just to complicate things further would it be possible to add some way of having even more than just another single rating. I’ve been using three this year for our series. The current RYA number, a club number gained from the PYS website and a personal handicap. With over 136 different boats doing our Wednesday evening series as you can imagine setting up 2 aliases for each competitor and keeping track of them all was tricky.
I agree that Aliases can be used but when you have in excess of 200 competitors to firstly set up and then maintain every few months, then its quite a considerable time factor for the guy looking after Sailwave. Far far easier to simply mod one " boat type " file ( Sailracer will actually automatically do this for you ) and then let Sailwave deal with the PY’s simply looking up the new or alternative file.
You also have a problem with the large number of transitory members who arrive for only 1 or 2 weeks, you need a realtively computer literate person to input their data, create an alias, set up the new parameters and then delete them, its time consuming to say the least and few will do it.
This one problem is really causing us to not really use Sailwave in conjunction with Sailracer, its a shame as without info, the RYA PY scheme then ends up with huge discrepancies within the advised PY numbers. The PY system is then discredited and everyone then complains about their PY number. Its a bit of a circular problem afraid.
There is an alternative way to actually modding Sailwave, what about a small batch file which just overwrites the boat PY file with the alternative and then rescore ? any one able to write a small batch file out there ?
Thanks for your comments.
The advantage of using aliases is that you get both your results published at the same time - I assume this is an advantage to you.
I wouldn’t really want to add more than 1 extra rating field to the competitor screen
However thinking aloud here:-
If you tick the box in the Rating System - Auto set competitor ratings and replaced the file in the ratings with your club ratings would this not calculate your results based on Club PY’s then change the File to RYA ratings if you want to use the Normal ratings. Would this work for you?
I have been playing around with using aliases to score our series with several different handicaps this year. I agree sailwave in its current form allows you to do this. However it is long winded and fairly complicated for someone who just wants to score a basic series.
I would vote to have several rating boxes somehow in the competitor details page where the current rating box is. Just to complicate things further would it be possible to add some way of having even more than just another single rating. I’ve been using three this year for our series. The current RYA number, a club number gained from the PYS website and a personal handicap. With over 136 different boats doing our Wednesday evening series as you can imagine setting up 2 aliases for each competitor and keeping track of them all was tricky.
If I can be of any assistance let me know.
Chris On 25 Nov 2012, at 22:47, Jon Eskdale jon@eskdale.org wrote:
Hi Wayne,
I’m sure we can do something for you, either an external program, or a mod to Sailwave itself. I would like to understand a bit more about your optimum solution and whether it is a solution that would benefit a lot of users or mostly just your club.
Lets look at two possible options
a) A mod to Sailwave
This would as I see it, and please tell me if this is what you want add another field to the Competitor labeled Club Handicap or Alt Handicap so that a Standard and a Club Handicap can be entered against a Competitor. Then when Scoring there would be a tick box that told it to use the Club Handicap in place of the Scoring Handicap. The state of this Tick box would have to be remembered while the blw Sailwave file is saved so that reopening it and clicking rescore would work.
The Disadvantage here is that it is another field on the Competitor screen and the obvious place to place it, is on the first screen next to the Existing Rating field, plus another option to the scoring screen. This adds to the complexity/ look that every Sailwave user will see unless we add additional complexity and put the whole option as an option in the UI setup. So the question is what percentage of users would be interested in it as it can be done using Aliases although I totally understand your comments on the added difficulty of use for the less experienced.
b) An External Program
This I could write for you and any one else interested quite quickly and it has the advantage that it does not affect any other users unless they want to use it.
Question is exactly how would this work. First thought is we use the Notes Field in the competitor to store the alternative Rating and each time you run the program it swaps the contents of the Ratings and Notes Field (With a bit of checking). This would be quick and easy, but you would loose the use of the Notes field for notes if you use it.
A bit more complicated and the external program could set the Rating based on Class or Fleet. So you select the Class or Fleet and then Standard or Club Rating and it populates the Ratings in the Competitor. Question here is the Club rating a club rating for the Class or for the competitor?
Lets have some feedback from anyone else interested or think its a good idea.
Wayne if you would like to call me on 03333443377 to discuss it might be quicker.
I agree that Aliases can be used but when you have in excess of 200 competitors to firstly set up and then maintain every few months, then its quite a considerable time factor for the guy looking after Sailwave. Far far easier to simply mod one " boat type " file ( Sailracer will actually automatically do this for you ) and then let Sailwave deal with the PY’s simply looking up the new or alternative file.
You also have a problem with the large number of transitory members who arrive for only 1 or 2 weeks, you need a realtively computer literate person to input their data, create an alias, set up the new parameters and then delete them, its time consuming to say the least and few will do it.
This one problem is really causing us to not really use Sailwave in conjunction with Sailracer, its a shame as without info, the RYA PY scheme then ends up with huge discrepancies within the advised PY numbers. The PY system is then discredited and everyone then complains about their PY number. Its a bit of a circular problem afraid.
There is an alternative way to actually modding Sailwave, what about a small batch file which just overwrites the boat PY file with the alternative and then rescore ? any one able to write a small batch file out there ?
Ah: I thought (possibly erroneously, haven’t tried it) that Sailwave allocated handicaps on a per race entry basis, i.e. once you had given someone a result for a particular race, that was the handicap used for that race whatever, unless you edited that particular race result - maybe I’m wrong here?
However thinking aloud here:-
If you tick the box in the Rating System - Auto set competitor ratings and
replaced the file in the ratings with your club ratings would this not
calculate your results based on Club PY’s then change the File to RYA
ratings if you want to use the Normal ratings. Would this work for you?
You are correct unless you tick the box in the Rating System - Auto set competitor ratings. It then sets them every time you score which I thought would be a nice simple solution to allow them change the ratings by just changing the files that Sailwave uses for the ratings.
Taking it a step further you could have 3 rating files and you could even have a class for each competitor so lets say competitor with Sail No 1234 is sailing a Laser. You could have a Rating file with Laser1234 as the class and his personal handicap in this file. Another file would have all the Ratings that start Laser with the RYA rating and a third file with all the ratings that start Laser with the Club Rating. If you swap the file then Sailwave would change the rating when you score to that from the file you have active. I think this should work.
However thinking aloud here:-
If you tick the box in the Rating System - Auto set competitor ratings and
replaced the file in the ratings with your club ratings would this not
calculate your results based on Club PY’s then change the File to RYA
ratings if you want to use the Normal ratings. Would this work for you?
Ah: I thought (possibly erroneously, haven’t tried it) that Sailwave allocated handicaps on a per race entry basis, i.e. once you had given someone a result for a particular race, that was the handicap used for that race whatever, unless you edited that particular race result - maybe I’m wrong here?
The problem we would have with that method is some helms change boats within the series so we have to amend their handicap whenever they change
Personally I would find a field for personal Hcap weighting useful so long as it is multiplied (by sailwave) by their boat handicap to calculate the corrected time. Perhaps I’m on my own on this one though…
However thinking aloud here:-
If you tick the box in the Rating System - Auto set competitor ratings and
replaced the file in the ratings with your club ratings would this not
calculate your results based on Club PY’s then change the File to RYA
ratings if you want to use the Normal ratings. Would this work for you?
Ah: I thought (possibly erroneously, haven’t tried it) that Sailwave allocated handicaps on a per race entry basis, i.e. once you had given someone a result for a particular race, that was the handicap used for that race whatever, unless you edited that particular race result - maybe I’m wrong here?
Another problem with dual result columns is which result order do you sort by, if the competitor was first scored under portsmouth and third scored using the personal handicap which order do you display the results in and which result do you use for a series score. Simplifying the creation of aliases fleets would be a better approach. A function to create an alias fleet, which allowed you to select all competitors with common attributes such as; gender = girl, or rating > 100, or platform = catamaran, or rig = Ketch, etc.
···
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
From: jon@eskdale.org
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:28:19 +0000
Subject: Re: [sailwave] Re: Dual colomns of PY numbers for handicapping.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your comments.
The advantage of using aliases is that you get both your results published at the same time - I assume this is an advantage to you.
I wouldn’t really want to add more than 1 extra rating field to the competitor screen
However thinking aloud here:-
If you tick the box in the Rating System - Auto set competitor ratings and replaced the file in the ratings with your club ratings would this not calculate your results based on Club PY’s then change the File to RYA ratings if you want to use the Normal ratings. Would this work for you?
I have been playing around with using aliases to score our series with several different handicaps this year. I agree sailwave in its current form allows you to do this. However it is long winded and fairly complicated for someone who just wants to score a basic series.
I would vote to have several rating boxes somehow in the competitor details page where the current rating box is. Just to complicate things further would it be possible to add some way of having even more than just another single rating. I’ve been using three this year for our series. The current RYA number, a club number gained from the PYS website and a personal handicap. With over 136 different boats doing our Wednesday evening series as you can imagine setting up 2 aliases for each competitor and keeping track of them all was tricky.
If I can be of any assistance let me know.
Chris On 25 Nov 2012, at 22:47, Jon Eskdale jon@eskdale.org wrote:
Hi Wayne,
I’m sure we can do something for you, either an external program, or a mod to Sailwave itself. I would like to understand a bit more about your optimum solution and whether it is a solution that would benefit a lot of users or mostly just your club.
Lets look at two possible options
a) A mod to Sailwave
This would as I see it, and please tell me if this is what you want add another field to the Competitor labeled Club Handicap or Alt Handicap so that a Standard and a Club Handicap can be entered against a Competitor. Then when Scoring there would be a tick box that told it to use the Club Handicap in place of the Scoring Handicap. The state of this Tick box would have to be remembered while the blw Sailwave file is saved so that reopening it and clicking rescore would work.
The Disadvantage here is that it is another field on the Competitor screen and the obvious place to place it, is on the first screen next to the Existing Rating field, plus another option to the scoring screen. This adds to the complexity/ look that every Sailwave user will see unless we add additional complexity and put the whole option as an option in the UI setup. So the question is what percentage of users would be interested in it as it can be done using Aliases although I totally understand your comments on the added difficulty of use for the less experienced.
b) An External Program
This I could write for you and any one else interested quite quickly and it has the advantage that it does not affect any other users unless they want to use it.
Question is exactly how would this work. First thought is we use the Notes Field in the competitor to store the alternative Rating and each time you run the program it swaps the contents of the Ratings and Notes Field (With a bit of checking). This would be quick and easy, but you would loose the use of the Notes field for notes if you use it.
A bit more complicated and the external program could set the Rating based on Class or Fleet. So you select the Class or Fleet and then Standard or Club Rating and it populates the Ratings in the Competitor. Question here is the Club rating a club rating for the Class or for the competitor?
Lets have some feedback from anyone else interested or think its a good idea.
Wayne if you would like to call me on 03333443377 to discuss it might be quicker.
I agree that Aliases can be used but when you have in excess of 200 competitors to firstly set up and then maintain every few months, then its quite a considerable time factor for the guy looking after Sailwave. Far far easier to simply mod one " boat type " file ( Sailracer will actually automatically do this for you ) and then let Sailwave deal with the PY’s simply looking up the new or alternative file.
You also have a problem with the large number of transitory members who arrive for only 1 or 2 weeks, you need a realtively computer literate person to input their data, create an alias, set up the new parameters and then delete them, its time consuming to say the least and few will do it.
This one problem is really causing us to not really use Sailwave in conjunction with Sailracer, its a shame as without info, the RYA PY scheme then ends up with huge discrepancies within the advised PY numbers. The PY system is then discredited and everyone then complains about their PY number. Its a bit of a circular problem afraid.
There is an alternative way to actually modding Sailwave, what about a small batch file which just overwrites the boat PY file with the alternative and then rescore ? any one able to write a small batch file out there ?
