Post-mortem on Regatta

Colin:
    A number of comments about Sailwave after the regatta. Sailwave
nearly let us down. I have played with it at home for months with no
problems running on XP Home. The computer for the regatta is running
XP Pro. Initially using Sailwave Version 1.47 Beta 7. Three of the
Sailwave people from Lunenburg were there and were a bit stunned by
the problems.
    At the club everything worked till we got to the fourth entrant
when the competitor window stopped automatically moving to a new blank
competitor window. It worked randomly for two days. Reinstalled 1.46
and it still did it. I had never tried to enter more than a few
competitors at home. So, is it me, Win XP, or the weather? This
problem occurs with any download on different computers but all
running XP.
    Sail number wizard. It worked but in the heat of data entry it has
shortcomings. In the window where I enter the sail number this window
should also include the position or codes. Having to hit return to
enter the position means that you don't know which sail number you
want to work with. Sounds stupid, but with noise and interruptions it
would be nice to see which sail number the position referred to. Also
with one window I would not have to hit return twice to get to the
next competitor.
   The most serious problem. After 5 races, race 6 is off the RHS of
the screen even at the smallest font size in my regatta. I had helm
and Crew data which uses a lot of space. When you need to edit later
races you can scroll to show the column. But, the sail number, helm
etc scrolls off the LHS. That essential data should stay on the
screen. It is a nightmare trying to see which row is to be edited and
I took to pointing with my finger to locate the row as I scrolled. We
need to be able to fix certain columns so they don't move during
scrolling. Changing fonts is a nuisance 'cos it is easy to forget as
you move to publishing. Similarly, shrinking columns also have to be
resized before publishing. So, the ability to fix colums would be useful.
    A final problem. THe computers were not networked so data for the
website were put on a floppy. Sailwave kept asking for the floppy
afterwards even though "publish to Word" was highlighted ( using 1.46
at this time).
    Finally, dispite all the problems we published results faster than
ever before, they looked good, people were pleased, and I avoided a
heart attack, but only just. What do we take from all of this? Clearly
the glitches could be circumstances, the humidity and temp were high
and even the laser printers were doing strange things. The other
comments are probably worth consideration. I'm surprised that nobody
else has mentioned the scroll problem, maybe that is just me as well.
   By next year the program will be much nicer I'm sure!
Bye, Donald

Hi Donald,

Thanks for the feedback and I'm sorry to hear things were a bit stressful.
Taken what you've said on-board but don't understand the first bit and the
competitor windows - can you explain that a bit more...

Regards,
Colin
www.sailwave.com

···

-----Original Message-----
From: longcove2002 [mailto:Donald.Wyllie@stmarys.ca]
Sent: 14 July 2003 14:27
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sailwave] Post-mortem on Regatta

Colin:
    A number of comments about Sailwave after the regatta. Sailwave
nearly let us down. I have played with it at home for months with no
problems running on XP Home. The computer for the regatta is running
XP Pro. Initially using Sailwave Version 1.47 Beta 7. Three of the
Sailwave people from Lunenburg were there and were a bit stunned by
the problems.
    At the club everything worked till we got to the fourth entrant
when the competitor window stopped automatically moving to a new blank
competitor window. It worked randomly for two days. Reinstalled 1.46
and it still did it. I had never tried to enter more than a few
competitors at home. So, is it me, Win XP, or the weather? This
problem occurs with any download on different computers but all
running XP.
    Sail number wizard. It worked but in the heat of data entry it has
shortcomings. In the window where I enter the sail number this window
should also include the position or codes. Having to hit return to
enter the position means that you don't know which sail number you
want to work with. Sounds stupid, but with noise and interruptions it
would be nice to see which sail number the position referred to. Also
with one window I would not have to hit return twice to get to the
next competitor.
   The most serious problem. After 5 races, race 6 is off the RHS of
the screen even at the smallest font size in my regatta. I had helm
and Crew data which uses a lot of space. When you need to edit later
races you can scroll to show the column. But, the sail number, helm
etc scrolls off the LHS. That essential data should stay on the
screen. It is a nightmare trying to see which row is to be edited and
I took to pointing with my finger to locate the row as I scrolled. We
need to be able to fix certain columns so they don't move during
scrolling. Changing fonts is a nuisance 'cos it is easy to forget as
you move to publishing. Similarly, shrinking columns also have to be
resized before publishing. So, the ability to fix colums would be useful.
    A final problem. THe computers were not networked so data for the
website were put on a floppy. Sailwave kept asking for the floppy
afterwards even though "publish to Word" was highlighted ( using 1.46
at this time).
    Finally, dispite all the problems we published results faster than
ever before, they looked good, people were pleased, and I avoided a
heart attack, but only just. What do we take from all of this? Clearly
the glitches could be circumstances, the humidity and temp were high
and even the laser printers were doing strange things. The other
comments are probably worth consideration. I'm surprised that nobody
else has mentioned the scroll problem, maybe that is just me as well.
   By next year the program will be much nicer I'm sure!
Bye, Donald

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