Colin,
I have no idea what most of that means but on behalf of everyone at my club could i say a massive thank you for all of the time and effort you put in to sailwave. It is a great program that has probably helped more clubs than you know.
Can i make one plea if the program is to change; please continue to work with RYA for return of race data as this single button could do more for grass roots sailing by making accurate pn returns more numerous.
Thanks again.
Chris Gandy
Draycote Water
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From: Colin Jenkins colin@sailwave.com
Sent: 17 March 2010 09:17
To: Sailwave User Group sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sailwave] Sailwave - The Future - A personal message
As you’ve probably guessed by my erratic engagement I’m having a little crisis with Sailwave. I need a fresh start with it. The existing design is flawed but has too much inertia to nudge the way it needs to go. I expected to be earning some cash form it by now in the form of a title sponsor but results get scattered all over the place and their origin gets lost - and it’s not attractive to anybody any more - I’ve tried. People do donate now and again (thanks) but for every user that does there are hundreds that don’t, so that is not a viable model either. I can’t sell it as a product because I cannot guarantee to support it - it would be unethical of me.
I may have said this before but I (really) have decided to retreat from big events and concentrate on perhaps what I should have been concentrating on all the time - grass roots sailors - personal handicaps - small clubs - many without “web2” websites. There are people out there already concentrating on the big events, so this makes sense.
Sailwave will become “Sailwave for Windows” - I will probably still do small changes and bug fixes as necessary - I will definitely do a publishing tweak so that enterprising users can publish anything they like using javascript. It has come to the end of it’s life - and is struggling on Windows7 a bit - because of the development env - which itself if struggling.
The new Sailwave will be trimmed right down and will run on Windows/Max/Linux/iPhone natively.
There will be a very simple new model for a “regatta” (.blw file). By rearranging the data structures I’ve figured out a way to add more flexibility while removing confusing elements of the existing Sailwave - aliases (don’t worrk Mark!) - inherited fleets - multiple starts etc.
A “regatta” contains a list of competitors and N “events” - each event is represented by a subset of those competitors - not necessarily mutually exclusive (as now) - this is the big change - so you can have an events called “everybody”, “cats” and “monos” for example. Or if you want to experiment with scoring “everybody py”, “everybody SCHRS” etc.
Each events has it own set of races (with ability to link to another race rather then re-enter data) and the start data is just in the race - no multiple starts.
Each event has a scoring system associated with it.
This is a much easier model to understand.
There will be minimal hardwired code. Extra scoring systems can be written by users and added to a library.
Every Regatta can have an optional auto web presence on the Sailwave site. This facilitates web2 for those clubs that don’t/can’t have/get it. You can post results to it etc etc. I also envisage competitor entry and this is a route to make a little cash for myself maybe.
Apart from essential competitor fields like “points” the user will speficy the field names he wants to use.
Ratings will be in a library not in the competitors.
Currently I’m leaning towards Adobe Air as the platform - Sailwave hits nicely into a HTML model cos essentially the UI just a load of tables and forms.
I want to maximise the opportunity for user involvement - designing scripts, layouts for results etc, but keep control of the ‘harness’.
Anyway, as of tdoay - those are my thoughts.
Colin