Fencing.Net - Your Guide to Fencing & Fencing Equipment

4qtrs · 06-20-2006, 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KD5MDK

I've also seen tournaments where they ran XSeed for the tournament and shadowed the results in Fencing Time to upload to FRED.

Wow, double entry, how painful. It's normally a long enough day without that.

However, I think that from everyone's point of view, being able to see the pools and DEs in html is a very nice feature (which XSeed doesn't seem to be able to produce).

Suzy

davesaint · 06-20-2006, 07:14 PM

I have been using Fencing Time exclusively for the last 2+ years. The software is awesome. Reseading is a breeze. Prob. the best $50 I have ever spent.

Dave

oso97 · 06-20-2006, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4qtrs

Wow, double entry, how painful. It's normally a long enough day without that.

If your bout committee consists of one highly overworked person, yea, its bad enough as it is. If however, you've got a bout committee of several individuals, all well trained, and used to working with each other, and capable of delegating different tasks to different people, it doesn't add as much time as you might think, once you get the hang of it.

And yes, the ability to export full results to FRED is fabulous. Eventually, there is going to be a critical mass of data accumulated for some wonderful statistical analysis to occur.

dberke · 06-20-2006, 07:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

It's why I love engarde... it allows you to make the decisions... its just much more flexible, its been stable to the extreme, and i can easily edit field names, formats, reports, exports, and almost anything else.

This is exactly what I'm wondering - other than the pool of 10 limit (granted, an abritraty choice I made when I first coded FT) - how is Engarde more flexible? Fencing Time lets you make pretty much any decision you would want anywhere along the way, as far as I know. If there are areas that you'd think should be more flexible, please let me know what they are!

If you haven't looked at the latest version (2.0) and are basing your comments on an older version, take a look at the new one. Version 2.0 added a lot more flexibility, especially in the area of round creation and report customization.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

When asked the difference between the two programs, my standard response is: Fencing Time is a functional equivalent of a microsoft windows wizard for running fencing competitions... It doesn't take much to learn, it doesn't take a whole lot of computer and tournament literacy to run it, but you don't have as much control as someone who has run a ton of tournaments usually wants, and it costs $50...

On the other end is Engarde... its like the linux of the fencing tournament world... You can do almost anything you want to it, it is more stable than any other program i've used (disclaimer: I haven't used anything other than the trial version of fencing time, and i didn't have any problem with it, but I haven't used it enough to vouch for its stability), you can make it jump through hoops that many programs never dreamed of, customize the hell out of it... but it takes a little more knowledge, and a willingness to get your hands dirty once in a while (or knowing someone who is willing to)...

That's a reasonable comparison. FT was designed with the non-technical user in mind, with ease of use as its primary goal. Its goal is to let people run tournaments without having to worry about the techncial details of how to get the data in, out, and through the program. Engarde requires more techncial know-how to get it to work, which I think is unnecessary.

Dan

DJ Apostrophe · 06-20-2006, 08:15 PM

Dan,

one off the top of my head that absolutely kills me...

the ability to only print three sizes of the tableau... being able to use the 'line spacing' option in engarde allows me to fit the appropriate amount of data on a page (without having to cut it afterwards) depending on what I want to do.

For example... at a tournament this year, I printed a table of 64 in portrait one one page for the person who was running the table from the floor, and printed two more copies of the table in landscape on four pages each (easier to read) for wall posting purposes... all this i did with key strokes, never having to touch a mouse, and it was all out of the printer in under 30 seconds...

There are more, but I have to go back to something else I'm working on...

the 15 fencer limit in the trial has honestly kept me from trying it any further...

I can't actually use it to run a competition, as almost all the competitions we run are WELL over 15 fencers... and there are just too many variables and at the moment decisions that are made while running a tournament, that simulating it with a smaller tournament while sitting in my living room just doesn't work out so well.

that's all for now.

-w

epeemike81 · 06-21-2006, 01:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dberke

Is there a practical limit to the size of pools that people might run? Would a new limit of a pool of 32 be reasonable?

I pity the person with a slow PC waiting for Windows to render all those text boxes...

Dan

Why do you need to limit it at all?

It's not hard to conceive of a data structure for pools that is infinitely scalable...

-m

epeemike81 · 06-21-2006, 01:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oso97

If your bout committee consists of one highly overworked person, yea, its bad enough as it is. If however, you've got a bout committee of several individuals, all well trained, and used to working with each other, and capable of delegating different tasks to different people, it doesn't add as much time as you might think, once you get the hang of it.

And yes, the ability to export full results to FRED is fabulous. Eventually, there is going to be a critical mass of data accumulated for some wonderful statistical analysis to occur.

So why use xseed at all? what advantage does it give you over FT or Engarde?

-m

KD5MDK · 06-21-2006, 01:32 AM

Those well trained people are most comfortable with XSeed, and so can move the tournament along faster with it. Fencing Time entries can be made as workload permits.

dberke · 06-21-2006, 04:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

the ability to only print three sizes of the tableau... being able to use the 'line spacing' option in engarde allows me to fit the appropriate amount of data on a page (without having to cut it afterwards) depending on what I want to do.

For example... at a tournament this year, I printed a table of 64 in portrait one one page for the person who was running the table from the floor, and printed two more copies of the table in landscape on four pages each (easier to read) for wall posting purposes... all this i did with key strokes, never having to touch a mouse, and it was all out of the printer in under 30 seconds...

FT supports three sizes, one with 4 bouts per page (large font), one with 8 bouts per page, and one with 16 bouts per page. In a large event, you can easily print the table in quadrants or octants for distribution to the strips like they do at national events. Are you saying that these three sizes of tableau isn't enough? I haven't found a case where one of the thee sizes doesn't work fine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

There are more, but I have to go back to something else I'm working on...

Please let me know what other issues you've run into so that I can address them (or add them to the to-do list of things to change)...

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJ Apostrophe

the 15 fencer limit in the trial has honestly kept me from trying it any further...

I can't actually use it to run a competition, as almost all the competitions we run are WELL over 15 fencers... and there are just too many variables and at the moment decisions that are made while running a tournament, that simulating it with a smaller tournament while sitting in my living room just doesn't work out so well.

If the 15-fencer limit is preventing you from doing a more comlplete evaluation of FT, let me know and I'll see if I can arrange something...

Dan

dberke · 06-21-2006, 04:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by epeemike81

Why do you need to limit it at all?

It's not hard to conceive of a data structure for pools that is infinitely scalable...

-m

It's not the data structure that's the problem, it's just the practical aspect of trying to squeeze the entire pool matrix on a single sheet of paper. I suppose I could keep scaling the name text down until I get to a 1 pt font, but I'm sure there's some kind of practical limit.

Dan

oso97 · 06-21-2006, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by epeemike81

Why do you need to limit it at all?

It's not hard to conceive of a data structure for pools that is infinitely scalable...

-m

One of the great misnomers of those who dabble in computer engineering

There is no such thing as an infinitely scalable architecture!

epeemike81 · 06-21-2006, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oso97

One of the great misnomers of those who dabble in computer engineering

There is no such thing as an infinitely scalable architecture!

speaking as somebody who "Dabbles" in databases, there's no reason why the software or database should be the limiting factor on size of a pool. data wise, it CAN be (theoretically) infinitely scalable. you will eventually, of course, run into physical processor and memory issues, but not at any practically applicable level.

-m

epeemike81 · 06-21-2006, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dberke

FT supports three sizes, one with 4 bouts per page (large font), one with 8 bouts per page, and one with 16 bouts per page. In a large event, you can easily print the table in quadrants or octants for distribution to the strips like they do at national events. Are you saying that these three sizes of tableau isn't enough? I haven't found a case where one of the thee sizes doesn't work fine.

Uh, he pointed out a case where the 3 sizes are inadequate....

when you have somebody running the table from the floor with a clipboard, and you want to put the whole thing (64 fencers, 32 bouts) on one page, Engarde can do that. ft can't.

otoh, I believe more important is his general point about how easily he can muck with report structure, spacing, etc. Engarde just empowers the user more.

-m

Wafath · 06-21-2006, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by epeemike81

speaking as somebody who "Dabbles" in databases, there's no reason why the software or database should be the limiting factor on size of a pool. data wise, it CAN be (theoretically) infinitely scalable. you will eventually, of course, run into physical processor and memory issues, but not at any practically applicable level.

But when you are tightly integrating with a display device that is inherently non-scrollable and of fixed size (say, a piece of paper), representation issues make this non-scalable.

It is reasonable to say that you don't want to solve the "how do I print out a pool sheet of n fencers" where n is an integer between 1 and 1,000,000. Solving for that problem probably isn't worth the cost.

There may well be an approach that does accomplish this, but on its face, the solution for n 2-10 may be different than the solution for 11-20, which differs for 21-32.

Remember that a tournament management software is more about the appearance, output and usability than it is about the math behind it all.

W

epeemike81 · 06-21-2006, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wafath

But when you are tightly integrating with a display device that is inherently non-scrollable and of fixed size (say, a piece of paper), representation issues make this non-scalable.

It is reasonable to say that you don't want to solve the "how do I print out a pool sheet of n fencers" where n is an integer between 1 and 1,000,000. Solving for that problem probably isn't worth the cost.

There may well be an approach that does accomplish this, but on its face, the solution for n 2-10 may be different than the solution for 11-20, which differs for 21-32.

Remember that a tournament management software is more about the appearance, output and usability than it is about the math behind it all.

W

Simple solution: once it's too large for a grid to fit on a page, print it as a list of bouts on as many pages as necessary.

problem solved.

-m

KD5MDK · 06-21-2006, 01:16 PM

Tabluating that by hand (which is the only way I know of to catch data entry errors) would be extremely inefficient, though.

DJ Apostrophe · 06-21-2006, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KD5MDK

Tabluating that by hand (which is the only way I know of to catch data entry errors) would be extremely inefficient, though.

Fencers check scores and initial after each bout (while the next is fencing), then they check the round results that get posted at the end (or during, if the situation allows), and report any errors they see.

-w

KD5MDK · 06-21-2006, 02:07 PM

But it's much faster if you can check for errors at input rather than waiting until the round is over and everybody checks their score.

oso97 · 06-21-2006, 02:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by epeemike81

speaking as somebody who "Dabbles" in databases, there's no reason why the software or database should be the limiting factor on size of a pool. data wise, it CAN be (theoretically) infinitely scalable. you will eventually, of course, run into physical processor and memory issues, but not at any practically applicable level.

-m

Theoretically of course. There you hit the nail on the head. Theoretically, anything is possible. But practical issues, like physical processor and memory issues, bandwidth issues, assorted other concerns or in this case, how many bouts can you print on a page before it becomes unreadable, do impose practical limits on what can be accomplished. Much as I'm trying to beat into the skull of my boss right now.

/geek mode off

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of fencing software